Magnus

I kept Amalia close to me as we wound our way more cautiously through the Abyss toward the monolith. Around every corner, I expected someone to leap out at us, but the pathway remained empty. I could put a cloaking illusion over us, but I preferred not to use it until we were closer to Absenthees.

After leaving the pool, I’d realized the jinn wouldn’t hunt us in here anymore, not after I pulled my disappearing act and nearly killed Nalki. No, they would wait for us to come to them as all the paths led to one place. That didn’t mean the newly resurrected trees wouldn’t draw some of them into the Abyss.

Stopping, I leaned against the wall and drew Amalia into my arms.

She frowned at me, but I didn’t let her go as I bent my head to kiss the top of hers. Her fingers curled into my back, and she bowed her head to rest it against my chest.

“Magnus?” she whispered.

“They’ll be waiting for us at the monolith. You must be prepared for that.”

Her fingers dug deeper into my flesh. “I am.”

A mix of possessiveness and fear crept through me. I’d never known fear before her, but since meeting her, it had become an increasingly familiar emotion. Even in battle, I wasn’t afraid; I did what I had to, and if I happened to die in the process, then so be it.

But with Amalia, I felt like someone had torn my heart out and placed it inside her; I could not allow anything to happen to her. Somewhere along the way, I’d fallen for this complicated woman who was so unlike anyone I’d ever encountered. I’d fallen for a preferred pacifist with the heart of a warrior. A woman who wore her every emotion in her eyes and knew so little of the world.

One day, I would show her everything she wanted to see and have her experience all she was denied while locked away. But first, we had to get through the many enemies out there who would prefer nothing more than to destroy us.

“I’m not going to lose you, Amalia.”

“And I’m not going to lose you.”

I gripped her closer as love swelled within my chest. I’d been determined to keep her at a distance, but it was impossible to do so with Amalia. With her unique spirit, loving nature, and spine of steel, she’d worked her way into my heart without me realizing it.

Amalia gave a small sob and nestled closer.

“Shh,” I whispered. “I’ll keep you safe.”

“I know, it’s not that.” When she met my gaze, her eyes were the most vivid yellow I’d ever seen. She rested her hand over my heart. “Your emotions. They’re so strong, and they’re for me.”

“Only for you,” I said and kissed her tenderly.

When she leaned into me, I broke the kiss before it deepened into something more. We had a mission to complete, but this woman could distract the sun from its orbit, and I was nowhere near as strong as the sun.

“Only for you too,” she murmured, and I claimed her hand.

“I’m going to put a cloaking illusion over us before we continue, so don’t make any noise and don’t let me go.”

“I won’t,” she promised.

Digging into myself, I drew forth my ability to make us invisible to anyone beyond us. Typically, it was more difficult for me to weave the illusion as I found it easier to create layers of existence rather than hide them, but with Amalia’s hand in mine and her claiming bite on my shoulder, I found it much easier to strip our presence away. When I finished, I didn’t feel as drained, and I knew it was the Chosen bond strengthening me.

Kissing her again, I hugged her one last time and kept hold of her hand as we continued down the path.

Overhead, I barely saw the top of Absenthees poking above the high walls, but the monolith was only half a mile away at most. Turning a corner, we came to the end of the path and stopped five feet behind the jinni standing guard there.

A small jolt of surprise went through me, and Amalia’s hand tightened on mine when Absenthees came into view. At the base of the monolith, boulders were piled at least twenty feet high against the structure. The silvery-black monolith shoved those rocks out of its way when it tore through the ground to rise high in the clearing.

And Absenthees rose far higher than I’d realized as I had to crane my head back to take in the top of the structure nearly three hundred feet above us. The smaller monoliths were silent as they rotated around Absenthees, and beneath them were mounds of earth around the four holes from which they’d risen.

The etchings I’d first suspected seeing on the monolith were some form of demonish, but I didn’t recognize most of them. The ones I did recognize were the symbols of unity, strength, and bound. Instinctively, I knew the jinn didn’t put those markings there. The fae or the Abyss itself had hewn them onto Absenthees’ surface.

