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My attention is riveted across the cavern on what looks like four large, gilded cages. The bars are thin and delicate, decorated with scrolled vines and flowers. Inside each is a god.
It appears they’re unconscious and a cry of distress escapes me. I push past Rune and he doesn’t stop me as I run to the first cage that holds Circe. She’s on her side, eyes closed, mouth slightly ajar.
Without regard for myself, I grab a hold of one of the bars, my intent to reach through and touch her, but the minute my skin touches the gold, I’m repelled backward with a painful shock that feels like a direct funnel of electricity. My body is thrust into a stone wall, slamming into it hard enough I should have several broken bones. The fact that I don’t tells me that while I might not have my powers, my body is still very much immortal.
I manage to keep my balance but my entire body tingles with aftershocks and nausea wells in my stomach.
“Should have mentioned not to touch the cages.” Rune laughs. I lift my head to see him walk up to Cato’s cage. The large man barely fits, his body twisted at odd angles.
“Are they alive?” I ask, pushing up on one arm to watch.
Rune studies Cato quietly before answering, “For now.”
“Valshour has rendered them incapable of anything but a deep sleep,” Ariman says as he steps into view. The glowing snake is now wrapped around his shoulders, its head hovering in midair while its tongue flicks in and out. My shoulder tingles with the memory of its sharp fangs. “Should they start to awaken, they’ll get another bite.”
I watch as Rune walks along the cages. He pauses at each one and observes the god inside as he or she slumbers.
I glance around, ever aware of Ariman and the snake.
Curiosity gets the better of me and I walk slowly toward the cave opening. I glance back and find Rune watching me, a placid smile on his face. He knows I’m not going to escape because as I reach the mouth of the cave, I see we are sitting high above the ground inside of a mountain. The drop is a good thirty feet and not one I’ll make willingly.
I inch out onto the ledge to get a better look. As far as the eye can see, flat ground covered by what looks to be black sand. Large boulders jut in an uneven pattern, and to the right bubbles the Crimson River. I gasp.
The river flows from the horizon, which looks to be many miles away, widening the closer it gets to the cave. It’s what provides the red glow, a tumbling mass of molten lava that slithers right up to the base of the mountain where it defies gravity and travels upward. I hold on to a rocky outcropping and lean out a bit more. I twist my neck to see the river rise up the stone face and disappear through a gap between another mountain.
Turning back, I ask, “Where are we?”
“I thought surely you’d know,” Rune says as he joins me. His hand sweeps outward toward the barren wasteland. “That used to be a fertile ocean of blue, and this beach was once white sand. A tropical paradise created by—”
“Micah,” I say with sudden realization. I heard the story from Finley. Micah was a Dark Fae who fell in love with a Light Fae named Charmeine. They were two of the earliest immortals to get a piece of the magical meteor, and it was quite large.
They fashioned the stone into items to hide the true nature of the powerful magic they possessed. From the meteor they formed an ordinary chalice and box, but Micah created a beautiful black-faceted gemstone. He set it in gold and hung it on a chain around Charmeine’s neck as a symbol of his love.
Being that they were from different races—Light and Dark Fae—they created a dimension all their own to live in for eternity. They invited others to join them where peace and harmony reigned in a beautifully formed paradise.
Except their story turned tragic when Charmeine fell in love with someone else. Filled with rage and betrayal, Micah used the box to destroy their dimension, blasting away all the beauty and leaving nothing but black sand and craggy mountains to match his feelings. He then called forth the Crimson River from the Underworld, pulling on it with mighty power so it flowed into his land and up the mountain where it cracked in half and the river disappeared.
In a rage, Micah trapped Charmeine inside the gemstone he had given her in love, then dipped the jewel in the Crimson River where it turned dark ruby. The magic of the river, coupled with the power of the stone, made escape impossible for Charmeine.
Micah attached the stone to his chalice and cried into the cup every night. He would drink his own tears, which made the darkness inside him insidious. Over time, such malignancy turned him into a cloven-hoofed monster who wandered his barren land, refusing to release Charmeine from the ruby stone.
All of that came to a head when Carrick and Finley traveled to Micah’s realm to steal the chalice and stone. It was their best plan of attack to stop Kymaris from tearing the veil and releasing the wrath of the Underworld.
They battled Micah with the help of family and friends, eventually wresting control of the chalice and stone from him.
During the war for control of the magical items, three notable things happened:
Charmeine was released from the stone and reunited with the one she’d fallen in love with—Carrick’s demigod brother, Lucien. They had but moments with each other before Micah killed her.
Lucien, driven insane by rage and grief, engaged Micah in battle. The demigod and Dark Fae shook the earth as they fought, but in the end, Micah threw Lucien into the Crimson River where he went under and was never seen again.
Micah was ultimately defeated, and the chalice and stone went into Carrick’s possession, albeit for a short time, until Kymaris gained control of it. Lucien, however, was the greatest loss, and my heart hurts to remember how driven Maddox has been to get him back.
No matter what happens to me, it’s my greatest hope that he can be pulled from the river and restored to his family.
“If you listen closely enough,” Rune says, jarring me out of my recollection, “you can hear the crying souls in the river.”
This I know as I’ve been near it many times while visiting the Underworld, which is its source.
