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

Chapter 30

Chapter Thirty

Ophelia

Lancaster picked up his sister and charged deeper into the chamber.

“Go!” I said to Rina, pushing her in front of me. She had a dagger in each hand, more strapped to her person.

I took off after her, diving into the abyss beyond the corridor. My breath sawed through my chest as I skidded through the darkness. I cast one glance over my shoulder—afforded only one second—and a wave of deadly soldiers met it.

Ten at the most, but they charged as fast as any living warrior. All in that same state of decay, all with dust swirling around them. Crumbs of stone fell from their tattered clothing as if they’d burst from the walls in some other part of the catacombs.

They screeched as their brethren had. Hollow, aching, wanting sounds that wrenched through me.

I sped into the dark.

Mystlight flared to life as we ran through the heart of the catacombs. Rows upon rows of wooden shelves stretched through the long cavern, ceilings low and rimmed with weakly fluttering sconces.

Artifacts laid scattered about their surfaces, bones trimming the base of the walls.

“Gods be damned,” Santorina called. “Any of these could be the emblem.”

I scoured the shelves as we ducked between aisles. Ahead, Lancaster fought to get his injured sister away, winding through the rows and finally setting her down to lean against the wall.

“It’s not any of these,” I called back to Rina over the howls and growls of the dead. Something beat beneath my skin. Greater than only my second pulse.

The dead were getting closer, their rattling breaths slinking around the chamber.

Lancaster hurtled past Rina and me, into the center aisle. He didn’t look at me as he asked, “Can you find it?”

There was a tug in my gut, that beat solidifying into a steady, demanding pulse. “Yes!” I yelled.

In answer, he summoned a long sword—one of the largest and most ostentatious I’d ever seen—out of thin air and faced the corpses flooding the main aisle.

“Go with her.” Lancaster nodded at Rina. He took a few steps forward, positioning himself firmly between where his sister was crouched and the enemy.

“You can’t face all of them on your own!” As Rina said it, the first dead warrior reached Lancaster with a bumbling, childlike run, and the fae sliced clean through its neck.

“Want to say that again?” Lancaster asked, fury limning his body as he kicked aside the crumbling corpse. “You’re more help to her. The quicker we find that emblem, the quicker we can get my sister help.”

“Come on.” I tugged Rina up the aisle toward the head of the cavern.

Lancaster stood as a wall against the catacombs’ defense. But?—

The dead didn’t storm toward him as the hive-minded horde we’d expected.

“Shit,” Lancaster muttered, bracing himself.

Splitting down the rows, the corpses wound with the uniform actions of a group who had practiced this routine many times, shrieking as they pursued all four of us.

They were a team trained to defend this place and what it contained.

Mora fired off daggers with her good arm—grunting in pain with each—but all they did was slow down the creatures, cause them to stumble. It wasn’t enough to kill them.

I skidded to a stop. Rina gripped my arm, trying to push me ahead, to force me after the emblem.

“We have to take care of them first!” I snapped, magic bubbling to the surface of my skin, rebelling against its cage.

A corpse leapt from the nearest aisle, raising a rusted old sword preserved about as well as its body toward Rina’s back.

“Move!” I shouted.

Rina dodged to the right, and without thinking, I blasted a burst of hungry magic at the corpse, withering it to ash along with the ancient blade.

“Holy gods,” Rina swore.

“Nope,” I panted. “Just me.” And I dove at the next corpse. Our blades met repeatedly between us as it cornered me down the aisle.

Rina slashed at another, letting it close enough to grab her before she sank a blade through where its eye would have been. Its screech was silent as she dragged a larger knife through its throat, severing right down to the bone so the creature collapsed before her.

“Smart tactic, Bounty,” Lancaster called.

“I’m not—” Rina’s words cut off in a gasp, and I whirled, dodging my opponent.

Lancaster was hunched over, a wooden staff protruding from his side. Blood oozed around it, the fae barely able to stand.

With some immortal and almighty will—or perhaps merely sheer determination—he lifted his sword with one hand, the other pressed to his side. And the male sliced through the neck of the warrior grinning a yellowed smile down at him.

Then, Lancaster toppled into a shelf, sending silvered artifacts clanging to the stone floor. With a sharp inhale, he wrenched the staff from his side. It wasn’t jammed deep, not even an inch coated in blood. Not enough that he should be so weak and pale.

“It’s made from a cypher,” he wheezed. “There are splinters…”

I shook my head, walking backward as the creatures closed in from the side rows. They pressed forward, segmenting me off from my friends. “What does that mean?”

