Born of Shadow - Book 1 (complete)

Chapter 51

Huge announcement! Born of Shadow now has over 300K reads - yay!! Thanks so much to all you lovely readers who have been supporting it. I appreciate each one of you!

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Liam tried to breathe as shallowly as possible. The creature paused and put its nose to the ground, as if sniffing. He wondered if these things could smell. If so, he was in big trouble.

He heard a howl in the distance, and the giant cat raised its head with ears pricked, then loped out of the cave. Liam stepped from the shadows and began inching his way into the cave. He was glad he’d volunteered to shoulder this risk and not the others. He could feel the danger, pulsing and palpable. How could he sit back and ask any of them to face it while he sat there comfortably? He couldn’t. And he couldn’t bear the thought of Kami doing this, although he had to admit she would probably have been smarter than to get her hand stuck in a stalagmite. It wasn’t that he thought he could accomplish the task better. It was because he wanted to protect her, protect all of them.

Liam made his way deeper into the heart of the cave, careful to avoid touching any hand-sucking stalagmites. The air grew warmer and more humid with every step. He wiped the perspiration beading on his forehead with his sleeve. He hadn’t expected this. He was used to caves becoming cooler as he went deeper, sometimes downright frigid. This was strange, unless there was some kind of natural hot spring inside the cave.

The smell was another thing he hadn’t expected. Instead of the damp, almost mildewy and sulfuric odor that typically characterized cave walls, the air smelled slightly perfumy, like the nectar of flowers.

He felt something brush his hand, and he jumped, rubbing it off. He thought it might be a spider, but when he held his torch to his hand, he saw a drop of wax dried to it. He peeled it off and threw it on the ground.

Liam walked a few more steps, then heard it. A drip, drip, drip. He shined the torch up at the ceiling. The stalagmites and stalactites were melting. He didn’t know why. Maybe something in the warm moist air could do what the lighter couldn’t?

He kept walking, stepping here and there to avoid the drips, though the occasional wax drop still dropped on him and clung to his skin. They were annoying but harmless, so he ignored them.

The drips increased the farther in he went. He felt something pull at his boot. He quickly yanked at it, and with a slight sucking motion his boot came out. He directed his torch toward it and saw that the drips were staying in their liquid form, and merging to form a river down the center of the path where it dipped lower than the rock around it. If he’d been wearing sandals, he’d probably have lost them by now.

He edged to the side of the cave, where he realized that someone had scraped the ceiling free of stalagmites, forming a safe pathway into the cave. He followed the path, watching wonderingly as the wax dripped rapidly. The river of wax was swelling and flowing swiftly. If he stumbled and fell in, he wondered if he’d have time to get up before the stuff coated and bound him. He figured it wasn’t likely.

Liam came to a fork. The wax river flowed to the right. He clicked on his torch and pointed it down the left tunnel. There wasn’t much wax down that way. It would be easier to navigate. But he suspected the wax had a purpose, and if he wanted to find Kami and Yasmin’s Neina and the people who’d been taken, he would need to follow the river. Besides, the path led that direction.

He walked awhile more, then saw a dim light up ahead. He snapped off his torch briefly so he could see it more clearly. It was hazy, but it definitely was something. He clicked his light back on and pressed forward. The scent was becoming stronger, its perfume intoxicating and heady. It made him feel sleepy. He wasn’t sure if it had any magical properties, and he didn’t want to stick around to find out.

The light grew brighter and brighter, until at last he reached the entrance. He peered into the cavern and caught his breath. It was an enormous space. The river pooled into a lake, and a ring of torches lit by fire surrounded the lake. The light flickered over the pale colored liquid.

A woman wearing a flowing gray robe stood at the edge of the lake. Her reddish-orange hair framed her exotic face in waves. Liam recognized her instantly from Gedo’s description. This was the woman who had threatened to kill Kami’s Neina—the Shadow Queen.

She stood with hands outstretched over the wax lake. Liam could hear her speaking. Her voice had an attractive throaty quality to it. He couldn’t make out what she was saying, but she seemed to be chanting something, as if casting a spell.

He moved a little closer and hid behind a rock. His eyes followed the path. It wound around the lake, then going up in elevation, wound around it again and again up the sides of the cliffs. The torchlight illuminated the first five or six tiers, but he couldn’t see past that. He couldn’t tell how far up the path went. The woman was a few tiers below him.

Hugging the shadows, Liam crept farther up the path. His eyes were glued to the Shadow Queen. She hadn’t seemed to notice him, but she was distracted. He kept moving forward, until he was directly behind her. He saw her sway. Whatever she was doing, it required intense concentration.

He felt his muscles relax slightly. He hadn’t realized how tightly he’d been hunching his shoulders. He rubbed his neck. He turned his head toward the wall and nearly screamed.

A pair of eyes stared back at him.

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Quick announcement - my lovely friend @JessicaBFry has now posted the special "dinner party" to celebrate the Wattpad Class of 2014 hitting a collective million reads! I answer questions about how Kami got her name, if Liam is a member of 1D and if he has real feelings for Kami, if I have a Galileo in real life, character inspiration and more! Plus there are ahmaaazing recipes with a Born of Shadow theme. You will want to check it out, along with the other wonderful authors interviewed there! I will post a link below or you can see a link on my message board. Hope you can party with us!

The dedication for this chapter goes out to a hilarious Wattpadre and Born of Shadow reader @Clarady! Her fabulous book "Excruciatingly Correct Behavior - A Guide to Wattpad Etiquette" is nearing 20K reads! You can find that story (and a lot of other great ones) by clicking on the dedication link above.