Son of Sun (Forgotten Gods (Book 2)) (10 page)

As the world slowly came back into focus, a great hand circle my neck. Icy fingers closed around my throat and jerked me up to a standing position, my feet dancing wildly to keep up.

With his hand alone he could have easily killed me. A flick of his wrist would have snapped my neck and he’d be done with it. His shirtless arms bulged and quaked with the restraint he was obviously forcing himself to hold onto. By the look in his eyes, I could tell his hold was slipping.

“Please, Chassan,” I whimpered with the last bit of breath my lungs held. At the sound of his name, his eyes flinched, and his fingers immediately released. I fell to the ground, gasping and choking, rubbing my throat to coax breath back into it.

Stealing peeks at him from behind my lashes when I could, I was floored by what Ceila had failed to tell me.

She had prepared me for the Grim Reaper. A ghastly bird, or a macabrely cloaked man at best, stalking death from the shadows. Never, had I ever expected to find a Dayne like god living with death in the mountains of Peru. Yet, that’s exactly what he was.

His hair was cut closely to his scalp, sticking up in a halo of spikes that covered his regal head in a soft golden helmet. Tiger-like eyes, flashing the color of caramel and molasses, swirled into an alarming mess of raw umber. His skin was tanned to the cafe-con-leche perfection of the natives, either from a lifetime in the sun or stained by the murky waters of the Urabamba River that flowed beneath Machu Picchu.

I bit my lip as I steadied my breath and took him in with disbelieving eyes. Never once, did his unsettling glare leave me. Unflinchingly, he stared at me with two fathomless, empty pools that should have been eyes. Not a single muscle moved, as if he were a statue carved from a bar of gold bullion.

Where Dayne’s skin glowed with soft moonlight whispers of blue-white, Chassan radiated a near constant shade of copper, much like the sun during a solar eclipse.

“Well!?!” His hiss demanded in the darkness. “You called me from the rocks. What is it you seek?” He jaw clenched resolutely into place when he finished speaking. Down the length of his long nose he held me in a contemptuous glare, enjoying my struggle for words.

“I...I need…” I needed so much, but at that moment my words were failing me. “I need help,” I finally blurted out. It was the least complicated thing I could think of to say.

“Trust me when I tell you
that
is obvious.” He crossed his ripped arms over an equally hard chest and continued to stare at me. “I take life. I do not save it. Consider yourself lucky I spared yours tonight and be on your way.” With that he turned on his bare heel and began to leave.

“No!” I shouted at his back, finding my feet and running after him, grabbing onto his arm and pulling him back. The force of his motion as he spun around slammed me against the rock wall to my right, causing me to drop his arm instantly.

I groaned and staggered to keep my feet. Instead of apologizing like most normal people his hands went out to his sides and he hunched low as if he were ready to fight.

My hands instinctively covered my face in self defense, cowering against the jagged rocks at my back.

“Please, Chassan. I need your help. I don’t have anyone else to turn to,” I pleaded with tightly shut eyes from behind my shaking hands. When I failed to hear the continued sounds of him preparing to attack, I peeked through my fingers. He stood ram rod straight, fists curled at his sides, staring at me with a look that was equal parts anger and irritation. Relaxing my defensive posture, I stood and looked into his cold, compassionless eyes.

“My magic is very new. I need to learn how to use it, or I will lose everything I love,” my voice sounded way stronger than I felt at that moment.

Chassan continued his icy glare, like we were in some morbid staring contest. He swallowed once, a knobby Adam’s apple climbing his throat and then sliding back down. Still, not a single ounce of emotion registered on his stone mask of a face. I bit at my lip, fearing there were no pleading words in the world capable of swaying this monster of a man’s heart.

“You already possess all you need to save what you love. The question is, are you willing to lose all you have to save what you love?” Even in a hushed whisper, his voice boomed like thunder.

“Absolutely. I’ve risked my life to find you,” I babbled as he turned into the night and began to walk down the grassy street. I kept a few steps behind him, fearing his temper may switch at any moment and I would be too close to the danger once again. “I would do anything to get him back.”

At the word “him” Chassan stopped in his tracks and I nearly collided with his broad back.

“Him?” He spit the word from his mouth. “Then why hasn’t
he
shown you how to use your powers?” Chassan asked as he spun toward me. I immediately backpedaled, shaking my head and feeling the tears well up in me as he followed me step for step. When my back hit the stone wall again the force knocked a few sobs from my throat and I turned my head to the side, trying to hide my tears. I said nothing.

I could feel Chassan watching me, listening to my jagged breaths, the tiny whimpers that came with each one, partly sobs of sadness, partly sobs of pain from the jagged rock in my back.

“What’s in it for me?” he asked, resting an arm beside my head and finding my eyes the moment I turned back to him. I gasped at his proximity, fearing his touch as I did.

