The Depths Chapter 1 #3
“This kind of stubbornness will get you killed.”
I stared into eyes the same color as the abyss, before I took the canteen.
He didn’t wait for me to drink it before he turned to his comrade and took the food that was offered.
I took a drink, and the second the water hit my tongue, I realized how thirsty I was. The adrenaline in my heart must have evaporated the water from my body.
One of the guys passed me a ration of food.
I felt bad taking it, but I did so without argument.
They took seats with their backs against the rock, all spread out to enjoy their rest.
I didn’t know where to go, so I sat on the ground with my back against nothing, the only place to sit that wasn’t directly next to any of them.
They didn’t talk to one another. Just sat there in silence, like something heavy weighed on all their minds.
I stared at the rock below my feet, unable to accept the grief of my loneliness. My parents were buried in the cemetery, but my grave was leagues below theirs. Vulgaris had returned to the castle and slept peacefully in his bed, ready to take Warthorn and enslave all the kingdoms under his rule.
He’d probably never think of me again.
“Where are we going?” My eyes remained on my boots for a second before I lifted my chin to look at the guys.
The brown-haired man was directly across from me, green eyes, looking no different from someone I’d see at home. He stared at me as he held the top of the canteen between his fingertips. He didn’t answer the question.
Neither did the blond or the one with dark hair similar to Morco’s.
Morco didn’t look at me. It was as if I hadn’t said a word.
Then I asked the question that I was almost too scared to ask.
“What—what are you going to do to me?” I might have lived a sheltered life in the castle, but I knew what happened to prisoners of war, how vulnerable women were in the presence of men who lacked accountability.
They could make me a slave, a whore, or kill me for meat.
Morco didn’t react to that either.
Neither did the other guys.
I wanted assurance that I hadn’t chosen incorrectly. “Did I make the wrong decision?”
Morco stared straight ahead and focused on the rock. “I don’t know what I’ll do with you, but I can say we’re the lesser of two evils.”
That gave me reassurance, but not much.
Morco got to his feet and handed his canteen back to the guy whose job seemed to be as the packhorse of the group. He then grabbed the torch and took the lead again, deeper into the mountain.
A long while later, we left the cavern and slipped through another crevice back onto the plains. Without the torch, it would be pitch black, no sign of illumination anywhere. That rosebud offered enough brightness to bring the world into a dull light, and without it, it was absolute darkness.
I continued to follow in line, my vision reaching only as far as the circumference of light. Morco seemed to know where he was going by memory because the light simply wasn’t enough. I felt a flush of fatigue behind my eyes, and I wondered what time it was—but it was eternal night down here.
More time passed, and the terrain remained the same, patches and trees and bushes and rocks and then nothing until there was more vegetation. I wished I knew where we were going, why they were there in the first place, seemingly at the perfect place at the perfect time.
At least, I thought so.
None of them spoke to one another, either because they had nothing to say or because it was imperative to remain quiet.
We finally approached a shoreline like the one we’d left hours ago. There were small waves, just a gentle rise and fall up the bank, like a quiet lake. They immediately took out their canteens and plunged them into the water.
Morco shared his with me again, letting me drink as much as I wanted, and then I refilled it before I handed it back to him so he could do the same.
He stood there on the shore in his boots and black clothing, looking out over the dark lake as he drank from his canteen, his mind elsewhere.
He was by far the most intimidating out of all of them, but I felt the safest with him since he was the one who had warned me about… whatever they were.
We walked down the bank until we came across a boat that had been left on the shore. A small boat that could only hold a few men with a couple pairs of oars. With me in the boat, it would be really cramped, but they gave no protest.
We stepped inside, and Morco pushed the vessel into the water before he jumped into the boat, his clothes and boots wet. For someone in charge, he seemed to do work himself instead of expecting men of lesser rank to do it for him.
He grabbed on to a pair of oars and started to row.
I was seated near the next pair, so I grabbed them and mirrored his movements.
The other guys didn’t protest, like they were happy not to row across the lake.
I wanted to be useful, because the more useful I was, the less likely it was that they would kill me. And if I could do physical labor, they were more likely to ask me to continue that than…put me to other uses.