“It means I can’t heal it. And I can’t access my magic.”

The cyphers. The trees we’d thought were nothing more than magic conduits across Gallantia but were actually gifted to repel fae spirits. In more ways than one.

“Rina, help him! Get to Mora, both of you!” I called. And I braced myself with Starfire and Angelborn. At least if I didn’t have friends fighting beside me, I could ground myself with the weapons that were extensions of my body.

The corpses rushed in from all sides. And my pulses pounded, pounded, pounded. Warred with me to run elsewhere.

One jumped at my left, and as I spun to meet it, another tugged my foot out from under me. I went crashing to the ground, my cheek scraping against rock and teeth slicing into my lip.

I flipped over, the tang of blood sharp in my mouth, and tried to scramble back, but the warrior loomed closer. I tightened my grip on Starfire and Angelborn. No way in the Spirit Realm I’d let them go.

This corpse hovered above me, seeming even older and more aware than the others. It assessed me with a vacant stare, seeing Angels knew what within my spirit. I adjusted my grip on Angelborn, waiting for my opening.

But the dead surged, lifting his foot in an unnaturally quick motion, and stomped on my ankle.

And even through the thick leather of my boots, something cracked. A cry ripped from my throat, but I bit it back, refusing to show him pain to widen that horrifying smile.

The shadows of the other corpses shifted, surrounding me.

Predatory magic called within my blood. It wanted out, wanted to feast on the bones of these corpses.

Use me , it begged.

“ No ,” I gritted out, forcing it back.

It was too risky to use—too explosive.

I clenched Angelborn tighter. If this one got a step closer?—

“Alabath!” The last voice I expected to hear called through the void of the distant tunnel, and my heart leapt.

“Vincienzo!” I yelled over the pain in my ankle. “Get out of here!”

The corpse closed in on me overhead, long, gangly limbs flopping almost puppet-like.

Tolek emerged from the darkness, the dead forming a wall between us. His eyes widened as he beheld what was happening. I could hear his wrathful growl as he captured the surprised dead’s arms and wrenched them behind his back until his decaying shoulders popped, and he kicked it in the spine.

Tolek threw the warrior to the floor. “Not a fucking chance.”

“Decapitate it!” I shrieked, and he followed the order.

Panting over the pain of my ankle, I swung my own sword, forcing the others back. Tolek helped me to my feet, my step buckling.

“Injury?” he asked, standing in front of me with his sword up.

I tried to take a step and hissed. “Likely broken.”

I didn’t have time to pause to use Angellight to heal it fully. Couldn’t wait for the mountains to set it.

I willed a quick flash of Damien’s light through my veins, straight from the emblem around my neck. Only enough to soothe the ache. It was sloppy, didn’t quite work right, but between that and the adrenaline coursing through my body, I grabbed Tolek’s hand and pulled him into a limping run.

“Let me carry you,” he demanded.

“We both need our hands to fight, Tol.” It sounded more like a plea than anything—something within me calling out for help as the four remaining warriors pursued us.

Only four, though.

We’d taken out more than half.

As I stumbled over my wrecked ankle, I thought we stood a chance.

And despite the shrieks of the dead and the tang of fae blood coating the air, despite the fact that he was a reckless fool for charging in here, gratitude for the man beside me unspooled like soothing Angellight in my chest.

Tolek Vincienzo always came to my rescue.

At the end of the aisle, the cavern opened into a circular chamber, ceiling draping low over a dais in the center and mirrors surrounding us. Though we were far below ground, a window was carved into the overhang.

“That has to be it,” I gasped. A silver box sat atop a metal stand, mystlight blaring down on it.

“Wait!” Tol said, whirling around with his sword raised, but I was already moving. He had to fight four against one?—

No, two.

Because Santorina was speeding up the aisle after them, daggers in her hands and vengeance in her eyes. Right as she leapt on a corpse from behind, I jumped onto the platform, landing on my good foot and sheathing my weapons.

“Ophelia, don’t?—”

“What?” I called to Tolek.

My pulses pounded. That tug in my gut persisted.

There was no latch on the box. It was made of mirrored glass with unblemished silver trim. As I leaned over it, my necklace swung into view in the reflection, and a flare of heat raced through me.

Maybe it wasn’t a lock to be picked. Maybe it answered to magic.

Blades clashed behind me, mingling with Tolek’s and Santorina’s curses as they fought the dead.

My hands shook, but I gripped the pedestal. For them, I’d do this.