Most of the jinn, including Nalki, stood inside the pit. Two or three jinn stood guard in front of the seven other paths I could see leading into Absenthees. From what I’d witnessed at the top of the hill, two more paths led into the pit, but the monolith blocked them from my view. I’d bet more jinn guarded these pathways too.

At the bottom of the monolith, a few jinn stood on top of the boulders with their hands resting on Absenthees. The rest of the jinn in the pit were focused on it. Like one of the movies the humans were once so fond of, a scene played out on the monolith as if it were a screen.

The woman running through the woods was a Wilder. Her eyes were frantic as tears streaked her face and her arms pumped faster. I couldn’t see what propelled her onward, but I suspected it was another of the jinn’s torments.

Amalia crept closer until her shoulder brushed mine as the woman screamed, opened her arms, and threw herself off a cliff. The woods faded away while the woman plummeted, and I realized she’d thrown herself off the top of one of the labyrinth walls. The jinn all leaned forward as the woman’s head smashed off an opposite wall and the impact threw her backward.

She was dead before she hit the ground, and lightning hit Absenthees less than a second later. The bolt lit the etchings as it traveled all the way to the bottom before flowing up again. Amalia shuddered when the markings at the base of the structure became the color of molten gold. Heat crackled across the open space separating us from the formation.

All the jinn stretched their hands out at their sides and turned their palms toward Absenthees. Their heads tilted back as they savored the life making Amalia shiver. I looked away from the spectacle of the jinn basking in death as the ones touching the monolith lowered their hands and stepped away. Four new jinn climbed the base of Absenthees while the ones standing there retreated. When the replacements rested their hands against the structure, a new scene unfolded before them.

On the structure, a demon having sex with three other males was revealed. The jinn watched for a minute before this scene faded away and a new one replaced it. And then, I understood how the jinn found us earlier.

The monolith was the equivalent of the humans’ TVs. It showed one channel at a time, but the jinn could flicker through the different channels until they found something they wanted to watch. Through Absenthees, they watched different wishes unfolding, but they could only see one at a time, and the jinn would focus on the ones heading toward their tragic conclusion. They must have accidentally flipped to us with Dana while searching for something better to watch.

I examined the pit while I tried to decide what to do next. With the height of the walls and their rocky formations, climbing in or out of the crater without making some noise or knocking rocks free would be impossible.

The angles of some of the walls would make descending nearly impossible as in certain areas they curved in until some of them would have us hanging upside down. The place would be impenetrable if there were still two or three jinn at the end of this path, but we could slip by one.

I suspected the resurrection of the fae world Amalia created by the pool had caught someone’s attention and drawn away the other jinn guarding this path. We’d somehow missed the jinn searching for us, or they’d tried to find us by stalking us from above.

No matter what they’d decided to do, or how they’d done it, they would be back, and we had to be out of here before they returned. Movement from the pit drew my attention back to Absenthees as, from around the corner of it, three of the ten remaining horsemen rode their mounts into view.

There are horsemen here!

It was a complication I hadn’t seen coming but should have. I knew they were all in league with each other, and the horsemen would enjoy playing in the Abyss almost as much as the jinn.

At least the jinn hadn’t invited any of the fallen angels to the party, or at least I didn’t see any of them here.

Briefly, I searched the sky, but when I saw nothing there, I turned my attention back to the horsemen. If any of the fallen were here, they would have started hunting us from the sky long ago. Cloaking illusion or not, those pricks would scour the land ceaselessly until they found us.

My attention returned to the horsemen. In the center of the three, Lust sat proudly on her horse with her lush body on full display. Her white hair spilled over the ass end of her gray horse.

I recognized Pride by the way he carried himself. Like Lust, he sat bareback on his smoky, purple-gray horse. Out of all the horses, Pride’s was the most beautiful with its thick, curved neck and its black forelock brushing against its nose. The horse’s black mane and tail touched the ground, and its eyes were the neon color of lavender.

Pride’s broad shoulders were thrust back as he sat taller on his mount than the horsemen with him. His black hair was brushed back from the planes of his angular face to reveal eyes the same color as his horse’s. Not one speck of dirt or wrinkle marred him or his clothing from his black pants and shirt to the royal purple cloak he wore. An almond-shaped broach with a single, unblinking purple eye gazing out from its center clasped the cloak together.