“My bracelet is all I have,” I searched his face for sympathy, knowing I had no more gold to offer. His eyes roved over my face as he thought.

“Not good enough,” he shook his head and straightened, walking into the darkness again.

I sighed desperately, my mind racing frantically. He couldn’t leave. I was so close. Everything I needed was right before me, and I couldn’t let him disappear.

Sprinting past him, I turned, blocking his path so he had no choice but to stop.

“If you won’t help me, then you might as well kill me. I have nothing left to live for,” I knelt down in front of him, clasping my hands at my chest in what I hoped was a convincing act of desperation.

His eyes flared wild and dangerous.

“Get off you knees!” he growled, his jaw working overtime. “I don’t want your blood on my hands.” His giant hand circled around my arm and jerked me to my feet. He lingered for a second as if he wanted to say something more, but stopped himself, breezing past me instead.

My latest plea seemed to get the most reaction out of him yet. A lightbulb went off in my mind. It was the riskiest plan I had come up with yet, but it was the only one I could think of, and time was running out.

“Fine then!” I shouted. “If you won’t do it, I will!” With that I took off running into the darkness. I was on a mountain top for crying out loud, if I could dodge all the stone buildings, it wouldn’t be too long until I came to a cliff.

Just as one came into sight, my mind began to reel. I was going way to fast to stop, and if he wasn’t behind me, I was just a fool. But I was too committed to my plan to stop. My toes left the earth without their normal force. Instead of flying into the air, I was falling, down into the darkened cloud bank that circle the Andean peaks.

Arms and legs flailed wildly at my sides, searching for something to save me, but found nothing. Air rushed by me as I picked up speed, falling faster and faster into the cold nothingness of the 8,000 feet between peak and base. I closed my eyes, wishing for all the world I had booked the ticket to Clonlea instead of Cusco.

In an instant, the whooshing wind stopped assaulting my ears. My arms found something solid to grasp onto and the sensation of falling was gone. Chassan’s eyes glared murderous, looking as if he wanted to drop me just as badly as he wanted to save me.

An instant later the ground returned beneath my feet and he released me from his arms.

“You are a fool!” He spit the words through clenched teeth. “That was your second chance. You don’t get a third.”

“Then help me,” I argued back, steeling my face to match his, and punching my hands to my sides. I leaned into him, letting him know I didn’t fear death from him or anything else at that moment.

We toed an invisible line between us. The night as black as our moods, our eyes locked on one another in hostile rage, neither backing down. My breath sped up as my heart hammered in my chest, more from adrenaline than fear.

“Hey! Whose there? You can’t be in here!” A voice boomed from the terraces above us. Neither one of us moved. A flashlight’s beam began to bob and weaved as it jostled down the stairs in our direction. The two guards from earlier were running our way. Still we didn’t move. A few seconds more and they would have us, but I kept still, staring at him just as coldly as he stared at me, a deadly game of chicken. His eyes narrowed and he grabbed my hand, dragging me further into the darkness.

“I hope you aren’t scared of heights,” he hissed and leapt from the mountain side, pulling me behind him as our bodies were engulfed once more by the weightless fall from Machu Picchu.

I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know whose body was being consumed by the funeral pyre I stood helplessly watching. Tears choked high in my throat, causing that annoying wheezing sound I always make when I’ m trying not to cry.

As smoke billowed higher from the funeral pyre, flames began to lick the blankets where a body lay. A small, soft cough echoed in my ears, and the form beneath the rich red and blue blankets stirred ever so slightly. Whoever was lying lifelessly over the flames was still alive, but not for long if I didn’t do something.

I tried to run to it, but something held me back. Something that was not physical, but mental. A loud voice inside me shouting,
Wait! Not Yet!

A piercing bird shriek echoed down the length of the mountain slope to where our group was gathered. Eagerly waiting for the flames and smoke to consume the life atop the pyre.

In my mind, the word
GO!
rang through me and my feet instinctively began to run. Into what, I wasn’t sure.

I awoke with a start
, alone in a darkened room. A faint glow seeped from the edges of a thick tapestry hanging over the doorway, casting just enough light to make out the shadows of the room. Pelts of jungle cats lay over me, insulating my body from a chill that had turned my nose into an icicle. My breath frosted into a puffy cloud when I yawned, the darkened walls radiating such cold they could’ve been made from ice.

Where I was, I couldn’t be sure. Leaping from the mountain top was the last memory I could recall from the night before. After that, I remembered nothing but darkness and the surprisingly gentle feel of Chassan’s talons wrapped around my arms as he carried me through the Andes.

At some point, I must have fallen asleep.

On a bedside table sat a taper and a box of matches. Cuddling the blankets around my back, I sat up and grasped a match between shivering fingers.

