Chapter 19
Dahlia’s POV
“Mommy, the stones are singing,” Axel whispered. His voice wasn’t childish anymore. It was ancient, like a hundred voices speaking at once. “They’re so hungry. They’ve been hungry for a hundred years p>
One of the Hollowed leaped from the wall. Nate intercepted it mid-air, his jaws snapped shut on the creature’s throat, but as it dissipated into thin air, two more latched onto his wounded side. Nate let out a pained roar, collapsing to one knee.
“Nate!” I screamed.
“Aidan, the lighter!” I barked.
My son handed it to me, his hands were shaking.
I didn’t use it to light a fire. I looked at the black silk veil Gina was wearing, the ceremonial dress of the sacrifice. I remembered what Silas had said about the Old Ways. They used fire to purify the shadows.
I didn’t think. I lunged at her.
I didn’t need to transform into my wolf, but I had the desperation of a mother. I tackled Gina, the momentum catching her off guard. We tumbled across the cold glass floor toward the base of the pillar. She clawed at my face, but I grabbed the hem of her silk veil and flicked the lighter.
The fabric caught instantly. It didn’t burn orange; it burned a brilliant, searing white.
Gina screamed, not a human scream, but a screech of something hollow being filled with light. The shadows in the room recoiled. The Hollowed attacking Nate shriveled, as their forms evaporated.
“Dahlia! Get back!” Nate shifted, his human form appearing in a flash of light. He grabbed me by the waist, dragging me away just as Gina’s entire form became a pillar of white flame.
She wasn’t dying. She was being taken. The mountain was accepting the sacrifice, but it wasn’t enough.
The white stone pillar began to crack.
“It’s not stopping,” Nate gasped, leaning heavily on me. His face was pale, the black veins of the shadow-poison were beginning to reach his neck. “The seal is broken. The Cradle is collapsing p>
“The children,” I sobbed, looking for them.
Aidan was holding Ariana, but Axel… Axel was at the very edge of the pillar. He reached out a tiny hand and touched the cracking stone.
“Stop!” the High Elder Martha’s voice boomed.
She appeared at the entrance of the chamber, her blue lantern was extinguished. She looked at Nate with a mixture of pity and fanaticism.
“It is too late, Nathaniel. The Seer has touched the Heart. The mountain will have its King, or it will take the entire Silver-Crest into the earth with it p>
“He’s just six years old!” I yelled at her, my heart breaking. “He’s just a little boy p>
“He is the bridge,” Martha said coldly. “Only his blood can stabilize the Root. If he stays, the pack survives. If you take him, we all burn p>
Nate looked at me. I saw the Alpha in him battling the father. He looked at his son, then at the thousands of lives currently screaming on the surface as the mountain shook.
“I’ll stay,” Nate said, his voice cracking. “Take my blood. I’m the Alpha. Take me and let them go p>
“You are the Alpha of the flesh,” Martha said. “He is the Alpha of the Spirit. The mountain has made its choice p>
Axel turned back to us. The glow in his eyes faded for just a second. “Daddy? Mommy? The mountain says it’s okay. It says it will keep me safe p>
“No,” I whispered, stepping toward him. “Axel, come back to Mommy p>
The floor between us vanished.
A massive abyss opened, separating Axel and the pillar from the rest of us. The white flame of Gina’s sacrifice surged upward, forming a barrier of heat that Nate couldn’t pierce.
“Axel!” Nate roared, throwing himself against the barrier, as his skin blistered instantly.
From the darkness of the abyss, something began to rise. It wasn’t a shadow. It was a massive, skeletal hand made of roots and stone. It moved with agonizing slowness, reaching for our son.
“Aidan!” I turned to my oldest son. “The spark! You have the Alpha’s spark! Can you reach him p>
Aidan looked at his brother, then at his father’s bleeding hands. A look of grim, adult determination settled on his young face.
“I can’t reach him,” Aidan said, his voice steady. “But I can pull the mountain down p>
Aidan knelt, slamming his palms onto the glass floor.
My ears weren’t just ringing; they felt like they were going to burst. The sound of the mountain moving wasn’t a normal sound. It was a deep, low thrum that I felt in my teeth and my toes. It felt like the earth was waking up from a long, angry sleep, and we were just bugs crawling on its skin.
