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Maia's skin crawled as they trudged up the island's muddy slope, her soul wrenching against her with every step,beggingher to turn back. A weight on her chest pressed all the air out of her lungs, making her head spin, and she knew the others felt it, too. There had been no traps like Nesslyn found on the shore, no shields. As if someone wanted them to reach the saints’ circle.
"We should turn back," Ark groaned, close by her side. "There's nothing here."
"You don't know that," Maia disagreed, her voice choked by the crush of her chest. The further they walked, the worse it got, until it hurt to even breathe. "We can't just leave the circle open."
A muscle flickered in his jaw, but he nodded. "Azrail, can you sense anything from the earth?"
Az turned with a frown, his movements sluggish. "I'm trying not to. It's like someone sank gunpowder into the earth; bitter and sharp. Explosive. We can't stay here long; the earth is messed up."
"Why am I even here?" Bryon complained, glaring at them, his mouth pressed into a hard line.
"For the company," Maia quipped, and tried not to think about what Jaro had told her, that Bryon had reacted the exact same way as her mates. She didn't feel that magnetic pull of her soul towards his, but ... he lost his wife and kid because of Maia's family and their rule. Of course there was no pull; he didn’t want a mate.
And mates or not, he clearly felt nothing but disdain towards her.
He jumped through the mirror to get to you,an annoying voice reminded her. Maia ignored it.
She'd face it later, when Vawn wasn't missing, presumed monstrous, and the circle wasn't leaking wrongness from the saints' prison into this world. The stories said fae and saints had warred, centuries ago, and the fae had finally won by trapping the psychotic saints. The price was locking away all the good saints, too. That prison had clearly frayed at best and come crashing down at worst.
And it was all thanks to Ismene rounding up beastkind and the fae she saw as disposable, and using her army to kill them on this island. If Maia was feeling forgiving, she might think Ismene had been manipulated by the dark saint, but she knew her aunt had eagerly done what the saint asked. Anything for power and wealth.
Maia remembered once dismissing Kheir's suggestion that Ismene wanted to conquer other empires. What a naive idiot she'd been. Ismene wanted the whole damn Saintlands. Whatever the dark saints didn't turn into their twisted kingdom, Ismene would hover over like a vulture, ready to pick through the bones.
Maia cast a paranoid glance around them as they trudged up a grassy hill, the path little more than muck under their feet, worn by hundreds of boots. By hundreds of deaths. Saints' circles were supposed to be sacred, left alone to preserve the stones. Not covered in blood and cracked in half.
"Is it just me," Bryon said, a note of unease in his gruff voice, "or is it getting darker?"
Maia frowned, lifting her head from where she'd been watching her trudging steps. He was right; it was far darker than it had been when they first began the trek from the boat, the sky a murky sapphire instead of the grey it had been.
"Could be another storm," Azrail replied, squinting at the sky.
Maia couldn't see any clouds, but it wouldn't surprise her if the heavens opened like they had before they entered Eosantha. The saints were just laughing at them at this point.
"Let's walk faster," Kheir suggested. "I don't want us caught in another storm."
"No," Azrail agreed, swapping a look with Ark, who took the front of their procession while Azrail walked behind the rest.
"Maia," Kheir murmured, catching her hand and brushing his thumb over her knuckles. "I want you to be prepared for not finding Vawn here. He might never have come to this island, or he might have been taken somewhere else—"
"He's here." Maia shook her head.
She couldn't explain it, but there was an unshakeable certainty beating against her ribcage, rattling the tall trees at the heart of her soul. He washere; she could sense it. She could find him, save him, and right all her wrongs. She'd given so many people over to Ismene like lambs to a wolf, but she could save this one person. Shehadto. She couldn't explain why it was so necessary, but something drove her on, and she was beginning to think it was the saints' will.
They needed Vawn, for whatever reason. Maybe he was another one of them, a saint reborn. It wasn't that difficult to imagine another saint had found their way into Azrail's ranks, fate nudging them closer to each other.
"He might be—" Kheir began, but he paused when Maia inhaled sharply.
"Bryon's right," she said, startling the soldier out of his stomping pace. "It's getting darker, and this isn't natural. It's barely two in the afternoon; why does it seem like it's night?"
The sky was dark blue, not speckled with stars like a true night, but completely flat. Like someone had thrown a sheet over the sun.
"It's like what Nesslyn said," Jaro breathed, his eyes wide and breathing fast. "She said the sun turned black."
Maia stared uneasily at the sky as everyone came to a grinding halt, squinting through the darkness that had been mere murkiness minutes ago.
"We need to leave," Azrail said, low and growling. His hands clenched into fists, muscles bunched in his inked shoulders and his neck tense. Maia didn't want to fight him, but she wasn't leaving without Vawn.
