Nothing else troubled them as they crossed the moat via the rickety wooden bridge that should not have held the weight of three people but somehow did. Jasper suspected it was a magic bridge. It was always magic. Nothing in their lives was ever mundane.
The bridge led them to an equally decrepit wooden door set into moss-covered stone, which deposited them in a small antechamber. Damp seeped through the cold stone walls, settling into Jasper’s already-wet skin. He shivered and Dorian pulled him close, rubbing warmth into his trembling arms. Echo politely looked anywhere but at them.
Jasper curled into Dorian, luxuriating in the warmth he radiated. The memory of their kiss played in his mind on a loop. It wasn’t their first, and provided they both got through this temple alive, it wouldn’t be their last. Not if Jasper had anything to say about it. But this kiss had been different, though no less monumental than the first, shared in a musty wine cellar deep in the belly of Avalon Castle. It was as though every strand of artifice had been stripped away, made flimsy by the urgency of the moment. Contained in that kiss were all the things Dorian never said, all the things Jasper never let himself believe. And to think, it had taken a gaggle of man-eating mermaids to bring that about. When he thought about it, he could still feel the frigid water closing around him, the unfathomable strength of the nix as they carried him down, deeper into the abyss, the burning of his lungs as he tried to hold his breath, the searing pain of water rushing into them when he failed.
Jasper had nearly died.
Not for the first time, and probably not for the last. But on the short list of maladies and disasters Jasper feared, drowning surpassed them all. He had never learned how to swim, his fear of drowning had been so great and so deeply ingrained. He and water simply did not get along, and so long as he kept his feet firmly planted on dry land, it wasn’t a problem.
Right up until it was.
As if sensing the course of Jasper’s thoughts, Dorian tightened one arm around his shoulders while his other hand kept rubbing soothing lines up and down Jasper’s bare arm.
“Are you all right?” Dorian asked, the timbre of his voice low and soft, meant only for Jasper despite Echo’s presence. She was valiantly trying to make herself as unobtrusive as possible as she studied the stone slab opposite the door through which they had entered the antechamber. Another room full of nasty surprises, Jasper guessed. They’d catch their breath and then move on, but Jasper was nothing if not a selfish creature, and in that moment, all he wanted, all he cared about, was basking in the feel of Dorian’s arm around him and the wonderful, radiant heat he produced.
Jasper rubbed his cheek into the coarse fabric of Dorian’s shirt. He turned his head so that he could rub his cold nose against the warm skin of Dorian’s throat. The touch elicited a squirm that was sinfully delightful.
“I’m okay,” Jasper said. “That would have been an ignominious end.” He tried to make light of what had just happened, but he couldn’t suppress the shudder that ran through him at the thought.
Dorian tilted his head so his cheek rested against Jasper’s. When he spoke, his breath ruffled the fine feathers on the side of Jasper’s head. “Anyone who means you harm is going to have to go through me. I’ve already lost Caius. I won’t lose you, too.”
A lump formed in Jasper’s throat and he struggled to swallow. He buried his face in the crook of Dorian’s neck so he could pretend, for just a little while longer, that they were anywhere else. That it was just the two of them. That they had all the time and comfort in the world to explore this fragile thing growing between them. Jasper had never been good at relationships. Echo had been his only real friend – and even then, they had barely trusted each other with anything of any great significance until she had burst into his home carting a half-dead Dorian. Relationships were an entirely different category of incomprehensibility as far as Jasper was concerned. But somehow, despite the overwhelming odds, he had managed not to mess this up. Yet. Dorian wanted him alive. Dorian wanted him safe.
Dorian wanted him.
Jasper splayed his hands across Dorian’s back. The sodden shirt clung to Dorian like a second skin, but he seemed unbothered by the wetness or the cold, as if they were inconveniences so minor they barely warranted notice. Jasper pulled away, still in the circle of Dorian’s arm, just enough to meet that perfect blue eye. Dorian’s pupil was dilated in the dim light – where the light came from Jasper hadn’t a clue, and he was willing to chalk it up to magic, because why the hell not.
It would have been the perfect moment for a kiss. Another one. Slower. Less frantic. Not fueled by a daring escape from the claws of death. Jasper brought one hand up to trace the filigree of scarring on Dorian’s left cheek. Dorian flushed.
Echo chose that moment to clear her throat, reminding them of her presence.
Dorian blinked and pulled away just enough to shoot her a look.
“This is a really beautiful moment,” Echo said, “and I’m honored to be a part of it —”
“You’re not,” Jasper interjected.
“— however, we have work to do.”
She was right. As much as Jasper wished she weren’t.
Echo stepped away from the door she had been studying and gestured for Dorian to approach. This one was carved out of blood-red marble shot through with veins of gold. A rune was carved into the center in the same ancient script as the one they had encountered earlier.
“What does this one mean?” Echo asked.
Dorian stepped away from Jasper’s embrace, and Jasper didn’t think he was imagining the reluctance as the Drakharin put a modest distance between them. Dorian approached the door and canted his head to the side as he considered the rune. His hand hovered over the elegantly wrought lines.
“I’ve never seen it before,” Dorian said. “It’s most likely a dialect that died along with the people who worshiped at and tended this temple.”
“Well, what’s your best guess? I’m assuming it’ll open the door the same way the other one did, but I’m getting cautious in my old age,” said Echo. Jasper doubted that very much. “I’d like to know what we’re walking into before we walk into it.”
Dorian traced the curves and lines of the rune in the air with a finger, his features arranged in a scowl that shouldn’t have been at all attractive but was. You’ve got it bad, Jasper thought.
