I kicked him in the face. 

He wasn’t Christian. 

The unknown man went sprawling on the floor.

I landed gracefully on my feet and turned to Brandon with an angry snarl. “Nice ring you’ve got around your neck.”

He returned my gaze sans my smirk. “Okay,” he said, raising his hands in mock defense. “Christian is not here. I don’t know where he is.”

“After what you put me through, did you really think I wouldn’t be able to spot an imposter at first sight?”

“I thought I might get away with it. You were fooled so many times. You even thought I was Christian,” he said, defensively crossing his arms.

I snarled again before pausing and looking at my surroundings for the first time. It was a place that had been written about in fairytales—a forbidden city. I thought the castle above ground had been magnificent in its own way, but it was nothing.

Before me was the entrance to Nhagaspir. A domed, vaulted ceiling greeted me. It was as though the walls themselves whispered things about me, whispered thoughts communicated through particles that they did not have to air. The walls were patterned like the shining gold scales of a dragon, each one carved individually. No. The gold carved itself, following instructions of a god, and seemed to shine internally. They flashed together like the thousand eyes of an angel. I stared back like a defiant daughter, a rebel, who had finally come home.

The man on the floor got up after being kicked and when he stood up, his face looked completely different. He was as gruff as a Viking, with heavy bones in his head and thick lips.

“I’m Axel,” he said. 

I looked at him like I was bored. I was bored. “I don’t know why I bothered coming down here.”

“Beth…” Brandon said, hesitating on how to proceed.

“I don’t want to talk to you. Even though I have forgiven you a thing or two, I want to talk to Pricina,” I instructed coldly, waving him off and looking at the grand ceiling over my head. “Don’t speak to me and get her.”

Brandon was silent, and I was thankful because I was seriously considering if I still wanted to cut his tongue out. 

He swallowed and rubbed the scar on his neck. He took a deep breath and started explaining anyway. “I know you’re annoyed we haven’t found Christian. We have been looking for him, but we’re not miracle workers or superheroes. Axel and I brought you to our helicopter pad, and we flew from Athabasca across the border into the Yukon and then to the foot of the mountain. We got you set up in the castle and I went back to Edmonton. I have called Christian every time I’ve had an opportunity and I have never once got an answer. I went looking for him. I looked everywhere—every one of his favorite haunts. It seems like he’s nowhere. No one has seen him as Christian Henderson, as Rogan Cormack, or any of his other aliases. I called Hilary and Mabel in Belfron, and nothing. I called other people too. It’s like he was wiped off the face of the planet. One would think that you’d be able to get in touch with him if you were able to move a stone as your personal elevator.”

I shook my head impatiently. “I haven’t been able to. Can’t you see the sword in my chest?”

Brandon looked sharp but also baffled.

“I can see it,” Axel observed. “It’s very elegant.”

“Elegant?” I huffed, feeling a whisper of the pressure the sword was inflicting on my chest.

A grin spread across his broad face. “Yes. There are many ways to establish a connection between two immortals. It’s been hundreds of years since I saw something like this. So beautiful!”

I glared at him. “You’re ogling my chest.”

He backed away. “Sorry. I should go. I’m supposed to be in the meteor room.”

Brandon put himself between me and Axel. “I’ll take you to Pricina. She’s in the tsunami room. There are several other immortals, spread out over other rooms. You can meet them later.” 

He began leading the way out of the gold room into a dark corridor. All the corridors that led from the gold room looked dark, like leaving the sun in order to enter outer space. 

Brandon kept talking as we stepped into the darkness. “I was hoping that you would be able to find Christian if you went into his heart.”

“Trying to get me to fix your mistake?”

“Look, trying to kidnap Christian would have been impossible for only Axel and me. When dealing with us, he wouldn’t have had to hide his immortality. He would have had fewer limits,” Brandon said, his weird thick accent returning, then disappearing. It was like he didn’t know how he should talk or what character he should adopt to give himself the best advantage while conversing with me. I’d already rejected him so thoroughly. He returned his voice to a neutral North American accent and continued, “The best way was to get you and then get him to come after you. That was the only method that would have worked. As it went, I don’t know if he was taken by someone with better manpower than us or if he disappeared on his own. It seems impossible to think that he wouldn’t be trying to find you if he’s not a prisoner somewhere.”

All that time, I’d just thought Brandon was being a jerkface for not getting in touch with Christian. It had never occurred to me that he had tried and failed. The idea filled me with fresh panic.

“I’ll look for him,” Rhuk suddenly suggested. It had been floating by my side so quietly that I’d almost forgotten it was there.

I sucked in my air and through my tension managed to ask, “Can you do that, little rock?” 

“What?” Brandon interrupted. “Did you just call me your ‘little rock’?”

“I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to my pet rock. Its name is Rhuk, and yes. You can’t hear it speak?”

Brandon took a step back. “No. I couldn’t.”

“That’s too bad,” I said to Brandon with an angry condescending sneer. “Please try,” I said softly, addressing Rhuk.

I expected Rhuk to lift off the ground and disappear down the corridor, but instead, it rotated slightly as if focussing its attention in different directions. 

“What are you doing?” I asked it, patting one of its turrets.

It bounced a little under my palm. “I have been asking the other rocks what they have seen. Now that they know what they’re looking for, we should be able to find him, but it might take some time depending on how many rocks we have to talk to.”

My brain did wild calculations, counting how many rocks were between Tombstone Mountain and the Canadian Shield and then how many were between us and New York. Paris? Belfron? Fiji? It would have been easier to count the stars in the sky. Wouldn’t talking to every stone take a million years?

Brandon interrupted. “I can’t believe I’m being excluded so you can talk to your rock.” 

“By the end of tomorrow, every rock on earth will be looking for Christian. Even the diamonds in lady’s rings. Get comfortable,” it said.

That sounded more hopeful than I originally thought. I turned my attention toward Brandon. “Rhuk is going to search for Christian. We’ll see if it does a better job than you. Where are we? I thought you were taking me to see Pricina.”

Brandon quickened his step and we left the darkness and moved to a hallway with more light. It had a glass ceiling. At first sight, I thought we were looking at the night sky, with stars lit above us, but that was impossible. We were miles below ground. Finally, I realized we were looking at the ocean. The lights I saw were not stars, but bioluminescent sea creatures, lighting up to show not just white, but also crimson and blue. I paused and gazed upwards. It was breathtaking. If I had to lay a guess as to what the architect had been intending to imitate, I would have said the feeling of walking through a comet’s tail. 

Brandon stopped, slowing his footsteps on the floor that mirrored the view above. Colored lights were over us and under us. I caught up to him, our footsteps echoing on the floor, even though I wasn’t wearing shoes. The empty space begged any sound to fill it.

As we walked, Brandon continued, attempting to sound reassuring, “I wouldn’t worry about Christian too much. We weren’t worried about him when we picked you up and left him behind. He’s one of the most powerful gods this planet has ever known.”

I didn’t like to tell him how that fact had changed, or how far Christian had fallen. Brandon was useless anyway, and I swore to myself that if he ever got in my way again, I’d do worse than cut off his head. Until then, I decided to give him one more chance to be useful in exchange for asking for my help in his rescue. Perhaps he would come in handy.

“This is the moon room,” he said as he invited me in.