Unable to feel her feet, knowing she’d suffered severe frost burn, she had no choice but to hope and pray that they’d not been led astray and that this was indeed the chalice of hope and not some fraud.
A horrible sinking feeling that maybe they’d been duped after all writhed through her stomach. It wasn’t even so much that it appeared completely unassuming, sometimes the objects of most power did, but it’d been much too easy.
She glanced at Giles. His head was resting heavily on her shoulders and he was only taking a breath now and again. If she mentioned her misgivings she suspected he’d demand they continue searching.
“Giles, I’m sorry.” She brushed her fingers against his cheek, shocked that she couldn’t even feel him anymore because of the numbness of her hand.
Just as she went to reach inside the opening and yank the cup out, glowing letters chiseled their way onto the ice surrounding it, forming a sentence that she read aloud.
“A price must be paid,” she mumbled and then grinned because all her fears were gone. This was the true chalice and whatever the price would be, it could be nothing to the anguish she was destined to suffer anyway. If she had to remain locked in a cave of ice for all eternity, then she’d pay it, just so long as she could get him out of there.
“This is it, knight. We are saved.”
With one hand she gripped her pendant and with the other she yanked the chalice out.
The moment she touched the gold, her heart stopped and she collapsed to the tunnel floor.
Fire.
It was everywhere.
Burning through him, filling him with energy. Bathing the world around them in steam.
Giles snapped out of the lethargy that’d gripped him and stared in shock at the world around him. The water on the walls and the floors, it was gone, melted away, and in its place glowed a heated, burning magma that oozed closer toward them.
It felt wonderful, amazing to feel so wholly alive again, until he glanced down at his feet.
Lilith was completely blue. Her hair, her lips, her skin, even her clothes. As though she’d sucked all the ice into herself. Clutched in her hand was the chalice of hope.
“Lilith!” He dropped to his knees and grabbed her, but hissed the moment he touched her body.
Just the brush of her skin against his own leeched the vitality out of him. Realizing just how much danger she was in as the heated magma drew closer and closer to her, he ground his molars and snatched the pendant off. Grunting as her ice seeped through his flesh, making him feel as though he’d never know warmth again.
Shivering violently, but now holding on to their only source of salvation, he roared to the heavens. “Danika! Come now!”
The mountain quaked and rumbled as rocks slid and rolled, being consumed by the heated core of Kingdom itself.
A bright flash of brilliant pink light burst through the emanating wall of heat surrounding them. Giles threw himself around Lilith’s body, not quite touching her, but trying his best to shield her from the lava coming much too close.
“Bloody hell,” Danika chirped. “Tell me what you wish, Giles, quickly, I cannot take this heat!” She rolled her wrist, gazing around in wide-eyed horror as her wings buzzed violently behind her back.
“Transport us to the castle of air.”
Danika’s bolt of power lifted them high into the air just as the magma was set to touch Lilith.
Wishing he could hold her hand as they traveled through a tunnel of stars, Giles contented himself with gazing at her and praying that somehow, someway they could lift whatever curse had befallen her.
In an instant they tumbled into a familiar castle chamber.
It was the great hall and already seated before him were Rumpelstiltskin and Shayera. Erualis lay in her lap, his eyes closed and his breathing weak.
Rumpel jumped to his feet. “She holds the chalice.” A grim smile cut through his dark features.
Shayera held out her hand. “Careful, Rumpel.”
He did not look back at her, but he nodded once as he came around to Giles’s side.
Giles was still on his knees, barely even comprehending what was going on around them. He could hear the buzzing of Danika’s wings and Shayera’s soothing murmurings, but it was as though he heard them from underwater.
“The final sand would have fallen today. Thank you, brother.” Rumpel gripped him by the shoulder roughly and Giles could barely even manage a nod of recognition.
Careful to grip the chalice only, Rumpel snatched it from her hand and the slim hope Giles had held that being released of the cup’s grip might wake her up vanished when her eyes failed to open.
Rumpel gritted his teeth. “Bloody hell, the cold in this is awful. Carrot, prick your finger.”
A better friend would have looked up, a better friend would have ensured that the chalice would indeed save the life of Rumpel’s one and only progeny, but his eyes were only for Lilith.
Her skin had lightened, and her cheeks looked flushed with the beginning of color again. Nibbling the corner of his lip, he haltingly lifted a hand to touch her.
Danika, still fairy-sized, landed on his shoulder. Her wings had finally gone silent.