“No, no. It’s okay, Heather,” Scarlet said. “That’s just the caves. The walls are actually sparkling.”
“Oh.” Heather calmed down a bit.
“When you said ‘caves’,” Nate said to Scarlet. “I had something less sparkly and more bat-infested in mind.”
Scarlet stepped forward. “So did I.”
Nate said, “Well this is awesome. The glowing walls will make navigating the caves much easier.”
Though it was still rather dark, the blue walls gave off enough light for them to find their way through the tunnels without flashlights.
Tristan shifted. “And these caves are supposed to weaken immortals?”
“Yeah. If the deadly plants don’t kill you first.” Gabriel touched a hand to the cave wall and waited. “I don’t feel any different.”
“Me neither.” Nate scratched his head.
“I actually feel…stronger,” Tristan said.
Scarlet felt for him, but nothing echoed inside her soul.
“Maybe the caves aren’t as debilitating as we thought,” Nate said.
She looked at Tristan and tried again, but still nothing.
He caught her eyes. “What’s up?”
“Uh…” Scarlet felt around inside herself. “I can’t feel you anymore. Like at all.”
Tristan frowned. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “Can you feel me?”
He shook his head.
“That’s weird.” Scarlet looked at Nate. “Do you know why—“
Tristan wrapped a warm hand around her wrist, gently encircling it in his fingers and Scarlet turned her eyes to where they were touching.
“Do you feel anything?” he asked.
She felt no supernatural pleasure at his touch. She just felt…normal. Wonderful.
“Oh,” Nate said in realization. “That’s what the journal meant by deadly to immortals. The caves must cancel out our immortality.”
She walked her eyes up to Tristan’s. For the first time in five hundred years they were touching without one of them being in danger.
From the look in his eyes, he’d realized the same thing.
And now the hand around her wrist felt incredibly intimate. Warm and safe and intimate.
Nate nodded. “It would also explain why you guys can’t feel each other in here and why Tristan feels stronger. You’re not sharing a life-force right now.”
Imagine that.
Tristan hadn’t released her wrist yet and Scarlet was absolutely okay with that. For like ever.
“Everyone’s mortal. Yay. Now can we get moving?” Heather said.
Tristan ran his thumb over Scarlet’s wrist and something about it made her heart leap. It was a simple touch, but it was carefree and unafraid. Tristan hadn’t touched her in such a weightless way in hundreds of years and she didn’t want him to let go.
But he did. He slowly released her wrist, his fingers brushing the length of her hand as he pulled away and it took Scarlet a moment to get the butterflies in her stomach to behave.
Everyone was staring at them.
“O-kay.” Nate clasped his hands. “Who wants to walk through the uncomfortable sexual tension first? Gabriel? Heather?”
“Ugh. Gag me,” Heather said. “Wait no. No one gag me.”
Gabriel rolled his eyes and walked deeper into the cave, Heather and Nate moving behind him.
Scarlet followed her friends through the glowing caves, staying by Tristan’s side as they walked along. His shoulder brushed against hers and the electricity that ran through her body had nothing to do with immortal blood or magic. It was just…real.
She glanced at him, looking at his shadowed profile in the blue glow around them. It had been so long since anything between them had been real. Or allowed. Or safe.
His eyes met hers and held them for a beat before Scarlet faced forward and swallowed. Her throat was dry. Her heart was dry. She missed him. He was walking right next to her and still she missed him. She’d been missing him for centuries.
As if he could still read her emotions, Tristan’s fingers brushed the back of her arm and slowly slid to her wrist before slipping into her hand. He wrapped her hand in his like there hadn’t been years between them, between their hearts. They were connected at the hand and Scarlet could breathe, really breathe, for the first time since she and Tristan had run in the trees together in her first life.
She lightly squeezed his hand, just to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. They were touching and no one was dying. If Scarlet hadn’t been so wrecked over what she was planning to do, she would have smiled.
The first hour of their hike through the caves consisted mostly of Nate contemplating the most efficient route to the fountain. The caves split off into dozens of tunnels that went every which way. Following the map, Nate led the way through a series of rather uneventful tunnels and was fairly confident they would get to the fountain ahead of schedule.
But a few hours into their hike, they hit a wall.
It was a wall of vines, but still.
This vine gate was different than the last. It was wide and in constant movement. Stretching almost fifteen feet across, the vines twisted and crawled across the tunnel like a wall of snakes, making a shhh, shhh sound.
Through in the vines, Scarlet could only see more vines, indicating the wall was very thick, and the blue tips of the vine’s thorns glowed in a pulsing rhythm.
According to the map, breeching the wall of thorny vines was necessary if they wanted to continue.
So that sucked.
“Goodie,” Gabriel said. “A moving wall of death.”
“Think of it like an obstacle course,” Nate said. “We just need to hack through the vines and tuck and roll until we’ve made it to the other side.”
“Except for that,” Heather pointed to the sides of the cave where jagged stalactites of Bluestone stuck out from the cave walls like thousands of blue knives.
Nate’s eyes widened. “Holy crap.”
“You know what we need? A chainsaw. Why didn’t anyone think to bring a chainsaw?” Heather bit at her nails.
“Next time.” Nate pointed at Tristan. “Make a note, dude. Tracking devices and chainsaws.”
She stepped forward. “I’ll go first.”
Tristan made a face. “Like hell you will.”
“Excuse me? I’m the only semi-immortal here. If I die, I’ll come back to life.”
Nate said, “Unless, of course, the caves do negate all immortality, in which case, you’re actually just mortal right now so dying could be, you know, permanent.”
Damn.
Scarlet hadn’t thought of that.
“Why don’t we all go in together in a line? If we keep hacking and sawing away, we can probably make it to the other side as a group,” Gabriel said. “I’ll lead the way and we can put Nate and Heather behind me, then Scarlet and Tristan. That way we’ll have two decent hackers in the front and two in the back.”
“And the weak, crazy girl who can’t defend herself in the middle,” Heather said dryly.
“With a machete,” Tristan said.
A commotion behind them had everyone turning around to see a group of Ashmen charging down the tunnel with their weapons raised.
“How did they get in here?” Heather asked.
“Raven.” Scarlet said. “We have to make it through the vines before they reach us.”
Everyone lined up and, one by one, they walked into the moving wall of death with their enemies right behind them.
Tristan held a knife in each hand as he followed Scarlet into the vines. As a team, they slashed at the snaking thorns and, for the first few feet, were successful. But the wall was thicker than they anticipated and Tristan was soon hacking like a madman just to keep up with the vines Scarlet had hacked a moment earlier.