In the southern hemisphere, December brought summer to Peru, weather I had packed for despite threats of snow when I left in northern California. The thin t-shirt and shorts I wore were not meant for such cold, and I vaguely wondered where in the heck Chassan had taken me.

I dropped the first match, hands too numb to grasp the tiny shaft. The second match I almost dropped as well, but for an entirely different reason.

Flaring to life, the little white flint on the match’s tip revealed the reason I was chilled to the bone. I gasped, staring at walls that were not ice, but sheets of gold, paved top to bottom, glowing so brightly I had to shield my eyes in the match light.

“What?” My word was slow, disbelieving, barely audible at all, but loud enough to echo up the golden chamber walls that climbed beyond the range of my match to darkness—or infinity.

“Ouch!” I yelped when the match burned my fingers. I dropped it and immediately stuck the tender thumb into my mouth. Striking a third, I lit the candle, slung the pelts over my shoulders and shuffled to the nearest wall. Running my fingers along the stunning scenes carved into golden slabs, I wondered dumbly at its beauty, intricate designs depicting the sun and birds soaring over mountains, repeated over and over; the faces of humans, crying out in sacrifice, hands raised, appealing to the gods for their favor.

As I circled the room I knew exactly where I was. There was only one place that could possibly house so much gold—Paititi. A breathy laugh fell from my lips as they curled in a smile, remembering my conversation with Rhea.

The room was surprisingly sparse to have such ornamented walls, only a columned bed that could’ve been carved from onyx and a simple gilt table. In the corner sat a chair covered with the lavish pelts of exotic jungle animals. On the floor more hides of furry creatures spread their legs so one wouldn’t freeze their feet on the gold bricked floor.

A pile of clothes and hiking boots lay on the chair, a fleece coat hanging from a curled goat horn arm. I knew they were for me. Modern clothes were completely out of place in a room like this.

I shrugged off a chill as the new clothes brought warmth back to my limbs—a pair of pants that unzipped into shorts, a soft pink plaid button down, and tan fleece jacket with thumb holes to make the sleeves into half-mittens. When I was completely dressed, I looked like I belonged on an episode of the Crocodile Hunter.

The whisper of a turning page snicked on the other side of the tapestry, the finger guiding it—I assumed—was Chassan’s. Nerves churned my insides when I remembered how close I had come to death last night. I still wasn’t sure what I had said to save my life, but for some reason he hadn’t killed me, which could only mean he was going to help me. Right?

I cleared my throat as I emerged from behind the tapestry, planning to begin by profusely thanking him for agreeing to help me—not that I really thought it would help with a guy as impossible as Chassan, but because it seemed like the polite thing to do. The only problem was, when I saw what lay on the other side of the curtain, I couldn’t form words.

Chassan was there, leisurely sprawled on a magnificent pillow, looking up from his book to watch me with the same blank expression I was coming to recognize as his own patented brand of discord with the world. But his ill humor was the last thing on my mind at that moment.

Golden walls circled the room, just as they had in my bedroom, now lining the colossal structure of what appeared to be some type of throne room. Every surface, as far as I could see, was made from some sort of luxurious material, be it precious metal or priceless stone.

I stood atop a set of five shallow steps. The same steps continued uninterrupted to form a rectangular frame around a sunken room that was easily the size of a football field. Giant pillars of black marble veined with gold lined the top step every twenty feet or so, towering over me to the point I felt like a flea in a redwood forest. Behind the pillars ran a hallway, open to the sunken room on one side, golden walls on the other, broken only by thick tapestries woven in vibrant colors and covering what I assumed were more golden bedrooms like the one I had emerged from.

All of this grandeur coalesced at an enormous throne, which dominated the room, encrusted well past the point of gaudy with more priceless jewels and precious metals. Sparkling in the light of a hundred torches hung from massive golden urns, the room looked like a secret, a pirate’s cache no one was meant to find. Corners sat silently cloaked in shadows. Fire light painted my skin with a sunset’s orange glow. Everything appeared so surreal, for moment I wondered if I were lost in a dream or under a spell.

Chassan lay on one of the many golden brick paved walkways crisscrossing the floor. Beneath these walkways were shallow pools of sky blue water where bright orange and white fish swam at their leisure.

“You must be hungry,” he said if a gruff voice. My stomach growled at the mention of food. How long had it been since I’d eaten? Maybe a day? I was famished.

I nodded my head dumbly and he pushed off the pillow in one graceful movement, swift and precise like the exacting swoops of a bird of prey on the hunt. I gasped at how lithely he moved.

He motioned to a table down the golden hallway to my right and began to work the crisscross pattern over the pools to meet me there.

Even the table was set with gold in this palatial hall. I stared openmouthed at the opulent cornucopia of food, not knowing whether I was supposed to sit with him or serve him, until he swept a princely hand toward one chair and took the one opposite it.

