To overthrow the cruel King who brutally slaughtered her foremothers, the last surviving water witch Elara Consuli must team up with novice warrior Juda Vikaris from the Serpent Order and realise an ancient prophecy, before the blood-thirsty ruler d...
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"Help me up," Elara said, clutching onto Juda as he eased her to her feet.
She clung to him for a moment, eyes closed, breathing in the scent of his skin as the haze cleared and the pain that needled under her shoulder blade settled into something she could manage.
"Maybe we should wait..." he murmured against her head; his hands warm on her lower back.
How she wished she could. By her foremothers, there was a part of her that wished she could just will everything to stop. Encase this time in ice and let them stand here forever like this, not moving forwards or back. To just lean against his chest and let the bastard world above be damned.
But it was not to be, and she knew it. The temple pulsed around her, a soft, but insistent call that stirred that all too-familiar yearning in her veins.
She opened her eyes. "There can be no waiting now."
It was a risk to take him with her. She knew that almost as much as she knew they could not stay here together, nestled into a fissure of time, but the tide was already slipping away from her. She needed to do what she had planned the very first time she had met him in this cavern and he had stood, staring back at her, eyes wide and disbelieving.
Leading him from the main chamber, Elara followed the feel of the pulse beneath her bare feet, the beat of the Naiad flowing over her skin, prickling the hair at the nape of her neck. She'd never be able to explain it to Juda, or anyone. How it made her feel to be here among them. This sense of her foremothers, of all who had gone before her. She could feel them—the press of their bodies as they walked alongside her, fingers entwined with hers. She could smell them—sea salt and dragon's gold. And she could hear them—lyrical song and incantation that ebbed and flowed against the temple walls, that ghosted her ears and sent shivers down her spine.
Without the reflection of the water, the light in the passageway glowed a deeper cerulean, its brightness giving way to a rich cyan hue that always soothed Elara. She couldn't resist reaching out and running her fingertips over the velvety-covered rock, slick with dragon's gold, which seemed to bristle under her touch, almost as if it breathed around her.
The ground sloped into a gentle incline and it was here that Elara stopped, placing her palms against the rock wall and touching her forehead to the soft blanket of moss that covered it. The sensation came as it always did. A heartbeat. A whisper. A touch so light, so gentle, that it coaxed the sigh from her parted lips.
She smiled to herself, in spite of the image of Kelena's face that still dogged her vision, and in spite of the novice who stood at her side.
The novice who should not be here.
Not here, in the very place her foremothers had trod, their song filling every crack and crevice in the black rock of Druvaria, spreading out under the citadel as if it would reach up and pull the entire Kingdom into the sea.
