❖ A hundred years after a disease burned the world down, Adriana is dragged into a war she didn't know existed. The Aztec gods are fighting for their lives, and they want her to help. ❖
Adriana is a fourth-generation member of Grillo Negro, a nomadi...
The fires went out in an instant. I spooked, and Emma startled so hard she nearly fell. She looked normal again. I turned to Jem to ask what he had seen, but before I could open my mouth, a man burst through the doorway. He skidded to a halt with a gasp when he saw Emma. "Itztia!"
I stared, dumbstruck. Everything about him was familiar, though I was certain we had never crossed paths. I would have remembered if we had. He was my height but as slender as a willow withe, good-looking, with my skin tone and long, sleek black hair tied back with a white ribbon. It was peppered with feathers. Soft ones, mostly green or blue, but some bright red. Were those real? Why were they in his hair? He wasn't wearing a costume. But the weirdest part wasn't any of that. I would have pegged him at thirty-five, but the harder I looked, the more impossible I found it to pin down his age.
Emma backed away. She threw me a desperate look, but something drove me from the space between the two of them. This was not my meeting to butt in on. The instinct was so strong, I obeyed it without question. Grifo had his head up and cocked. It wasn't aggressive, and he too made no move to intervene.
"Itztia?" said the man. He sounded unsure now. "It's me. Quet."
Emma's face matched my familiarity with the man perfectly. He—Quet—looked at her with a whole lot more recognition. Was this someone Emma had met? But then why did I feel like I knew him?
"I don't know you," said Emma. She wasn't lying. Not fully, anyway. The man faltered a step, and she screamed, "I don't know you! Leave me alone!" She flung out her hands, and a glowing snake reared from nowhere between them. Jem and I both gasped. A wind spun about the cave as the man skipped back. Emma was breathing hard. The snake's heaped coils rose to her waist; it could have spanned the cavern uncurled. It shimmered like her robes in the flames had. There but not there: an illusion that could be real if she tried hard enough.
Jem's hand found mine and clasped it tightly. I returned the grip.
"You don't remember," said the man.
Emma's voice trembled. "Stay back or I'll make it eat you."
He opened his mouth, but his face froze in a mask of pain. He fell to his knees with a feathered shaft lodged between his shoulders.
Terror rooted me to the ground as the warrior in the cave doorway lifted his bow again. The feathered man's face twisted in a snarl. "Xolotl!" he shouted, and Emma screamed as the cave vanished behind a wall of feathers.
Yells and bows' twangs ricocheted and reverberated through the cave. Dogs barked, and a huge one snarled like thunder. Jem and I dashed to Emma's side as our feathered walls spun by. They tightened around us until we were huddled at the room's center with our barrier a body's length away. A feathered, dragon-headed snake as thick as Rosa was tall coiled on itself until a warrior would have had to climb to the ceiling to shoot at us. I hugged Emma, who had squeezed her eyes shut.
We were going to die. We were all going to die, by a bow or a dog or this... I didn't even have a word for it. Why! Why was it here? Where did it come from? And why were its feathers the same colours as the ones in Quet's hair? Did he summon it to protect us?
The fight was as brief, bright, and violent as the flames. The cave went silent a second before the snake vanished. Arrows with bloody tips clattered to the floor. A second man caught the feathered one as he collapsed. Three Xolo dogs darted anxiously around them.
"Take them with us," gasped the feathered man.
No—
His companion threw out a hand, and Emma screamed again as gold flames whizzed around us. When the ring closed behind its caster, the world flashed white.
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A/N: Looking for more epic Fantasy with a friends-to-lovers Romance and a strong female lead? Look no further!
