"You can have them all."

"Oh, Micah." Though she wanted nothing more than to stay in his arms, she forced her mind back to the task they couldn't afford to leave incomplete. "Ask the land to be quiet until you've dealt with my father. It will understand."

Going down to his knees, Micah touched his fingers to the dry and cracked earth, murmured his plea for quiet. Not forever, he promised. Just until the bad blood is gone. I am here now - I will sing to you as you need.

The earth sighed, answered with a caress of peace.

"Come, Lily. It is time."

Mounting their night-horses in silence, they began the last leg of the journey to the castle that had once been the heart of Elden and was now the seat of such evil it had shattered the earth itself. They rode until they reached a place Liliana called the Dead Forest.

"I used to play here," he said, remembering the shimmer of the aseria blooms, the bright green of the dew-honey trees heavy with their tulip-shaped flowers, the symphony of birdsong.

Now it crawled with plants the shade of rotten flesh, blackened trees shooting their diseased branches out into the sky. The living things that roamed its murky depths, Liliana told him, were akin to the gremlins - nasty creatures who lived only for death.

And who would delight in bringing down a night-horse.

"Go," Micah told the proud beasts after they'd dismounted and unburdened the night-horses of their gear. "We thank you for your help."

The horses shook their heads.

Gripping their manes he looked each in the eye. "You must go. The things that roam here will hurt you, and if they do, Liliana will cry. I don't like it when Liliana cries." He put all the menace he was capable of - and the Guardian of the Abyss was capable of a great deal - into his voice. "Go."

The night-horses reared and turned, neighing loudly as they raced away.

Going to the saddlebags, he removed the knives and strapped them to Lily's body so that she would have physical weapons, before picking up his sword.

"Wait." Liliana took out the food Emmy had packed and forced them both to eat to further armor themselves with energy.

Prepared as well as they could be, they stepped into the hungry jaws of the Dead Forest. Things jeered and skittered at them from above, but nothing came close.

The strange plants that smelled of decaying meat, however, tried to lick out, as if they would wrap their enormous tongues around Micah and Liliana and drag them into the teeth-filled maw of their "flowers." Micah sliced out at one aggressive tongue and the plant screamed, its appendage gushing black blood. The others snapped back at the warning. Walking past without pause, Liliana used her knife to hack away a vine that had attempted to wrap itself around her arm.

That was his mate, he thought, fierce and strong.

Teeth bared in a smile of pride, he walked beside her as they cut, sawed and sliced their way through this once-lush forest become a nightmare. It took too long, time slipping through their fingers at an inexorable pace. Bones crunched underneath his boots sometime later, hours after full dark.

"My father," Liliana said, flinching at the sound, deep grooves around her mouth, "disposes of his enemies here or in the lake." A hollow statement. "He used to ask his minions to bury them, but he no longer cares, as long as there's no stench from the rotting flesh."

Micah stepped with more care after that, for though some of these bones might be of men who had once served the Blood Sorcerer, many would be those of innocents. It was as he was making his way around a skull gleaming white in the night air that he caught his first glimpse of what had once been Elden Castle.

Chapter 26

In his memories, the castle was a proud structure of glimmering stone standing in the middle of a pristine lake. At night its windows had been filled with golden light, while during the day the colorful pennants that spoke of the Royal House of Elden and their allies had flown high overhead. Music had rolled out over the lake more often than not, and the causeway that connected the castle to the mainland had been filled with the bustle of movement as the people came and went.

What he saw before him was a desecration.

He and Liliana had come out of the forest on the opposite side of the lake to the causeway, but even from this far he could see the foul creatures moving about along the narrow stretch. They appeared agitated, their anger vicious. But their presence was, in many ways, the easiest to bear. As for the castle itself...

Enough sickening yellow light spilled from within that he could discern the black slime mold crawling up the sides of the stone, see the monstrous vegetation. His mother's gardens, her fruit plants, were all gone, dead. To be replaced by putrid plants akin to those in the forest behind them.

The lake was in no better condition - slow moving and polluted, with a thin film of grease overlaying the surface, it appeared lifeless. But it was not untenanted. "What are those?" he said, catching the eager movements beneath the slime.

