Air {Elements of Power 3}

Chapter 41: Jasmine

Avery blinked a few times, then rubbed her eyes with the pads of her palms, as though she was certain her eyes were playing tricks on her. Once she appeared to have satisfied herself that I was, in fact, real, she spoke.

"What's going on? Aren't you the girl with the Arcans? What are you doing here?" She looked around wildly, panicked. "Are we being invaded?"

"I came here with Roxy. We're here to rescue her father." I felt it would be best not to go into detail about the fact that he was my father too-she looked confused enough already.

"Roxy's here? Where?" She took a step towards me, her eyes wide with excitement and hope.

I shifted from foot to foot. "We tried to come in through the staff entrance and-"

"She fell down into the dungeons? Great. Some rescue team you guys turned out to be." Avery flicked her hair and threw herself down onto the room's bed. Everything in the room had a tussled, semi-destroyed feel to it, as though a small child had had a big temper tantrum. Only the child must have got hold of some matches, since most of the objects in the room were heavily charred.

"What's been going on in here, Avery?" I asked, as I took in the damage.

"Oh, you mean the mess? Cin's nightmare of a girlfriend locked me in here weeks ago. I got pretty mad... and bored." She shrugged as if it was no big deal and that she ruined rooms full of expensive furniture all the time. At least it explained her dishevelled appearance.

But I had bigger issues to be concerned about right now, such as: "Cinaer's girlfriend?"

She looked at me like I was crazy. "You are actually the worst rescuers in the world. Do you have any idea what you have let yourselves in for?" She stood up and sauntered over to the door. "Come on," she added, looking back at me with her brows furrowed. "I'm not risking getting stuck in here again. We need to move before she comes this way."

"Who?"

"Adresteia. Keep up. Cin's girlfriend, remember, I mentioned her, like, 30 seconds ago? Flames, Arcans have short attention spans. Well, pseudo-Arcans anyway." She shrugged and left the room.

"Where are we even going?" I asked, trailing after her down the corridor.

"Away from the Inescapable One and hopefully to find Roxy too-she'll be able to kick her butt." Avery glanced over her shoulder at me. "No offence. I'm sure you're awesome in your own special way, but Adresteia is a Cinaer brand of evil. She's a problem we need Roxy to fix, but it looks like we're going to have to rescue her first. Such a mess," she sighed dramatically.

We both heard the click-clacking of heels coming along the marble flooring from the corridor ahead of us at the same time.

Avery was pale as she wheeled to face me and shoved me unceremoniously into a room to our right. She shut the door silently behind us, holding a finger to her lips.

I slid past Avery and crouched in front of the doorway's keyhole, eager to see what she was making such a fuss about.

The girl who strolled past was gorgeous; her skin was a deeper tan than Roxy's, her eyes a bottomless black, with ebony hair which curled down past her shoulders in effortless waves. She wore a short tailored red dress and her lips had been painted a deep, blood red. She smiled as her high, black heels, clicked their way along the corridor. The smirk on her face and the glint in her eyes made her look businesslike and mean. I could see how she could be Cinaer's girlfriend: she looked stunning and cruel-Cinaer's two favourite things.

"At least we shut the door behind us," Avery whispered, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me across the room towards another doorway.

Had we shut the door? I didn't think that I had. Maybe Avery had shut it without me noticing. It was too late to worry about it now at any rate. Avery was already dragging me through into another room, and then another.

"Where are we going?" I asked, keeping my voice low.

"Down," was all she said in response, before stopping in front of a large painting depicting the formation of the Helian Realm's second sun. Ordinarily, I would have been happy to stop and look at it, but now definitely wasn't the time for an art viewing.

I looked nervously back over my shoulder, before hissing at Avery to "Hurry up and move on!"

She huffed in response, flicking her long, flame-filled hair, before gripping the painting on its right and swinging it open like a door.

On the other side was a glass spiral staircase, heading downwards.

I gave a silent prayer of thanks that I had found Avery-I would have never made it to the lower levels of the castle without her.

She was on the stairs in a flash and I followed eagerly, making sure to shut the painting firmly behind me. I definitely wasn't leaving clues this time.

{Do you like having Avery back? Comment to let me know. And please vote if you enjoyed this chapter.}