Fortune Favors the Cruel - Kel Carpenter Page 0,77
towards the cave. Together they entered, the cool night air dropping several degrees almost immediately. The sounds of the forest and the wind and the wildlife fell away as something more arose. Magic danced along Quinn’s spine. This place, this cave, was old. Well beyond anywhere Quinn had ever been, and that included the temple in N’skara. Perhaps it was the oldest thing that existed on this plane, this realm. Not that she would ever know.
Quinn sucked in a breath as she felt venerable power infuse her limbs and she followed Lazarus farther into the recesses of the cave.
They came to the end of a short tunnel where another entrance stood, circled by the same strange lettering as they had seen outside. Lazarus shouldered through, but Quinn took her time examining the ancient script. Long blackened vines marked the path on the ground that crawled up the cracks in the rock to hang over the entrance—a curtain of sorts.
In barely a whisper, Quinn asked, “How will I know when it’s over?”
Lazarus paused, his hand outstretched towards a section of vines that he meant to move aside. “When your magic has returned to your body,” he answered.
Quinn considered that for a moment, then nodded as Lazarus finally pushed aside the last barrier to whatever awaited her. Quinn’s lips parted as she stepped inside the sacred ground. The top of the ceiling had been carved upward so thinly that a small jagged hole about the size of a shield opened the cavern to the elements and beyond that, the moon. It hovered like an eye over the small pool of water, watching and waiting from above.
It was not the moonlight that lit the cave up, too dim for them to actually see, but the water itself. An iridescent glow emitted from the pools, shining faintly on lush ivory flowers that dotted the dark vines running along the walls of the cavern, reaching for the wet surface.
“Strip.”
Quinn jerked and faced Lazarus. “What?” she demanded, crossing her arms.
Lazarus wasn’t looking at her, though. He was staring straight ahead at the large translucent pool—or really to the area up above it, to the smaller pool that fed into it by the means of a waterfall. “You can’t wear clothes into the water,” he said by way of explanation. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Believe me, it’s not my first choice but Thorne was very specific about what you have to do.”
Quinn frowned, but he was not acting like a man interested in taking advantage. She had witnessed and dealt with far too many men like that. Lazarus was not them. While she knew he felt something towards her, she also had the distinct impression that wasn’t what this was about.
Sighing to herself, Quinn walked toward the lower pool and began to undress. She stripped her weapons first—the rod-staff gifted by Siva, her sword she took from Draeven, and the daggers she’d collected over the years—leaving them, along with her clothes, on the edge. When she stood bare before him, she turned a fraction, glancing at the man over her shoulder as he rummaged through his jacket. Quinn knew she should be feeling some sort of anxiety, a faint inkling of fear for what may come, but the more she watched him the less concerned she became. It wasn’t as if he was forcing her to do this, not really. She wanted to know about her power just as much, if not more than Lazarus did. And he was giving her the chance to find out. Beyond that, there was something about the cave that put her at peace. She knew pain was coming. That the magic in her veins had to leave her before it could return, and yet it was almost as if a part of herself was sliding into place this night.
A part that was always meant to be.
Lazarus retrieved a small leather satchel and tossed it to her. Quinn deftly caught it and untied the top, reaching inside to pull out a heavy palm-sized stone that was clear all the way through.
“That,” Lazarus said before she could ask, “is a Servalis stone. It will be triggered when you go into the waters.” He gestured behind her to the top pool. “You’ll need to get to the top, and quickly.”
Quinn sucked in a breath and nodded, turning for the lower pool. She was going to have to swim through the lower portion before she could climb to the top.