A Battle of Blood and Stone (Chronicles of the Stone Veil 4)

Regardless, it’s more unique than anything I’ve ever seen in my life.

“It’s powerful,” I reply, my tone not apologizing for the way it looks but pointing out it has something better than looks. “I can feel it.”

Rainey’s head pops up, head tipped in curiosity. “Really? What does it feel like?”

I also lift my head, straightening in my chair. Rainey does the same. My gaze shifts from her to the chalice. “It feels like that moment when you’re on a roller coaster, and you’re just hovering at the top of a long drop. That combination of fear and excitement, and the possibility it could be either or both, but that whatever you get, it will be the thrill of your life.”

It’s not exactly ugly—the chalice—but rather crude. The stone it was carved from left a cup about six inches high from top to base. The cup and the base are roughly the same diameter, maybe about three inches, and the stem is thick. The chalice’s interior couldn’t hold more than four ounces or so of a liquid, so I don’t think it was created to slake thirst. My theory is it was created in the fashion of whatever chalices looked like at that period in history so it could hide in plain sight.

“Do you want it? The power?” she asks.

I blink a few times, looking away from the cup back to her. I’m truthful with her because I know I can be. “If it would stop the prophecy, then yes… I want it.”

Carrick and I have talked about the chalice a lot the last few days. When we got back from Micah’s realm, we examined it thoroughly. It seemed to me, not just by look but by touch, that the Blood Stone and the chalice had fully merged to become one. When I touch the gem—darkened in the middle since Charmeine’s death—it feels dark and somewhat sinister. When I touch just the stone of the chalice, it feels neither dark nor light, but rather just ready to be used.

Carrick said it felt the same to him. “It’s like the chalice is the powerful body and the stone is the magical soul.”

That was such a good way to put it.

Rainey settles back in her seat. It’s just us girls as it’s a workday. Myles is at his job, and Rainey came over on her lunch break. The rebuild on One Bean is progressing nicely, and today the new flooring was going to be installed. Rainey was hoping I’d take a look at it tomorrow, but honestly… my heart hasn’t been into my coffee shop. I was vague in my commitment.

I reach out and slide the chalice to the side, so it’s not in between us. I’m tired of looking at it.

“Is Carrick okay?” she asks.

My fingers play with a lock of my hair hanging over my shoulder as I consider her question. “I think so. He and Lucien weren’t overly close, but they were brothers and Lucien was helping us out. I think he feels guilty that he couldn’t save him.”

“Doesn’t sound like he could do anything,” Rainey points out. She and Myles are fully up to speed on what happened as I’d called them as soon as we got back to the condo after defeating Micah. I knew they’d be waiting on pins and needles.

“I’ve told him that, and he knows it. I guess it still doesn’t feel good to watch your brother get taken by the Crimson River.”

None of us know what it means. The river itself is almost mythical, but it’s supposedly filled with evil souls stuck there for eternity. We know the river was able to seal Charmeine within the stone, another representation of its powerful nature. We are assuming the stone itself now has unlimited potential since its little bath in the river of souls.

But what did it actually do to Lucien? Carrick said he didn’t catch fire or burn, but rather seemed just slowly to get pulled down into it.

Does that mean he drowned in it?

Flowed with the current somewhere else where he got out safely?

Or could it have turned him into something dark the way the gem was changed into the Blood Stone?

My thought was if the souls were stuck there for eternity, that perhaps Lucien was, too. Maybe the river was inescapable.

Carrick had no answers, and he has been reaching out to the gods every day to see if one will tell him what happened to his brother. As of now, they’re being silent, and that includes efforts to find out when Cato will release Maddox. We’ve not heard anything from him since he disappeared the day we left for Micah’s realm.

While Carrick is worried for his brothers, he’s more worried about what their absence means to me and the prophecy. The plan after retrieving the Blood Stone was to secure it and then go after Kymaris. He wanted his brothers by his side for that battle, not to necessarily help defeat her, but to help protect me because it was my battle, too.