“Nate!” I screamed.
The name felt like a prayer, but the wind took it and ripped it away before it could even reach him. He was only five feet away from me, but he looked like a ghost through the thick, white dust and the steam rising from the cracks in the floor.
He was covered in blood, most of it that black, oily shadow-blood and his eyes were wide and wild. He didn’t look like the man I had loved. He looked like a cornered animal.
Between us, the ground was gone.
I looked down into the abyss that had opened up, and my stomach did a slow, sick flip. There was no bottom. Just a yawning, black throat that seemed to be breathing. And there, on the other side, was Axel.
My baby boy was standing right next to that glowing white pillar. He looked so small. So fragile. The pale light from the stone was washing over him, making his skin look like marble.
He wasn’t crying. He wasn’t even moving. He just stood there with his hand pressed against the rock, his eyes fixed on something I couldn’t see.
“Axel! Come to Mommy!” I yelled, reaching out across the gap. My fingers brushed the heat rising from the fire barrier Gina had left behind. It smelled like burning hair and old copper. “Please, baby! Move away from the stone p>
Axel turned his head. His eyes were glowing that cold, eerie white again. “Mommy, it’s okay,” he whispered. I shouldn’t have been able to hear him over the roar of the mountain, but his voice sounded like it was right inside my head. “The mountain is lonely. It just wants someone to talk to p>
“I don’t care if it’s lonely!” I screamed. I felt a hot surge of rage. How dare this mountain take my son? How dare these Elders think they could use him like a battery?
I looked at Nate. He was throwing himself against the wall of white fire again and again. His skin was blistering, and his fur was scorched black, but he didn’t stop. He was roaring, a sound of pure agony that made me want to cover my ears and sob.
“Nate, stop! You’re going to kill yourself!” I cried.
He didn’t listen. He was an Alpha. He was a father. He would burn to ash before he let that gap stay between him and his son.
I turned to Aidan and Ariana. They were huddled together, their faces were pale and streaked with soot. Aidan was still pressing his hands to the ground, as his knuckles turned white.
I could see the sweat rolling down his face. He was the one holding the room together. He was the reason the ceiling hadn’t come down on our heads yet.
“Aidan, honey, you have to keep going,” I told him, kneeling down and grabbing his shoulders. “You have to be strong for Axel p>
“It’s… heavy, Mom,” Aidan gasped. His voice was thin and shaky. “The mountain is pushing back. It wants to close the door p>
I looked back at the chasm. The massive hand of roots and stone was still rising. It was slow, but it was steady. It was only a few feet away from Axel now. Its fingers were as big as tree trunks, covered in moss and sharp, jagged rocks.
I looked at the high ledge where Martha, the High Elder, was standing. She was watching us like we were a science experiment. She wasn’t lifting a finger to help or destroy us.
“You’re going to let it take him!” I yelled at her. “You’re going to let a child be buried alive for a pack that doesn’t even deserve him p>
“It is the cycle, Dahlia,” she called down. Her voice was cold and flat. “One life for the thousands on the surface. It is a fair trade p>
“Not his life p>
I looked at the IV pole I’d dropped during the fall. It was laying near the edge of the pit. I scrambled for it, my fingers catching on the cold metal. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had.
I stood up and looked at the fire barrier. If it was made of shadow and Gina’s sacrifice, maybe it reacted to the opposite. I remembered the little emergency lighter in my pocket. It wasn’t white fire, but it was pure. It was a light I had used to keep my kids warm in cold apartments and dark alleys. It was a light of survival.
I flicked it on. The tiny flame looked pathetic in the face of the glowing pillar, but I didn’t care. I stepped right up to the wall of white fire.
“Dahlia, no!” Nate yelled, shifting back to human form. He was covered in burns, his chest heaving. “It’ll eat you alive p>
“Get ready to catch him, Nate!” I yelled back.
I thrust the tiny lighter into the white flame. For a second, nothing happened. Then, the fire hissed. It didn’t like the little flame. It started to swirl and pull away, like oil on water.
I pushed harder, my hand feeling like it was being shoved into an oven. The skin on my arm started to redden and sting, but I didn’t stop.
The barrier cracked. Just a tiny hole, but it was enough.
“Axel! Now!” I screamed.