Chapter Fourteen #2
Time to teach him a lesson for using my feelings when he’s not meant to be able to do that. “I don’t know why you think I’m scared. I never said I was. I’m just thinking about how we can get in.”
“Sorry,” he says, reaching up to run his hands through his hair but finding his hat instead. “It was just the tension…your silence…”
Riiiiight. “Quiet. I’m thinking.”
I can see far more clearly in the dark than he can.
There are several doors into the building.
The double doors at the front, which will obviously be guarded.
Two doors on the left side into an alleyway—likely better options, although not completely safe.
A stairway from a deck on the right side down to a dock with a door on each level. And who knows how many in the back.
The only good thing about the setup is that it’s a lot of doors to guard. If they have around a dozen people here, like he suspects, it’s unlikely that there are more than one or two per entrance. We could maybe take them in a fight, but there’s a problem with that.
“How are we meant to get the guards out of the way without killing them?” I ask. My weapons are not meant for intimidation or knocking sense into people. They’re meant to kill, and even if I try not to, I can’t guarantee they won’t.
If the guards are involved in trafficking the girls, I won’t feel bad about taking them out. But if they aren’t…
“With this,” says Soren, pulling a vial out of his pocket. “An elixir that knocks someone unconscious if inhaled. All I need is for you to get me close enough to them that I can open it beneath their noses.”
“So which door are you thinking?” I ask him. It occurs to me that once we’re close enough, if it’s Ronan, he’ll be able to tell if someone is on the other side of the door by their feelings.
Let’s see what he has to say about that.
“The alley is the darkest. Let’s get closer. Maybe we’ll be able to hear something.”
Hear something. Sure…
I wait until the lone woman in the street passes us and lead Soren down the hill to the warehouse. I stick to the shadows of the buildings, avoiding the streetlamps and only darkening our surroundings when I absolutely must in case someone is looking.
As we approach, I check for movement in the alley before I darken the shadow there. I grab Soren’s hand—smooth as ever—and lead him into the inky black of total darkness.
The secrets I’m concealing, including my knowledge of his identity, are really making a difference to my magic.
I can usually feel a bit of a drain on my energy when I darken a shadow, and that pull is greater the larger the area or the longer I hold it.
But I feel almost nothing in this alley.
It’s the difference between running up the stairs and a leisurely stroll on level ground.
Soren gestures to the door furthest away, or roughly where it is given that he can’t see it.
I take it that means the one closest to us is guarded.
We creep along the alleyway, moving extra slowly as we pass the guarded door.
My shadows have no impact on noise. One wrong step and our mission is over before it begins.
We approach the unguarded door and stand perfectly still, listening.
Silence within.
I try the handle, expecting it to be locked.
But it isn’t.
The door clicks open just a crack. I pause, completely motionless except for the pounding of my heart.
There’s no light coming from within the doorway, not even without my shadows. I move to step inside, but Soren squeezes my hand and doesn’t follow.
He pulls backward, and I understand his meaning. Slowly, softly we creep a few feet back, the door still hanging open.
“I don’t like this,” he murmurs so quietly I can barely hear him. “Why would they leave the door open?”
“Maybe someone was just careless,” I whisper, but I can’t ignore the shiver that goes down my spine. “Did anyone know you were coming?”
“No,” says Soren. “A friend of Marcella’s told me. I can’t imagine she’d send me directly into a trap.”
“What do you want to do?” I ask. I know exactly what we should do: turn around and go back to the palace and come back with two dozen armed guards to turn this place over.
But there are so many exits, it’s possible that they would escape with the girls before we ever set foot inside. And if they’re in there—just feet away from us—and I turn around and leave them?
“I’m willing to take a look if you are.”
I nod, then tell him, “Alright,” because he can’t see in the damn dark.
It’s honestly quite brave of him to let me guide him while he’s totally blind. Brave, and also incredibly foolish.
I lead us back to the threshold and pull the door open a bit further, keeping us behind it initially in case someone comes running.
But they don’t. It’s only silence behind that door. Silence, darkness, and hopefully two shadow-born girls who don’t fear it.
Soren nudges me and drops my hand for a moment, pulling out the vial of elixir. I take it from him and open it without giving it back.