Next to Pride, Sloth’s pudgy frame slouched on the back of his horse. His legs barely wrapped around the horse’s thick belly. The mane and tail of his brown horse were matted, and its forelock was a tangled knot between its ears. The horse had one lazy blue eye drifting toward the right and one lazy brown eye falling to the left.

Some of Sloth’s tousled brown hair stood on end, and the rest of it draped across his round, florid face. Sloth personified laziness, yet the intelligence in his pale blue eyes didn’t match his apathetic persona.

Amalia gave a subtle tug on my hand. When I turned to her, her red eyes burned with fury, but she’d paled visibly. “They brought the horsemen here,” she mouthed.

And if the growing pallor of her skin was any indication, the putrid emotions the horsemen emitted was battering her newly escalated empath ability. I had to get her out of here.

“Focus on me,” I mouthed back.

Her jaw set before she pointed a finger at the horsemen. “They should not be here. We can’t allow them to remain.”

Then I realized the horsemen weren’t just escalating her empath ability and fueling her anger; she was enraged at the jinn for bringing the horsemen into the Abyss.

Squeezing her hand, I turned my attention back to those gathered before us. We would have to return to the others and bring them here if we were going to fight the jinn and the horsemen. We couldn’t face them with only the two of us.

A step drew my attention to the path behind us, and I froze. Coming toward us were three more jinn who would walk directly into us in less than ten feet.

Tugging on her hand, I turned sideways to slip past the jinni at the end of the path, and Amalia followed silently behind me. We hugged the steep walls until we neared the jinn guarding the end of the next pathway. Edging further into the middle of the pit, we stayed far away from the jinn to avoid causing a shift in air current and possibly alerting them to our presence.

I had to get her out of this pit and somewhere she could open a portal out of here. No one could see us, but I wouldn’t be able to cloak the disturbance in the air she created with the opening.

Coming around the back of the monolith, I spotted a set of ruins sitting on top of the wall. Judging by the remains, the crumbling, sandstone structure once spanned hundreds of feet in length. Most of what remained was only a few feet high, some of it was a single story, and in other sections, it was two. One area of the ruins stood three stories high.

The three-story section was mostly untouched and showed no sign it might collapse anytime soon, but the segment next to it was nothing more than a few feet of wall. A single tower stood beside that ruined section, and I suspected there were once more towers, but time ate all but the one.

If we could make it up there, we could find a place for Amalia to take us from here.

Her hand trembled in mine, and I felt a weakening in her. Turning, my breath caught when her eyes met mine; they were a sickly mustard hue I’d never seen before. Her skin was so pale her freckles stood out starkly.

Is this from the horsemen, or is something more at work here?

I went to scoop her into my arms, but she edged away from me. My teeth ground together when I stepped closer to her again; she avoided me.

“No,” she mouthed. “We both have to move freely. I’m okay. Go,” her lips formed the words, but I found myself torn between carrying her out of here and listening to her. “Go.”

I had no other choice; she would only fight me, and we could not stand here arguing about it. We made our way to the other side of the monolith, opposite the horsemen and most of the jinn. After a few more feet, a set of rocky steps rising from the pit and toward the ruins came into view.

We closed the distance between us and the steps in less than a minute. Chunks of crumbling sandstone fell out to roll down near my feet. Most of the railing had given way, and what remained of it lay on the ground beside the stairs. The steps didn’t look as if they would support a flea, never mind the two of us.

I studied our surroundings again, but unless we intended to hang out with these assholes for the rest of eternity, or until I couldn’t hold the cloak anymore, we had no choice but to climb.

Amalia’s fingers bit into my hand when I placed my foot on the first step and gingerly tested it. I worked to keep my concern for her safety buried so she wouldn’t sense it as I placed another foot on the next step.

Amalia followed me as we carefully climbed the steps, but though the stairs looked like a breeze would topple them, they remained solid beneath my feet.

We were nearly three quarters of the way to the top when something shifted beneath my feet.

I froze, and behind me, Amalia’s breath exploded out of her as for a minute nothing more happened. Then, the stairs turned into sand beneath my feet. I scrambled to find some purchase, but nothing substantial remained as we plummeted toward the ground.