Carefully, so carefully, I pulled a thread of tethered Angel power from my veins. The one I trusted and knew. I tried to control it, to summon only the strand connected to Damien and press it against the box.

Nothing.

But I didn’t dare draw up more. Not with its erratic state.

“It’s not opening!” I shouted.

“Can you grab”—Rina sliced at a warrior—“the whole thing?”

Swiping Starfire up, I limped off the dais, landing beside her. “It’s welded to the stand.”

“That’s part of why I came here,” Tolek panted, dodging a close blow. “I realized a mistake in the translation. This emblem—for whatever reason—the chosen can’t take. It’ll harm you, Ophelia.”

“ What? ” I gasped. In my shock, my attacker got a step closer.

“It’s why Ptholenix and Xenique were mentioned so frequently in the races. We got the translation wrong. It didn’t say the dead rest here, but rise. And the chosen is meant to fight them while another retrieves the emblem.”

We’d mistranslated. It was an easy mistake to make with an ancient language.

I caught my corpse’s strike with Starfire. “Someone else?—”

“You get them in, they grab it. A friend, Ophelia,” he gritted out. “It’s all about friendship and how necessary it is to survival. The damn Angels are trying to preach to us now, too.” His arms strained as he held back a dead warrior. “How are you so fucking strong? Are you training in the damn afterlife?”

My mind whirled.

“Rina?” I clenched my teeth, trying to balance my weight on my good leg and still fight.

But she was already up those steps. Already had a hand on each side of the mirrored box. And before I could take another breath she cracked the seamless lid, and?—

Santorina swore. “It’s empty!”

“By the fucking Spirits,” Tolek cursed as he took out another corpse.

“What do you mean?” I yelled.

“There’s nothing here, Ophelia.”

“But I could feel it. My blood?—”

But that pulsing sensation in my veins wasn’t tugging toward the box at all. It wasn’t the beat of a nearby emblem as I’d thought.

No, that second pulse was lurching toward the remaining dead warriors.

“I can’t…” I mumbled.

“What?” Tolek asked.

“My power. It wants…it wants to be used.”

They were pressing in. Closer, closer, closer. Tolek and I were both so worn, so injured. Somewhere, Lancaster and Mora might be bleeding out. Blood trickled down Santorina’s cheek, her human healing not nearly as quick as ours.

For them, I would do what scared me.

“Stay behind me,” I said.

And without another thought, I answered the call in my gut. I tugged not at the five threads tangled through my soul, but at the thing unnamed. With the strength of the Mystique Angel himself, I lashed it out across the chamber like a violent snake striking.

The dead screeched as their brethren had.

As the magic tore from me, it searched. What do you seek?

It was full of possibility, full of life. But it couldn’t find whatever it hungered for.

Instead, it wrapped around the remaining corpses. And beneath my light, they burned and howled. Bones charred to nothing but ash.

My magic writhed through the air, longing for more, more, more. Begging to consume.

You cannot have anyone else .

It tried to tug me forward, to take and gnaw, breathe and expand.

In my mind, I pictured myself back on that plane Jezebel and I had traversed, where we stood among the power of myths. I cupped a steady hand around the magic and absorbed it back into my vacant spirit.

It rioted against me, but drop by drop, the waves of gold cascaded into me. As they did, my mind flickered between here and elsewhere. Somewhere with a misty plane and gray-coated skies, another land of grand, sweeping mountains that kissed the clouds.

My knees buckled, wounded ankle barking, and Tolek caught me around the waist. Silence screamed in the wake of the dead, my panting breaths and rioting heart fighting it. Greedily, I leaned into Tol’s grounding warmth and fought to remember what was going on. To remain here.

“I don’t…it’s not here,” I muttered. Even to my own ears, the defeat in my voice was crushing. “The emblem. It was all for nothing.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Tolek said, scooping me up. “We’ll figure it out later.”

We found Lancaster and Mora nursing their injuries and the five of us made our way back to the entrance of the catacombs in wounded silence. Heavy with the scent of jasmine, the night breeze winding through the air was a welcome relief to the crushing stench of decay below.

“Just a second,” I said as we reached the archway atop the stairs.

I gazed up at that stone curve and the fading Endasi atop it.

Something squirmed within me, the power that had been fed wanting more. And perhaps it was unwise, perhaps it was reckless, but I wrenched up those strings of soul from the emblems.

And with the power of Angels, I lashed light down the stairwell, whipping it sharply against the stone walls.

Ancient rock caved in with the cataclysmic force, echoing down the descent and sealing the way into the catacombs.

Then, we left the dead to rest.