“Is that the same water as on the surface?” I ask. It’s flowing in a strikingly similar way.
Roarke runs his fingers over the wet stones, feeling the water, then smelling it.
“Yes, this is the same as the one above. Just water flowing through lava tubes.”
“Are we in the right place, then?” I ask, my heart aching with the idea that we’ve found nothing more than drinking water and a pretty cave.
Roarke turns and points out the arched doorway and down the cascading steps. He follows his own pointing, his finger tracing the path of the water with a serious thinking face etched into his features.
We shadow him, disturbing a swarm of some kind of glowing bugs that flit about us wildly before settling against the glass dome over our heads. I lean back into whichever Elorsin is behind and just stare.
“Firedragons,” Seth whispers in my ear. “Not much better than flies, but they glow.”
“And they’re not supposed to live in the north at all,” Roarke mutters.
Their wings are delicate like a dragonfly, but their bodies are almost too small to make out features – helped by their bright glow. Not all of them are glowing, though, and one darts past my face looking ready to bite.
With a tiny forked tail and little spines down its back, it is a little dragon-ish. “They’re cute.”
I hold my hand out, but Seth wraps his fingers around it and quickly closes my fist.
“Nope, not sure mortals and firedragons would get along,” he says, pushing me down the wide steps.
The water trickles steadily over a series of long shallow steps, over moss-covered rocks, and into a well.
Roarke stoops down and runs his fingers through the surface of the well. “This is the Spring.”
“How can you tell?” I ask since it looks like ordinary water to me.
“Come here,” he says, taking my hand and leading me out through the arch. I turn in a circle, piecing together my surroundings.
My bare toes brush over the moss-covered rocks, triggering a flash of memory – of me as a baby, right here on these stones.
“This is it,” I whisper. “The Spring she put me in.”
Roarke guides me to the big round pool’s edge. The thing is black with depth and completely still, almost giving the illusion that it’s also made from solid glass. I squat down and dip my fingers in just to check – yep, water.
If it wasn’t scaring the crap out of me, it would be the perfect size for us all to sit back and relax in.
Naked.
Preferably naked.
Killian crouches on the other side of me, chuckles, and taps the side of my head. “Shhh.”
“Agreed,” Roarke adds. “What does the water feel like?”
“It feels like water,” I say.
“It doesn’t feel, ah, foreign to you?”
Seth kneels on the other side of the pool, cupping some water and then letting it trickle from his fingers. “It feels... hostile.”
“How can water be hostile?”
Pax kneels and leans forwards to lick the surface.
I screw up my brow and try not to laugh at him.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He turns his head, and I realize I’m talking to Thane.
“Right, sorry, go ahead, drink the water.”
He dips his tongue in once then straightens, saying, “It’s alive.”
I close my eyes and breathe deeply, trying to feel beyond the Power Blocker and beyond the bubble, if that’s even possible. Everything is muted, like functioning in the middle of having the flu or someone has stuffed the world with cotton-tufted wool.
I reach out and ask, Are you there? Are you alive?
The walls around us feel like they could be humming, but I can’t be sure. All I’m getting through the layers of magic is a prickling sensation down my spine.
But that’s not good enough. We’ve found the spring, but I’m down to one step. Do I even have enough time for Roarke to experiment with potions?
Hear me – speak to me, I beg and get a sharp pang of pain for my efforts. Obviously using Allure the wrong way, again.
Roarke releases my hand, and instantly, my wall throws me against him, hard enough to topple us both over. Landing with a hard thud on the steps.
He lands sprawled on his back, and I’m draped over the top of him.
“Sorry,” I begin, losing the last syllable when Killian leans down, wraps an arm around my waist, and yanks me to his chest.
There’s a little stiffness to the way Roarke gets up, but all of his attention is still on me.
My feet brush the stone, then Killian commands, “Move.”
He unwraps his arms from around me, and my wall smacks into my cheek, smooshing one side of my face flat.
“Bad news,” I say.
Killian shoves me in the back, the motion first giving me more space, then sends me hurtling into the solid surface. It’s unrelenting and chuckin’ hurts, and I’m not at all comforted by the fact that Killian catches me before I land on my ass.
I groan and rub my cheek. “No steps.”
In all of that, Pax has rushed over, and suddenly, he has one hand on the back of my neck, pressing me into his chest, the other gripping Killian’s arm with white knuckles.
“No steps,” he whispers, disbelieving.
“The last breath of the one who does not belong. A shard from the barrier that protects us all. Return the soul to the place of its origin. The black depths. Five beats. And the water to wash the walls away,” Roarke mutters.
“And the water to wash the walls away,” I repeat. The solution almost knocks the wind out of me. “I have to go into the Spring.”
“We don’t know when, or if, she’ll come back out,” Roarke argues, not with me but with Pax. “We might not see her for another hundred years – if ever. She died the last time, and there’s no well on the mortal side to
