Zanaikeyros - Son of Dragons (Pantheon of Dragons #1)(56)
Jordan met his gaze, and her stunning hazel eyes flickered with a dim light of compassion. Still, she stuck to her guns. “What do you mean by rebirth? Is that…is it literal?” She visibly cringed.
He looked off into the distance, staring beyond the falls at the highland terrain before them, noting how all the trees were sprouting new leaves, how all the flowers were in full bloom, how the very soil around them seemed to pulse with new life. “It is.” There was no point in mincing words.
She took a sharp, stuttered breath and exhaled slowly. “I see.” She swallowed hard and raised her chin. “Am I going to be…going to be…do you have to kill me, Zane?”
He virtually recoiled at the word, drawing back in surprise. “No!” he insisted. “I mean, nothing that sadistic.”
She blinked several times as if she couldn’t comprehend his answer. “Then how am I supposed to be reborn if I don’t first have to die?”
Zane clenched both hands into fists—there was simply no subtle or easy way around this. He stood up, paced around the semi-dark space, and then turned to face her directly, dropping to his knees at her feet. “Jordan…” He took both of her hands in his and tightened his grip, lest she pull them away as usual. “The rebirth is as much symbolic as it is literal.” He knew he looked anguished, if not desperate—hell, he felt like a fish out of water. Blessed Pantheon, he was lying to her when she’d asked for the truth. He shut his eyes, gathered his courage, and started to explain it again. “Your death—as you put it—will be to a mortal body: to sickness, to frailty, to your strictly human decline. Your rebirth will be to immortality, to the Dragons Pantheon, to newfound wisdom and many of the powers that come with that enlightenment. It happens in a moment, in the blink of an eye…once the flames are extinguished.”
Jordan jolted. Her back stiffened, she sat upright, and her complexion turned a sickly shade of green. “Once the flames are extinguished? What flames, Zane?”
He closed his eyes again, and this time he kept them shut. “In the Temple of Seven, there’s a dais that faces the seven thrones of the dragon lords. You will be adorned in a beautiful gown, just like any wedding, and asked to kneel on the dais. I’ll be right there with you.” He rushed those last six words. “I will wrap my body around yours. Yes, the dragons will cleanse-away your human origins with mystical fire, but”—he placed a heavy emphasis on the word—“but I will be there to absorb the majority of the flames, the majority of the pain.”
He swallowed hard, opened his eyes, and commanded her gaze with his own. “Jordan, the cleansing portion of the ceremony takes about thirty seconds, during which time, your mortality will…come to an end. But immediately after that happens, within seconds—an instant, really—the lords will gather their cumulative healing and transformational power, a silver-blue fire that soothes, repairs, and reforms, and reanimate you as their own…an immortal dragyra.” Before she could reply or, worse, pass out, he pushed ahead, still holding her gaze. “Again, it will take about thirty seconds for the reanimation, and you will be made whole: perfect, without blemish, without illness, without vulnerability like you had before. The transformation will be over, and you will be reborn.”
He left out the fact that the entire rebirth would begin with orange-and-red fire, and that it would hurt like a bitch—for him—his skin would blister, and his bones would start to melt from the effort it would require to shield her from the worst of the flames. And yes, she would feel a brief moment of agony, too—but only a flash—and then the flames would turn silver as the gods began to sanitize and cleanse her soul, finally becoming silver-blue in the final act of restoration.
When she spoke next, she was trembling so hard that her teeth chattered in her mouth. “W…w…which of the seven gods is going to do this to me…t…to us?” She bit down hard and forced herself to speak more calmly. “Breathe fire over the dais, that is? Will it be Lord Saphyrius?”
Zane shook his head. “All seven,” he whispered. “The Pantheon must act as one.”
In an instant so terrifying Zane would never forget it, Jordan yanked her hands out of his, stood up like she was perfectly calm, and sidestepped around him. She took three quick steps toward the rushing falls, and then, without preamble or hesitation, she leaped off the ledge, throwing her very mortal body into the roaring cascade.
Zane gasped in shock and horror.
And then he flew into action.
Moving with all the supernatural speed of his kind, he called upon his primordial dragon. Huge sapphire-and-chestnut-brown wings shot forth from his back, and he dived into the turbulent water.
He must have been going a hundred miles per hour as he sped downward, desperate to get beneath his dragyra; shot back up through the thick of the falls; and latched both arms tightly around her waist. He flew back through the torrent, into the crevice, and dragged her to the back of the ravine.
His heart was pounding in his chest.
His breaths were coming in ragged gasps.
And his own broad, muscular shoulders were trembling with shock.
“Are you insane?” he rasped, cradling her head against his chest and holding her even tighter. “By all the gods, Jordan—what were you thinking?”
She couldn’t answer.
She didn’t even try.