Like part of me was fading, dying...
I stepped toward her. “I appreciate everything you’ve done, but I really need to find Lucien.”
She cocked her head a little. “You know...you say his name differently than the rest of us.”
“I do?”
Whisper grumbled and gave up guarding me in favour of stuffing his face. With a half-hearted hiss, he gave Auntie Mei fierce instructions not to get up to anything, then stalked toward the bowl of meat.
Auntie Mei shuddered as he wolfed down his dinner. “We say Luxin. Similar to how you say it...but not the same.”
Curiosity scratched me. “And that other name you call him? Xiao Lu?”
She laughed quietly as if my question dredged up the past. “It means Little Furnace. In English, Luxin translates to Furnace Heart.”
My knees almost gave out.
Luxin.
Furnace Heart.
Something yanked hard on my soul.
A sudden vicious tug as if my heart had been wrenched clean out of my chest.
Fire.
Everywhere.
Burning.
Burning.
My vision shot white, ripping me from the pavilion and dumping me somewhere else.
Fire licked at stone, curling around a rounded ceiling, melting rock until it rivered to the ground. Fire roared, turning pebbles into liquid. Flames howled, heating glacial water into boiling steam.
Lucien sat cross-legged in the middle of a pool, the epicentre of the rampage. His hands clawed at his knees, his chin ground against his chest, his entire skin blistered with fire—
I staggered as the vision cut short, dumping me back into his room.
Everything seemed perfectly normal but...I felt him.
Felt his heart thundering its last beats, his lungs failing, his body screaming on the edge of collapse.
Dying.
He’s dying.
And here I was talking.
My gaze landed on blackened handprints on the floor, triggering what I’d forgotten.
Lucien hunting me across the floor.
Begging me to help keep him alive—
“Lucien!” Clutching my chest as if I could physically hold my breaking heart together, I lurched past Auntie Mei and ran for the open doors.
“Miss Rook?” She spun after me. “Where are you going?”
Whisper abandoned his dinner and flew with me.
I didn’t stop to apologise.
I just ran in the direction my heart was yanking me—the invisible thread that’d bound us together pulling, pulling, pulling.
But it was fading, fraying, threatening to snap—
Hurry.
Hurry.
Hurry.
Go east.
Go fast.
The mountains.
The caves.
Run!
Chapter Thirty-Nine
I BOLTED THE WAY HUNTED ANIMALS DO.
I sprinted for my life, too fast for my pathetic system to catch up, driven by primal instincts.
The estate was a blur of corridors and lanterns.
My bare feet didn’t make a sound as I flew through gardens and over bridges; Whisper’s silent paws tearing up the lawn beside me.
The night was cold, but I poured with sweat.
Burning alive, just like him.
Lucien.
Furnace Heart.
God, please don’t die.
The pull in my chest twisted, yanking me east, toward the dragon wall, toward the looming mountains that touched the stars and cut the moon in half.
Every step hurt. Every breath seared.
I could feel him like a second heartbeat—wild, erratic, racing toward catastrophe.
Another glimpse almost sent me skidding into a lattice screen.
His shirt ignited in a fireball, leaving his chest bare and metal disc turning molten. His jaw clenched as orange and gold roared out of him with flaming surges. The pool he sat in completely evaporated, leaving the dry rock to crack—
“Lucien!” I screamed, the vision making me fall.
I cried out as sharp pebbles tore into my knees.
Whisper surrounded me instantly, twining and whining, nudging me to get up, get up, get up.
Gasping and sobbing, I crawled and scrambled, forcing my way back to my feet.
The moment I was upright, I flew.
“Hold on. Please, hold on. I’m coming.”
I didn’t know what I would do when I found him.
Didn’t know what I could do.
But whatever it took, I would do it.
Whatever he needed, I would give.
Up ahead, a turtle and lotus carved door waited for me. Cracked open and giving me a way to escape the dragon wall.
My heart hurled me toward it, guiding me, whispering to me.
Dashing through the wall, the mountain and trees swallowed me whole.
Thick branches blocked the starlight and wide trunks blocked my path. The air grew thick—every breath acrid with smoke and scorched stone.
Flinging my hands out in front of me, I ran.
I didn’t need eyes to see where I was going. Not when my heart guided me.
The ground sloped upward.
A luminous glow beckoned me forward, but...it wasn’t moonlight.
It pulsed a violent gold, licking at rocks and leaves, revealing a cave mouth where a monster dwelled.
Trading bracken and foliage for a world made of water and stone, I staggered against the wall as a wickedly sharp pain almost killed me. The world turned helter-skelter as I clutched my chest, sipping air, begging the pain to stop. Each inhale was too hollow, too shallow—filling with an absence as if Lucien couldn’t hold on any longer.
The cord in my heart—the tether in my soul—blazed white-bright, jerking me forward.
My shoulder bruised against the rock as I followed the urging—like a compass needle, leading me to where I was supposed to be.
Whisper kept pace with me, his whiskers flaring as the air temperature increased to unbearable degrees.
The deeper we travelled into the caves, the louder the water roared. It thundered everywhere and nowhere, loud enough to drown everything.
I ducked under a low arch, tripping into a large cave that’d been fashioned by time and liquid. Instead of round walls and empty spaces, the cave wove like a snake, full of shadows and corners, pockets of pools glittering in the red haze.
Whisper hissed as he stepped into a shallow puddle, shaking off his paws as if it’d burned him.
Steam rose from the ground, licking around my ankles.
It had to be close to boiling but...I couldn’t feel it.
My skin didn’t blister.
I was immune.
But Whisper...
He pranced on the spot, trying to find a cold patch. He snarled and hissed and...couldn’t come any further.
Pointing the way we’d travelled, I panted, “Go back.”
He roared.
“Go home,” I roared right back. “You can’t come. I’ll help him. I promise I’ll help him.”
Lucien couldn’t be too much further in this labyrinth.
I would find him.
Save him...
“Go, kitty cat.” I broke into another run, leaving the panther behind as I followed a pitch-black tunnel, lit up thanks to Lucien’s fire.
I stumbled into a large cavern with a giant pool in the centre. This one hadn’t dried up, full to the brim with sloshing angry water. Endless eddies churned, thanks to the hypnotic spiral in the middle—a whirlpool pulling down into death.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose.
A sharp tug on my heart, sudden and hot—begging me to come quickly, come fast, come now.
I staggered and broke into another run.
Skidding around the deep pool, my bare feet slipped as the roar of water hurt my ears.
The red glow brightened as I paused on the threshold of yet another cave.
In the distance, in the middle of a dried basin, I found him.
Exactly like I’d seen in my mind’s eye. Hunched over his crossed legs, clinging to his knees, every muscle rigid and quaking while savage flames burned him alive. Fire poured from him in violent surges, licking up the cave walls, turning dripping droplets into hissing steam.
