The Myths of Ophelia (The Curse of Ophelia #4)

Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Tolek

“You never get over it,” Erista said dreamily, watching the khrysaor and Sapphire take flight as she emerged from the willowing cypher branches at my back.

I raised my brows, turning away from the view as Sapphire’s blue tail flicked into the clouds and disappeared. “Didn’t want to stay in the cottage either?”

“The stone walls grew crowded.”

That was an odd way to phrase it, but I huffed a laugh. “It’s sort of nice having everyone back, though I could do without the fae.”

“Such meddlesome tricksters.” Erista perched at the base of a cypher, leaning back against the ash-white trunk with her feet tucked beneath her. “Did you fly much while we were traveling?”

“I told Ophelia to go on her own with Sapphire,” I said, ignoring the abrupt change of conversation, “but she dragged me along with her almost every night the weather permitted.”

A half-smirk twisted my lips at the memory of her pulling me onto her pegasus when I said they should enjoy the time together. Of Sapphire’s impatient scuffing of the ground, agreeing with Ophelia.

Of how, hidden up in the clouds, I’d dipped my fingers beneath the hem of her skirt, teasing the slick heat between her legs until she was practically begging me to touch her. How I’d made her be patient until we landed and then given her an orgasm that could have shattered the stars and nearly had me following without her even touching me.

I cleared my throat, shifting to adjust the now-uncomfortable stiffness in my leathers. Spirits, would that girl ever affect me any differently?

I hoped not.

“It’s magnificent.” I cleared my throat again—damn the roughness. “The flying.”

Every second of these weeks, being forced to pause the physical hunt for the emblems and be alone with Ophelia, had been magnificent truthfully. The unfamiliar domesticity I hadn’t been sure we possessed. It certainly wasn’t natural for us given it took a fae queen threatening an attack on the warrior continent to prompt it. But it had been a welcomed change.

“It’s unlike anything else,” Erista reflected, a bit mournfully.

“When she does fly alone, I don’t even bring my journal,” I said. “I just watch.” This phenomenon that shouldn’t be possible and yet somehow was with the Alabath sisters.

Erista hummed in agreement.

“Were you able to visit the desert on your way back?” I asked.

The Soulguider shook her head, curls bouncing. In only the moonlight, her eyes seemed as dark as night. Her unusual silence had me flicking a narrowed look her way.

“The Rites of Dusk have stopped?” I asked. She and her brother, Quilian, had explained that the swirling, sky-born dust storms were used to recharge Soulguider magic, but had been occurring more frequently as of late. Concernedly so.

Oddly in time with Ophelia’s use of the emblems.

“Artale is quiet.” Erista spoke softly, a waver of what I thought might be uncertainty passing through the words, but she recovered, slipping easily back into her usual lively demeanor. “I’ve studied them.”

“The Rites?” I asked.

“The khrysaor.” She gestured toward the sky, the gold crescent moons inked on her palms seeming duller than normal. “They are often mentioned with the pegasus.”

“What did you find?” I asked.

The Soulguider’s headband glinted between the dark coils of her hair as she tilted her head, her hands folded primly in her lap. “There are hardly specific accounts, but there are hints. Tales of beasts ridden into battle in ancient wars, with wings of scales and feathers. Always both. Where one was mentioned, the other followed shortly after.”

A pair among legends.

“Sapphire’s wings manifested when the khrysaor arrived at Ricordan’s estate,” I said. “But Sapphire had seen the khrysaor before.”

She’d been there when the khrysaor first attacked us in the forest, on that journey to the Undertaking that set all of this in motion. The beast had reared up, thrashing its spiked tail and nearly impaling all of us.

That had been fun.

Jezebel explained she thought he was frightened then and was not truly a threat. Sometimes fear was the worst threat, though. The things it drove us to do…

“It has to be connected,” I said, shutting down my own morbid thoughts. “If the khrysaor and pegasus are mentioned side by side in battle tales, there must be a reason.”

My skin prickled at the consideration. Above, the clouds parted slightly, enough to allow the Mystique constellation to peek through, a shimmer of gold light reflecting off the clouds.

“And they happened to choose those two,” I muttered.

“Both species are known for being incredibly loyal,” Erista said. Warrior horses in general were devoted, but Sapphire had always displayed a heightened level of commitment to Ophelia. “They are recorded as holding allegiance to Lynxenon, Moirenna, and others .”

I straightened. “Others?”

She shook her head. “It is hard to find a direct mention.”

“Lynxenon makes sense,” I said, scratching a hand across my stubble.

“The God of Mythical Beasts.” Erista nodded.

“But why Moirenna?” I considered. “The only clan that has any connection to the Goddess of Fate and Celestial Movements is the Starsearchers.”

“Perhaps these beasts are not warrior. Maybe that’s only who they’ve chosen,” Erista suggested. Of us all, she’d studied the gods and goddesses the most. I trusted her instincts, though something about it still felt incomplete.

“And others ?”

“I cannot be sure,” Erista said, and that unfamiliar glint darkened her eyes again. “But the one recurring truth in every tale is that these highly loyal, mystical creatures were born for battle and chose their riders carefully. It’s almost as tightly drawn as the hereditary bargains of the fae and the gods.”

A chill rolled down my spine. “And if the pegasus and khrysaor are returning now…”

We both looked to the sky, the draping cypher branches swaying in the breeze. “What battles are they here to attend?”

And what did that mean for the riders they selected?