He reaches for me and gives my hand an angry squeeze when he finds it empty.
I pull his head to me and whisper impossibly softly into his ear. “You can’t see.”
What good will the elixir do if he can’t see where the enemies are?
Of course, he can sense where the enemies are, but he thinks I don’t know that. I smile in the darkness, grateful he can’t see my satisfaction.
Elixir in one hand, Soren’s hand in the other, I lead him around the doorway and into a narrow hall.
It looks as if this area is used for storage or maybe disposal. There are a handful of crates and empty barrels lining the walls, but there’s nothing else in the room except a doorway that looks to lead deeper into the building.
It’s too narrow in here for us to be side to side, so I stand in front of Soren. I back up to him until I feel him against me. I breathe deeply, willing the part of my mind that wants to focus on the sensation of his body against mine to shut the fuck up.
I need him to stay close to me, or he’ll knock something over in the room and give us away.
I move forward, and he follows, our bodies moving in sync with each other.
My pulse pounds in my ears, and I can’t tell if it’s from the situation we’re in or the way he feels.
The heat of his body on my back. The warm breeze of his breath on my neck, brushing the wisps of my hair aside.
We make it to the door, and I reach to try it. He doesn’t stop me, which makes me feel that it’s unlikely that there’s anyone on the other side.
This door is locked.
What a relief.
Carefully, with agonizing slowness to avoid making a sound, I retrieve my rake from the coin purse in my pocket and a pin from my hair, and I pick the lock.
Soren’s face registers surprise, but he says nothing.
I crack the door open slowly and peer inside the room before entering.
The main room of the warehouse sprawls before us, dark and expansive. It’s filled with shelves and racks, each of which is covered in wooden barrels and crates, some of them stacked to the ceiling.
The darkness is broken only by the distant flicker of a single candle in a window on the opposite side of the room. There’s no hint of movement, not a footstep, not a shifting shadow. Wherever the guards are, it’s not here.
I move slowly along an aisle between shelves, and Soren reluctantly follows.
There’s room enough for us to walk together now, and I feel the lack of him the second he moves out from behind me.
We pause as we reach an aisle that extends to the front door.
I darken the shadow as deep as it will go as I lean out to check for guards.
No one. Even the front doors have been left unguarded.
This feels all wrong. The goods they store here are valuable.
The shelf beside me contains several crates labeled as saffron, a spice so rare and expensive that I’ve never so much as seen it, let alone tasted it.
And the city is busier than ever with festival goers coming into town.
Why would they take such an unnecessary risk?
Did someone else get here first?
There are no signs of a struggle. Nothing looks the slightest bit out of place.
Soren squeezes my hand and walks a step in front of me, urging me onwards. It’s brighter on this side of the warehouse because of the candlelight, bright enough that he drops my hand and begins to lead.
I try to ignore how empty my hand feels without his, how his warmth lingers on my skin.
We’re nearly to the candlelit window now, although an aisle separates us from it. I peek through a gap in the crates to see an empty desk with an overturned chair within.
Here’s the fight we were looking for. It’s difficult to see from this angle, but something caused the occupant of the office to leave in a hurry.
“Let’s go,” I whisper. The office has a door that leads outside on the dockside of the building. If the girls were here, they could be on a boat by now.
“Wait,” says Soren, and he grabs my arm and pulls me back to him forcefully.
Then he pushes us both to the ground, urging me into the bottom shelf between a stack of wooden boxes.
He’s sensed someone. It takes a moment before I hear their approaching footsteps. At least two of them, moving quickly and with no regard for the noise they’re making.
The door slams open, banging into the wall.
“Gods, it’s heavy!” yells a man. His voice is accented. It reminds me a bit of Larus, the accent of the Enez Islands, though I know it’s not him. I could recognize Larus’s voice anywhere.
Please don’t be Felix.
Something crashes to the ground with so much force that it shakes the containers we’re hidden between.
“Careful with it,” replies a woman, her accent Selaran. “There’s a lot of coin in that crate.”
“Yes, madam,” the man replies. He says it without a hint of sarcasm, and I breathe a sigh of relief that it’s unlikely to be Felix. After our encounter today, I can’t imagine him taking orders from anyone.