"The flesh-eating fish I told you about," she said with a shudder before nodding to a small wooden boat that lay pulled up on the verge not far from them. "If we try to take that out into the water without my father's sorcery to protect us, the fish will eat through the hull to get to us." Staring at the water, she said, "I've been thinking. My blood is close enough to his that I may be able to fool the fish, get us safely to the castle - otherwise, we'll have to breach the causeway."

He tasted her fear, knew her father had terrorized her with the bloodthirsty fish in the lake. But they weren't the only beings beneath the water.

You must always treat them with respect, Micah. They are the guardians of this place.

His father's voice, stern and yet kind to a young boy who'd been flushed with his own power after summoning one of those great guardians from the deep, for his was the magic that spoke to the earth and its creatures, whether on the land or in the water. Perhaps the guardians were long dead, poisoned by this filth, but Micah didn't think so. They were beings of vast and ancient magic who slept far, far below, under the silt of the lake bottom itself.

"No, Lily," he murmured. "Save your strength, your blood." Heading to the boat, he told her to get in. "You must trust me."

It didn't surprise him that she entered the boat without another word. She was his. Of course she should trust him; he would've likely growled at her if she had not. Putting his sword in with her, he knelt beside the boat, his hand braced on the bow, and went to brush the water with his fingertips.

Liliana pulled his hair. Hard. "Those fish can swim in the shallows. They'll bite the tips of your fingers right off."

He glared at her. "That hurt."

"It'll hurt more when they're nibbling on you."

Scowling because she was right, he considered the situation. "I must touch the water to do this."

Liliana scrambled out of the boat to run into the forest without a word. Spinning, he ran after her to see her sawing away at one of the "tongues" he'd hacked off near the edge of the trees. It infuriated him that that black blood was touching her, but he helped her in her task and, together, they dragged the piece back to the lake.

"If you put this in front of your fingers," she said, sliding away her knife, "the fish will go for it first. It'll last perhaps ten heartbeats at most."

"Are you sure? I quite like my fingers."

"So do I." A sinful smile so unexpected it made his own lips curve. "The plant is a delicacy to them - my father uses it as a reward after they take care of another enemy."

"Back in the boat," he ordered, and waited until she'd scrambled inside before taking the hunk of dead plant and dropping it in the water. As the hideous white fish, their eyes a dull pink, swarmed in a frenzy, he dipped in his fingers into the shallows and whispered, "Your help I ask, one guardian to another. It is time to wake."

Teeth grazed his fingers just as he wrenched them out of the water. Liliana cried out in dismay when she saw the blood running hot and slick down his - still whole - finger. "You may kiss it better later," he told her, his eyes on the lake.

The surface remained placid, the fish having calmed.

"Micah," Liliana whispered, her eyes on the watch she wore around her neck. "It's almost midnight."

"Patience." There. A bubble of water too big for a fish.

Running to the back of the boat, he began to push it into the lake, jumping in right before it would've been too late. "Row, Lily!"

Tiny crunching sounds came from all around them and Liliana knew the revolting fish with the pink eyes were eating away at the boat. A cold sweat broke out along her spine as she lifted her oar out of the water to dig it in again and one of those foul creatures appeared, teeth clamped on the wood as it flopped in the night air. "Micah."

"We're almost to the deep."

That didn't reassure her, since it ruled out any possibility of escape. But she'd promised to trust Micah, so she continued to row with frantic determination...and almost dropped her oar when a giant tentacle appeared, curling over the side of the boat. Another gleaming tentacle appeared on the other side.

She felt a tug, realized Micah was taking her oar and putting it on the bottom of the boat. "Hold on," he warned, just before the water began to churn and they crashed over the lake at a speed that had her fingers going white-knuckled from the force of her grip. Around the lake, other mysterious creatures rose with a haunting song, their bodies so immense as to be incomprehensible, their jaws massive as they swallowed up her father's evil creations with slow dives that rippled throughout the polluted water.

Exhilarated, she wiped away the filthy water spraying onto her face and held on tight as they headed straight for the shore - and the back of the castle. The tentacles slid away as they reached the shallows, but their momentum crashed them right onto the rocky edge, the boat falling apart on impact.

Scrambling onto the rocks with Micah behind her, she looked out over the churning surface of the lake. "My father's creatures are vicious," she said, able to see the flesh-eaters clamped on the tentacles that waved in the air. "They'll hurt the guardians."