Page 75 of Soul of Fire

Arik looked around, his expression unreadable. “This way.”

“Do you know something about temple ruins I don’t?” I asked, stumbling over a rock as I followed him down the hill.

He grasped my waist to steady me, his lip twitching at the corner. “Just following the smoke, Kjære.”

I looked up to where his gaze had landed above the trees. A thin, barely-visible wisp of smoke rose into the darkening sky.

Arik took my hand again and guided me down the hill, away from the crumbling walls of the temple.

“There’s a settlement here?” I supposed there was fish in the river, but this little island didn’t seem capable of sustaining a village of any size.

“Not to my knowledge, but smoke usually means people.”

I frowned again at the smoke. Something about it struck me as odd, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

It is the smell.Idunn sniffed haughtily.It is wrong.

The wind made it difficult, but Idunn was right. There was some scent under the smoke that wasn’t anything like burning wood.

“Stay close, Kjære,” Arik murmured, drawing me behind him as we approached the edge of the tree line. “There’s someone there.”

I peeked around him, hopeful to see a shock of white hair or a stooped back. A figure in a light-blue robe sat on one of the crumbling stones of the outer wall of the temple, a small fire burning before them. “Sigrid?”

“Oh!” The voice wasn’t Sigrid’s, and I felt the hopeful bubble in my chest burst as the robed figure turned toward us. Her face was younger than mine, and golden hair tumbled over her shoulders. “You’re here!”

Arik held up an arm to stop me, and I longed for our mental bridge if only so I could accuse him of being an overprotective watchdog like Branka would.

“Who are you?” Arik’s voice was stone, and the girl took an understandable step backward, almost knocking into the cauldron that was the source of the strange smoke.

“Amaya.” She bowed her head and moved her hands before her heart, making a diamond with her forefingers and thumbs. “I am one of Elysia’s priestesses.”

I frowned. “What was that?”

“What…was what?” Amaya’s eyes were wide as she looked between us. “This?” She repeated the motion with her hands, and something nagged at my mind.

Idunn swooped excitedly in my head.It is the symbol over our heart. From the necklace.

“It is the sign of Elysia,” Amaya explained, waving her hand over the cauldron. The contents inside immediately stopped smoking, as if there had never been anything burning there at all.

“How did you—“

“Sigrid warned me you would have many questions.” Amaya smiled and waved her hand over the cauldron a second time. It completely disappeared. “She will explain all. Come.”

“Völva magic,” Arik murmured, frowning as Amaya hiked up the skirts of her robe and began heading back the way we had come.

“Sigrid is here?” I asked, jogging a step to catch up to the priestess. She was uncannily fast for someone encumbered by long robes, and I wondered if she were floating rather than walking. “Where?”

“In the temple, of course.” Amaya gave me a patient smile that made me want to grind my teeth. “I was told to take you to her directly.”

She stopped a short distance away from the reflecting pool before a set of broken stone pillars, which had fallen together to make a sort of triangle.

“The temple is a ruin,” I argued, waving toward the crumbling walls as Arik placed a steadying hand against my back.

Amaya smiled again, placing her hand to one of the fallen pillars. A symbol like a sideways hourglass appeared for just a moment, as if seared into the stone with a blue light. Then, a terrible grating noise sounded from beneath our feet.

Arik pulled me back as the stone pillar in the center of the triangle sank into the ground, revealing a pitch-black opening that seemed to lead to a set of stairs.

“Not all is as it seems,” Amaya said, snapping her fingers. A small ball of pinkish flame appeared in her hand, and Idunn growled protectively.