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“With the same liquid my father used to give me.”
Maxine held me tighter, gently stroking her hand against my arm, like she had done when we were just kids. She leaned her head against mine. “Is Jaroth in your prison? Did you capture or kill him?”
“Thayer and Gaian left to find my father in the north. They brought him along.”
“In the north,” Xorgor repeated, almost as if things were starting to register in his head. “You mean—fuck. I knew Thayer was a fucking psychopath, but I wouldn’t have thought he’d bring Jaroth to the pits with him.”
“What pits?” Maxine asked.
“Where monsters who love feasting off demon flesh live,” Xorgor clarified. “If they brought Jaroth there, he’d be more than dead. I doubt an ounce of his flesh and blood is still out there. Those monsters devour every last bit of demons.”
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the father
gaian
“It’s cold as fuck,”Thayer growled, wrapping some fur from a wild animal he had killed around his body and shielding his face from the treacherous winds that burned our bare skin. “Not going to fucking lie. I wouldn’t be surprised if we found Sina’s real father dead up here.”
I cut my gaze to him and pulled up my hood, the cold searing my ears. While I hoped that Sina’s real father was alive, I didn’t know how anyone could survive here for years by themselves, chained up.
After stopping, Thayer pulled out his phone, which I was surprised still had any battery or service. I hadn’t seen anyone for the past ten hours around here, not even another animal, besides the one he had killed.
“If this map is correct, he should be about a mile farther,” he said, stuffing his phone back into his pocket and picking up his pace toward the north. “Let’s fucking go. I want to get back home. We’re going to fucking freeze out here.”
Once I started after him, we trekked up the side of a mountain that loomed over the forest below. The snow that lay upon the slope had frozen over into solid ice. Thayer slowed down enough, so he wouldn’t trip and fall on his ass.
Carefully, I stared down at the ice, so my eyes wouldn’t burn, leaned forward to balance myself, and took steps up the mountain. The farther we made it, the colder it got up here, and Thayer had to keep talking shit to keep himself warm.
I just kept Sina in my mind, desperate to reunite her with her biological father, the man who had lived his life chained in the ice pits and a Paragon who must’ve been one of the strongest people alive if he had survivedthis.
Thayer slipped face-first into the ice and began sliding down the mountain side. I gripped on to a sturdy tree branch to steady myself and grabbed the back of his arm just as he passed me to stop him. He grunted and scrambled to his feet.
“If you don’t shut up, I’m going to let you slide all the way down next time,” I said.
He shook the ice off his coat. “Has Sina seen this side of you?”
Biting back a snarky reply, I gritted my teeth and continued a mile up the mountain until we reached a level clearing. Thayer blew out a cloud of cold breath from his mouth in an attempt to sigh and crossed his arms, scanning the area around us.
“He’s not fucking here,” he growled.
“Well, where the hell is he? You have the map. You’re part demon.”
“That doesn’t mean I know shit about where he is,” Thayer growled. “My mother doesn’t give a fuck about letting me in on the demon gossip or rumors. She’s a no-good, lying piece of shit.”
Before I could finish my sentence, the mountain rumbled, shaking the trees violently around us. I ground my feet and bent my knees slightly to stay put and not shake with it, but Thayer—yes, fucking Thayer—was picked up by the winds and thrown down the side of the crumbling mountain.
As the mountain began caving in on itself, my feet slipped from the spot, and suddenly, my body was flying through the air and following Thayer’s hundreds, if not thousands, of feet down into the darkness.
We landed with a thud on hard concrete. Above us, the mountain that had caved in on itself began closing overhead, trapping us within its center. And when the darkness completely consumed us, I stumbled to my feet and grabbed ahold of Thayer.
“What the fuck was—” he started, then looked behind me and froze.
“I would’ve let you find your way down here yourselves,” a man with a deep voice said behind me, “but you two together are quite annoying. Who would’ve thought I’d say that after not seeing anyone for the past twenty-three years?”
I turned around to face him, my eyes growing wide. A Paragon with eyes burning bright stood, chained to a single pole, his body spewing flames to keep himself warm in the midst of these ice pits.
“You fucking did that?” Thayer growled.
