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

Chapter 66

Chapter Sixty-Six

Malakai

We were fucking flying .

We had been for a while now, and still, I didn’t understand it. The desert soared hundreds of feet below, wisps of clouds around the sphinx’s wings on either side of me, and the sunrise teased the tips of the mountains we sped toward.

The sphinx had emerged out of the Gates of Angeldust shortly after Ophelia, Jezebel, and Erista. I’d stared at her dumbfounded for a few minutes—Ophelia had woken this mythological creature—before being pushed toward her with Lancaster and Mila while the others broke off toward Sapphire, Zanox, and Dynaxtar, more piling onto the larger khrysaor with Ophelia and Tolek leading on her pegasus.

But I couldn’t enjoy any part of this miracle because the woman I loved was still unconscious in my arms.

“Come on, Mila,” I whispered, gently turning her face to me. Her lips and eyelids were tinged blue, her usually-tan skin icy.

“She’ll wake,” Lancaster grumbled from behind me.

We coasted over a pocket of air, my stomach dipping. I tightened my thighs around the sphinx’s sides, bracing my free hand against her lion’s body, and tossed a quick glance over my shoulder. “She’d better.”

“I could feel the poison leaving her,” the fae said over the roaring wind. “It was wound very deep thanks to that injury. It will take time for it to fully seep back into the land.”

Mila’s lips parted on small breaths, each one fueling my crazed hope.

“How could you feel it?”

“My healing is not a trained skill as your human friend’s. I was gifted with a very strong type of magic.” Lancaster’s words were tight. “Therefore, I can feel the effects of it. Unlike even your Bodymelders, who must manipulate their ingredients and the body rather than fall in tune with it. It is a slight nuance to one who does not practice, but an imperative one.”

I’d have to take his word for it, despite the fact that I didn’t trust this fucker.

But relief loosened a knot in my chest when the majestic voice of the sphinx carried on the air, “He is right, warrior.” Her words rumbled through her body beneath us—as large as Dynaxtar’s.

“How can you know?” I asked. Mila’s chest rose and fell, pale morning sun bathing her profile and highlighting the dried crimson staining her hair.

The sphinx only laughed in response.

Another time, I would have pushed her to answer. Now, though, I narrowed my eyes on the mountains looming ever closer, and held Mila tighter.

Come on, Mila. You promised me your tomorrows.

We followed Sapphire at the helm of our flying party, toward the wide mouth of a cave carved high into the mountains, her white wings reflecting the breaking dawn. She swooped in, Zanox and Dynaxtar on her tail.

“Do you have any idea what your queen is up to?” I asked Lancaster.

The only reason I hadn’t insisted we impale him with a cypher stake before this leg of our journey was because Mila might need his healing. He, Mora, and Brystin had been split among our party, though, the other fae each on one of the khrysaor.

“No,” Lancaster clipped, and if I wasn’t mistaken, there was a tinge of distrust to his voice.

“She wants the emblems,” I led as the dark tunnel engulfed us and we kissed the fresh breezes goodbye. We both stiffened against the sudden shift, the air thick with the scent of damp stone and something I couldn’t name.

“She does,” he agreed after a tense moment.

“And beyond not wanting this supposed Warrior God to be freed, do you know why she would want them? What she could do with them?”

Lancaster scoffed. “Is not wanting to free a tyrant not reason enough?”

Was the god a tyrant? Or was Ritalia?

“Answering a question with a question to avoid the truth,” I pointed out. A chill whipped through the tunnel as we dipped and rose with each powerful flap of the sphinx’s wings. It was colder within these mountains than I remembered.

“You’re familiar with the tactic?” Lancaster asked.

“You admit you’re evading something?” I almost smirked at his resounding silence. “Answer this—do you know what her plan is here? What we need to look out for?”

I wasn’t stupid enough to think he would admit it to me, direct orders from his queen or not. We were warriors—the fae’s enemies for centuries.

And yet?—

“I do not.”

A chill that had nothing to do with the mountains speared through me. Because Lancaster’s tone was graver than ever at the confession that his queen withheld her plans from him.

“And you trust her decisions?”

He was silent for a long moment, the beating of wings filling the cavernous tunnels we swept through. “She placed rules on my sister’s life that have caused her a great deal of pain, and she took more than I can name from me. I have felt the ill will of bargains that reign through the generations and will do what is in my power to guide hands to unravel them.”

I dug through his masked words.

Lancaster and Mora had suffered from bargains that reign through the generations . Certain fae magic—goddess gifts—were said to cause hereditary bargains. And Lancaster was unable to speak of certain depths and origins of his magic…

Exactly how powerful was Lancaster?

The male had used Ophelia’s and Tolek’s bargains twice. Recently, to save their lives in the catacombs. And before that, to force us to answer to Ritalia, which was likely the queen’s doing with her power over him as her hunter.

The question stood, was it the bloody fae queen moving pieces around her board here?

I thought of the one queen we’d faced before, and how deep her desperation ran. How twisted her motives and methods became. As Sapphire’s graceful body arced over a stone bridge and swept back down—white coat gleaming even in this shadowed network of tunnel—one thing was blatantly obvious. We would need to be prepared for all manners of brutality from the queen of bloodshed.

I swore it internally, tightening my thighs around the sphinx as she ducked beneath the bridge. I was about to warn Lancaster that we’d do whatever it took, would show no mercy for fae on warrior land, when a strangled whinny pierced the air.

“Aoiflyn’s tits!” Lancaster swore.

And Sapphire was careening toward the floor, an arrow through her wing.