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Chapter Seventeen
“I don't need a king. I'm already the queen.”
—Marilyn Monroe
Divina didn’t know how far they traveled. But when the harpies finally landed at the base of a mountain so tall, she could not see the peak even as they approached it from the skies, she was frozen from the inside out.
So cold, she thought her face might shatter if she so much as blinked. As it was, her eyelashes were clumped together with beads of ice, her lips must have been blue, and she was shivering so badly, her bones rattled.
It wasn’t just the climate, she knew. It was the gnawing, ravaging fear in her soul, making the blood in her veins turn to black ice.
She never let go of Andros during the long flight. She’d pressed her face into the crook of his neck to breathe in his fading scent and feel the faint pulse in his throat. Most of the time, she couldn’t feel anything. But every once in a while, there was a tiny flutter, sluggish at best.
Perhaps she dreamed it. Or wished it into being. Just a tiny, tenuous proof of life. But it was there.
Divina refused to believe otherwise.
Now, she looked around her, standing over Andros’ prone body protectively, even though the smallest of the harpies was still three times her size. The harpies cawed and hissed at her, trying to scare her away, make her relinquish her claim. But Divina stood her ground, hissing back.
If she were in dragon form, she’d make all of her feathers spike up like a crown around the back of her head and neck to make herself look larger, more intimidating. Though a multi-colored peacock of a dragon didn’t typically incite terror in its beholders.
Divina wasn’t a warrior dragon that had elemental gifts like fire, water, wind, or earth. She couldn’t spew poison either or shoot lightning from her eyes.
She had feathers. She was extravagant. She helped people fall in love and have babies, being a fertility deity. None of which gifts were useful to her at the moment.
Nevertheless, she puffed herself up as big as she could and pinned the harpies with her blackest glare. She’d chuck her platforms at them if she had to. Or sic Chewie on them too. Bottom line: they weren’t messing with Andros under her watch.
The harpies received her unspoken threats loud and clear.
“This juicy centaur meat has little time left,” the leader of the group snarled, snapping her jaws together in front of Divina’s face as she licked a long, curling tongue around her mouth, smacking it.
“Guard him all you like. When he breathes his last, we will be back to collect our reward.”
With that, the harpies shot into the air with a mighty push of their clawed feet and a collective flap of leathery wings, disappearing once more into the foggy skies.
“W-where are we?” Divina stuttered, visibly shrinking as she let go of her bravado. She shivered and stood, her teeth chattering from cold.
Thankfully, Sorin wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her into his side. The warrior was toasty warm despite their flight through frigid air. The benefit of being the Phoenix, clearly, Divina thought.
She looked over at Ere. He also seemed unaffected. Must be because he was a fire dragon, and even within the constraints of this human shell, he retained some of his supernatural powers.
“The entrance to the Underworld, at a guess,” Ere said. “One of them, anyway.”
He scanned their surroundings with narrowed, cautious eyes.
“We should count our lucky stars we’ve only encountered harpies. What I know about Greek myths suggests that there should be other monsters at the entrance.”
Divina shivered again, and Sorin rubbed his hand over her upper arm, his rough, calloused palm slightly abrading, warming her with his touch.
She glanced at Ere to gage his reaction.
When they first met, Ere took offence to any person touching his Mate, especially one such as Divina. But he didn’t seem to mind now. His mouth quirked slightly as if he even approved.
Did this mean they were friends? That Ere was starting to like her just a little bit? Divina warmed a few degrees on the inside from that thought alone.
“What kind of monsters?” she remembered to ask.
“The Scylla, for one. But it’s a sea monster, so it should only be found under the ocean at a different entrance. Briareus, for another. The storm giant with fifty heads and one hundred arms and hands. Gorgons, with snakes for hair and body. The Lernaean Hydra…” Ere shuddered at that.
