precious is already gone,” I thought I heard Xun Guan say, but I couldn’t be sure.
Hands gripped my shoulders, and then a mouth pressed against my ear.
“Listen to me, Veritas.” Ian’s voice, raised and insistent. “Someone threatens you, you rip open the netherworld and hurl them into it. Don’t bother about more veils cracking. We can fix whatever you break later, but you survive now, understand?”
After that, something soft brushed my cheek that might have been his lips, but I couldn’t be sure. My vision had narrowed to pinpricks, and the white-hot pain made me feel like I was being blasted by those superheated gases again.
Hurry, Ian. Hurry!
I repeated that as shudders wracked me. More sweat ran down me, making my clothes feel sodden. The ground shook harder, faster, until its insistent vibrations felt like a heartbeat pounding in my chest. Pain took turns turning my blood to ice one moment and fire the next, making me almost insensible. Even my brain ached as if trying to split through my skull.
I couldn’t stand this. I had to drop the time-bubble. I had to. It was too much, too much, too much . . .
Cool fingers dug into my temples and face, finding pressure points and massaging them. Hadn’t Ian left yet? What was he waiting for? Didn’t he know I was at the end of my strength?
Above the roar in my ears that could have been the mountain breaking apart or my skull shattering from power overload, I caught snatches of words, and realized they came from Xun Guan.
“. . . can do this, my beloved. Nothing has ever defeated you. Nothing ever will. Hold on a few moments longer, just a few . . .”
A few moments longer. I ground my jaw tighter, ignoring the continuous taste of blood. Yes, I could do this for a few more moments. The council members might be able to save another dozen more lives in that amount of time . . .
“What fresh hell is this, Ian?” an annoyed voice said with a noticeable Romanian accent.
If pain wasn’t ripping me apart, I would’ve smiled. Vlad Dracul, better known by his hated moniker, Dracula, had just arrived.
“See that mountain?” I heard Ian reply. “A mad god turned it into an erupting volcano. Unless you want to see thousands of people burn, use your fire-controlling abilities on a real challenge instead of just incinerating anyone who annoys you.”
“If I did that, you’d be ashes,” Vlad muttered, but then I felt a blast of power that knocked me back against Xun Guan. Before I could recover, I felt a second blast. My hold over the time bubble splintered. The ground heaved like it was vomiting.
“Keep the mountain together, Mencheres!” Ian roared. “She’s losing her grip on it!”
Not losing, I thought as agony smashed me apart. Lost.
Chapter 30
I opened my eyes. Ian’s face was the first thing I saw. At some point, he’d knelt and gathered me into his arms.
At once, I looked beyond him. Mount Lycabettus still rose over Athens like a huge stone sentry. Relief almost made me pass out again. No poisonous gases, no deadly pyroclastic flows, no building-smashing tephra, and no molten lava. Just the familiar landmark that had towered above Athens since before the wheel was invented. The only sign that anything ominous had happened were a few new boulders around the base of the mountain and the small, fading plume of ash rising above Lycabettus’s peak.
“They did it,” I whispered with overwhelming gratitude.
Ian’s light snort tickled my cheek. “Only after you did.”
Then Ian leaned back, and Vlad Dracul came into view.
Vlad’s espresso-colored hair reached the shoulders of his storm-cloud-gray suit, where a charcoal scarf hung with casual elegance around his neck. His jaw was shadowed with one of those growths that was more stubble than beard, and the dark contrast against his pale, creamy skin made his cheekbones look even more chiseled. Vlad could be mistaken for any other handsome man in his mid-thirties, if you ignored how his hands were alight with blue-white flames that somehow didn’t burn his jacket. Vlad’s control over fire was all-encompassing, down to it never even scorching a hair on his head.
“Veritas.” A faint, sardonic smile curled Vlad’s mouth, and his eyes darkened from glowing emerald back to their normal coppery color. “My compliments on an unusual morning. I’ve never been tasked with extinguishing an erupting volcano before.”
I smiled, though even that simple gesture felt exhausting. “Next time, I’ll have Ian kidnap you for