“This part here” – Dorian indicated the left half of the rune, made up of two downward strokes bisected with an undulating line – “is similar to the symbol for ‘fire.’ Or maybe ‘smoke.’ Or ‘eating utensil,’ but I don’t think it’s that one.”
“If there’s something that wants to eat us behind that door, I swear to the gods, I will set this whole place ablaze,” said Jasper.
Dorian continued, ignoring Jasper’s threat. “And this part looks like the runic symbol for ‘cat.’” His eye narrowed as he thought. “Or perhaps ‘bird.’”
With a determined sigh, Echo tightened her ponytail. “Great. Well, at least we have some idea what to expect – a pyromaniac cat-bird.”
“I’m fairly certain it’s a reference to fire,” Dorian muttered.
“If Caius is behind these doors,” Echo continued, “then I don’t want to keep him waiting.” She gestured to the rune. “Dorian, if you would be so kind?”
Dorian offered Jasper a sympathetic look. “Are you sure you’re all right to proceed?”
Jasper might have appreciated the comfort Dorian had offered him moments ago, but he drew the line at coddling. “Right as rain. The sooner we get out of here, the better.”
That earned a nod from Dorian and an “Amen” from Echo. Dorian raised his hand and moved it toward the center of the rune. Squaring his shoulders, he visibly gathered himself to face the next obstacle thrown in their path. They were so close to Caius, but one wrong move, one miscalculation, one error in judgment or fate, and their journey would come to an abrupt end. And now they were facing the one thing that made the loudest vessel in Echo’s consciousness – Rose – quiver with fear and panic.
“Wait,” Echo blurted.
Dorian’s hand froze in midmotion, fingers inches from the smooth red stone. He angled his head so he could study Echo with his one eye. “Are you all right?”
Fire.
“Yes,” Echo lied.
A single silver eyebrow raised, calling her bluff. Dorian didn’t need words to communicate; his face said everything. He was probably terrible at poker.
“No,” Echo admitted. “I’m not all right.”
She looked back at the rune. Unlike the previous runes, all the lines of this symbol were angular and sharp – just like the harsh sound of Drakhar consonants.
Fire.
The word was laden with memory. It was fitting that their final – or so Echo hoped – obstacle was the element that plagued firebirds, past and present. Those jagged lines summoned images seared into Echo’s brain: the crumbling white ash of burnt bark in the Black Forest; the golden flare of Tanith’s power, setting the Oracle’s sanctuary ablaze; the crackling timber of Rose’s cottage after Tanith had ignited it. Echo took a deep breath. What she smelled was not the cool, earthy scent of the cavern beneath the temple, but smoke and ash. Ghosts of a life snuffed out in a fit of righteous anger.
“Whatever’s behind that door …,” Echo began. She didn’t finish her sentence. She didn’t want to admit her weakness out loud. As irrational as she knew it was, she couldn’t help but feel that voicing it would make it worse somehow.
“You can handle it,” Jasper said. “I know you can.”
“Not entirely sure I share your confidence,” Echo said, “but I appreciate the sentiment.”
Dorian had not lowered his hand, but he did draw back slightly. “Caius told me what happened,” he said. “To Rose.”
Echo shot him a puzzled look. “You didn’t know?”
Dorian shook his head. “He didn’t tell me when it happened. We weren’t that close back then. I had only just joined the guard, and we were friends, but …”
“He didn’t trust you,” Echo said.
“Not in the way he came to. That took time. But he opened up to me eventually. It was killing him, keeping that secret to himself. It was too much for any one person to carry alone, even him.” Dorian looked between Echo and the door as if weighing his options. After a moment, he seemed to reach a conclusion. He managed to sound both impatient and gentle when he spoke. He was in a hurry to get to the other side of that door, to find Caius, but in no hurry to cause Echo any harm. Perhaps it was the debt he felt he owed Caius; perhaps it was just simple friendship that propelled him to say “Whatever is behind that door, I can deal with it.”
“I have no doubt that you can,” Echo said. They were wasting precious time, but she couldn’t bring herself to charge forward, not with the sense memory of charred skin and scorched air so powerfully and undeniably present.
“What I am saying,” Dorian continued, “is that I can take it from here. You need not come with me. You can stay and I will scout ahead.”
Relief, sudden and heady, rushed over Echo, followed by a pang of shame. She couldn’t ask Dorian to face the next trial alone. That would be a level of cowardice to which she hoped never to ascend.
“I can’t ask you to do that,” Echo said. Her voice shook, but she said the words and she meant them and that was enough.
“You’re not asking, I’m offering,” said Dorian.
Oh, how tempting it was. But even in the face of fear, Echo knew she wouldn’t take him up on it. She could not ask others to risk that which she would not, no matter what horrors dwelled in the labyrinth that was her shared memories.
She leveled her gaze at the carved rune. “No,” she said. “We’ve come this far together, we keep going forward together. That’s the only way we’re going to make it through. All for one and one for all and all that jazz.”
She didn’t mean just getting through the temple. Or finding Caius. Or getting out in one piece. She meant all of it. The war. The world outside. The great unknown. None of them would survive to see the end of it if they allowed themselves to splinter.
Dorian nodded, not in simple assent but as if he understood everything she did not say. “All right,” he said. He held out a hand to her. She took it. Jasper held her other hand, and Dorian reached for the rune. His palm came to rest against the red stone, and beneath his touch, the carved lines began to glow a warm orange light that grew and grew until it was a blinding white, so bright Echo had to close her eyes against it.
“Together,” Dorian said, perhaps sensing that Echo would be grateful for the comfort of his voice in the face of the oncoming trial. She was.
The door slid open under Dorian’s hand, and together they stepped over the threshold and into the flames.