After what felt like an hour, my arms grew tired, but I didn’t complain, not when Morco continued without any sign of fatigue. His arms were the size of my head, so our strength was incomparable, but I did my best to match him, to prove that I was better alive than dead.
But my pace started to slow and no longer match his. My muscles screamed in fatigue because they were utterly spent. Soon, it was pretty much just Morco doing all the work because he was the only one rowing. “Caius.”
“Move.” The blond moved up a seat and took the oars from my hand.
“Sorry…” I moved aside and gripped my arms, which silently screamed in protest.
Morco didn’t ask someone to take his place, and he continued to row at the speed of someone fresh.
More time passed, and the torch burned at the front of the boat.
I wanted to ask how much longer, but I didn’t want to seem like I was complaining about the length of the journey. The best decision was to stay quiet, stay invisible, and not give them a reason to think about me too much.
In the distance, I started to see it, the light of torches.
It was faint at first, just a flicker of light like a candle in a cathedral, but then the color became more distinct.
As we came closer, the light grew richer, and the details of the land became more vivid, a thick forest with tall trees and brush at the bottom.
Other boats were along the shore, so I assumed this was our destination.
Morco and Caius hopped out of the boat and pulled it to shore, so the rest of us could hop out without getting our clothes wet.
I was grateful that I had changed into trousers and boots before I had been banished to the Depths.
A dress would not have worked in a place like this.
I probably would have drowned in the lake if I’d worn one.
Morco put out the torch in the sand and took the lead once more, stepping right into the line of crowded trees. It was dark, but he didn’t seem to need the torch to know his way through the forest.
One of the strangest things about this place was how quiet it was. I was used to birds on my terrace first thing in the morning, chirping in the garden, regardless of the seasons, but here…I heard nothing.
The light became brighter, bonfires in the distance, a golden hue from something that hovered in the air. Then I noticed the glimmer from the forest floor, the gentle glow from the firefly petunias.
We broke the tree line and came to the center of the forest, old trunks protruding from the earth in some places because they’d cut down everything that had been here to create this space in the dead center and hidden from sight.
There were homes everywhere, little huts and two-story houses, bigger buildings in the distance, and a communal area with several tables out in the open near the bonfire.
A few people sat at the tables, and they immediately turned to look at Morco and the others, the same age, people in their late twenties or early thirties. Their eyes immediately went to me—like they knew I didn’t belong there.
One of the women sitting there stared at Morco like she knew him well. She left the table and headed straight for him, forgoing introductions like she didn’t need to waste her time with that. “What happened?”
“We failed.” Morco turned his head slightly to look at me. “Circumstances changed…”
With dark hair like his and green eyes, she was stunning. Taller than me, with drawings across her skin in black ink, she shifted her gaze to me and studied me like I was a strange animal she’d never seen before. “Who is she?”
“The circumstance,” Morco said. “I need to speak with my mother.”
Whoa, he was leaving?
Morco stepped away to depart.
“Wait.” I moved after him, knowing he was almost as much of a stranger as everyone else, but not quite. “Don’t leave me here with these people.”
He turned back to me, his look the harshest it’d been. “These people are my people.”
“I just mean I don’t know them—”
“You don’t know me.”
“I just…” I swallowed, knowing how pathetic I looked right now.
I’d lived a life in which I never had to ask for anything, and now, I had to plead for morsels of food and sips of drinks, for guarantees of protection.
“I’m scared.” I dropped whatever front I had, dropped diplomacy and self-preservation and went straight to honesty.
“I’m alone and I’m scared, and I just… I need to know what you’re going to do to me. ”
The harshness remained in his gaze, but it slowly dampened like raindrops dropped on it from the sky. The change wasn’t significant, but it was enough to show that he was human. “I don’t know what will become of you.”
I inhaled a harsh breath, feeling worse than I had before I’d asked the question.
“I don’t know you. I don’t trust you.”
Fuck.
“But if you mean us no harm, then I will do you no harm.”
I felt my eyes close at the first sign of safety. “Thank you.”
“Stay here. When I return, I’ll decide what to do with you.”