“Paititi?” I half whispered.

He nodded.

“Are we the only ones here?”

His gaze fell from me to a bowl of exotic fruit. With an annoyed sigh, he nodded his head.

“Do you really know so little about our world?

Now it was my turn to look away. I shrugged without saying a word and took a mango from the basket of fruit. The disgust that swept through him was palpable.

“I’ve never cared much for the Sidhe. Tolerated them mainly. But to let one of their own into this world so unprepared puts all of our kind in great danger.” His fist hit the table to reinforce his anger and I jumped in my skin.

One of their own?
I kept my focus on peeling the mango with a sharp gold knife, chewing on my inner cheek as I thought. Chassan must’ve assumed I was Sidhe because of my bracelet. He could never know what I feared I might actually be; no one could. In a split second the decision was made not to correct his assumption...ever.

“They didn’t exactly
let
me out,” I kept my eyes down. “
Kicked
me out would be a better term.”

“Kicked you out?” He leaned into me, suddenly interested in my story. “Why?” He crossed his forearms over the table, a rugged, well worn blue knit shirt covering the muscles that almost killed me last night.

“I fell in love with the Queen’s son.”

“Ah, and she didn’t approve.”

I only nodded.

He sat back as if to take me all in, one arm flung wildly over the back of his chair, running the back of his fingers over the angle of his chiseled chin as he thought. With a tilted head he watched me eat hungrily, yet ate nothing himself. After quite some time he finally spoke.

“Tell me then, why do you insist on forcing the impossible? He cannot defy the queen. And I hate to be the one to break it to you, but if the bracelet has fallen from your wrist, he’s already let you go.”

I gasped, the knife clattering against my plate when I dropped it in total shock. Its echo rang like a church bell through the silent hall. When the piece of mango lodged in my throat I slapped both hands over my throat and began coughing to free it. Looking into Chassan’s cold ochre eyes as I struggled to breathe, I could tell he enjoyed my misery, a thought that dried the tears desperate to run down my cheeks. I knew exactly what he was trying to do, and I wasn’t about to let him deter me from finding my answers. Not after I had already come so far and risked so much. I narrowed my eyes and punched my chin defiantly in the air.

“Because he’s all I have,” I answered, gritting my teeth as I stared at him.

Chassan’s lips curled into a superior grin, and he shook his head, his short spikes of dirty blonde hair glistening under the torches.

“The Sidhe have diluted their race into such weakness. It’s embarrassing,” he snorted and looked away.

My temper flamed deep in my belly. Who was he to belittle people he didn’t even know?
I
knew the Sidhe, and even though they didn’t want me, there was one of them I wanted very much. One I would defend to the death if I had to.

“Weakness? Because they choose to live with their kind instead of kill them?” As soon as the words were out of my mouth I regretted them. My eyes flew as wide as the golden charger I was eating from. I knew first hand what Chassan was capable of and he had already told me I didn’t have another chance with him. Fearing his temper would flare just as mine had, I grabbed the knife from my mango and fisted it in my hand.

Instead of reacting, his steady eyes fell to my sorry excuse of a weapon. The corner of his lips twitched in what could have grown into a smile, but by the time his eyes reached mine again, his trademark disdain was firmly back in place.

“Ah, so you have heard the stories.” He raised an eyebrow, calm and composed once again, his voice a serene tone that should’ve discussed pleasant weather, not killing his brothers.

“Yes,” I answered, tilting my head in an indignant way.

With mild interest he popped a grape into his mouth and folded his forearms on the table again.

“You intrigue me, Faye. Most would not sit at my table knowing what I have done. Yet you have chosen to seek me out. So tell me, why do
you
think I killed my brothers?”

“Greed.” It was the first answer that popped into my mind, and fearing I had offended him again I gripped the knife tighter in my hand.

“What is your definition of greed?” He absently ran a finger over the golden knife at the side of his plate—his eyes dancing in a dangerous way that made my heart thunder against my ribs.

“A selfish desire to get what you want.”

“Ah! Are your motives not selfish? Traveling all this way to find answers only
you
seek?” He sat back, a smug smile on his face, obviously high-fiving himself over working this all back to me and the mounting reasons why I shouldn’t be here. But I wasn’t going to be deterred.

“No.” Defiantly, I shoved my chin higher into the air. “My motives are self
less
.” I returned the same smug smile right back at him, and I could tell my boldness shocked and fascinated him by the way he was biting at his lip, trying to hide a small smile. “This life means nothing to me without him. There is nothing I wouldn’t give or do to win him back.”

“Selfless love,” Chassan said, more to himself than to me, his eyebrows hitching up his broad forehead again. With a dispassionate shrug he seemed to acknowledge my victory, losing interest in the war of words as he thought about what I said. Again, the backs of his fingers traced his chin.