Page 87

To mate with evil.

GORAN

It was probably the stupidest thing I’d ever done, going back to Pict on my own. But when Lusca had dragged Rada out of the ocean and she rasped that quiet command, her hazed eyes had cleared for one split second and met mine.

I’d been of no use to her in her current state anyway. With her body running a temperature closer to lava than a normal human, Lusca and Skadi were the only ones who could give her their knots and not be in agony. The selkies were more than capable of making sure the Omegas reached Starlak. They’d argued that I should come with them to Starvale and return to Pict together, but I’d vowed to follow my Warqueen’s orders. And she’d been desperate for her Beta.

Of course the command, “Help Lex,” might not be easy to follow. I was certain he’d died in the caldera. No human could survive the kind of wounds he’d had, and even if he had lived for a while, it had been a week since then.

His last words haunted me. “Seven… mates. Seven to heal her. Her… command.” I wasn’t sure what he’d meant. I wasn’t as smart as Kellin, but I could count. Seven mates. Me, Lusca, Lachlan, Kellin, Skadi… and two more? Serak and Alexios were the only two left who could possibly be hers.

But if Alexios was dead, that left us with Serak and a potential mate I did not think I could accept, no matter if the Goddess came down and asked me face to face.

I had little hope of finding Alexios alive. But I searched all over the enormous mound that was in place of the Alldyns Vug. It resembled an ant hill, if ants were the size of dragons. Even if he’d survived, Alexios had been buried alive. My heart ached for my Warqueen.

As I climbed the rubble of it now, hot ash blowing around my face and making breathing painful, I hoped I would at least find his body. I could take it back to⁠—

“Alpha?”

One of the small boulders on the side of the Alldyns Vug moved. Once it had unfolded completely, I realized it was one of the breeding Alphas. His gray robe had blended with the ash perfectly, but the smile he gave me was wide and his dark eyes friendly.

“Frol?”

I knew the other two, Karl and Vallen, had been killed by this one. But I wasn’t sure he could be trusted.

“Yes, Frol!” The massive Alpha straightened, revealing a basket in his grip. There was a long, narrow vine tied to the handle. Very long, from the number of loops he had in his other fist.

“I’m Goran, Frol. What are you doing here?”

“Help,” he said, then spoke in a language I didn’t know, explaining. He opened the basket and showed me fruit and some small peppers. “Help?”

“Who are you helping?” I asked, approaching carefully. It was a good thing I’d slowed, since the surface of the volcano vanished between one step and the next. I sucked in a breath, staring down into the narrow tunnel that led down to a glowing cavern far below.

It was a narrow lava tube, but one that ran almost perpendicular to the surface. Hope rose in me. “Who are you feeding, Frol?”

“Offering,” he replied cheerfully and set the basket down. He began lowering it, and I waited to see if someone would take it. But after he’d lowered it for a while, he just let go of the vine, dropping the basket.

Offering, he’d said. “Who is the offering for, Frol?”

“Priest,” he replied succinctly, already heading back down the slope. Priest? That could mean a lot of things. One of Edan’s servants, Alexios, Serak…

Uneasy, I called down the tube in Mirrenese. “Hello, is anyone alive?”

There was no reply that I could hear, though a scraping sound filtered up to my ears. It could have been rocks shifting on their own. Someone crawling on a cavern floor.

Scales, sliding toward me.

Shit. I needed to rest. Preferably, far from the Alldyns Vug. Unsettled, I set down one of my own bags to mark the place and followed Frol down the slope.

He led me across the dome and to a place I hadn’t seen before. Lava had spilled out of the side of the volcano, but left a peculiar set of long ridges buried under the now-cool black flow just to the northeast. Next to one of the ridges, just outside the path of the lava, was a small outbuilding that was unmistakably an outhouse.

The ridges must have been longhouses for the Alphas who lived on this side of the island. Frol jogged past the outhouse and stepped into another remnant of the priests’ community: a good-sized garden, with plants in untidy rows beneath fruit trees that were mostly picked clean. He went to a pile of baskets, picked up one, and started digging.

“Carrots?” I asked when he pulled a pale orange tuber from the ground. He nodded. “For the priest?” Another nod.

He hummed to himself and spoke short sentences in the strange language as he worked, but around midday, he set down the small wooden spade and kneeled, facing the west. He was obviously praying. To Edan? I wasn’t sure.

It would make sense. Frol had been helpful, but he was one of Edan’s priests. I didn’t know if I could trust him to help me look for Alexios. I scouted for signs of others, but the island seemed to be deserted.