Chapter 72
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
LEINA
It’s dark.
But it’s not the darkness of the Veil. Not that soft, comforting part of me that I’ve come to embrace. This is one that presses down with unnatural weight. The air is stale here, too. But not like in the Veil, where it’s not needed.
It’s stale here like there are too many creatures competing for it and not enough to go around. I flutter my eyes, trying to remember . There’s something important living at the fringes of my memory. My head pounds. My bones ache.
A hand clenches on my wrist.
“Leina,” Ryot breathes out, and I turn toward his voice.
A single match flares in the darkness, casting shadows against the walls as a lantern is lit.
I burrow into Ryot’s chest, hands clenched in his tunic, eyes turned from the shadows.
I push out with my mind, and I don’t feel Vaeloria anywhere.
She’s not nearby. I jerk away from him, panicked.
“Vaeloria!”
Ryot grasps my upper arms, holding me at eye-level. “She’s fine,” he says. “Einarr took her over the Valespire Peaks with the other beasts when we evacuated. But the peaks are high, and Einarr couldn’t handle any extra weight, so I brought you through the mines, with the refugees.”
Valespire Peaks. Evacuation. Mines. Others.
The words run over and together in my mind, and my eyes dart around the enclosed space, the darkness and the stale air making more sense.
The walls surrounding us are a pale rock, with veins of something black running at a diagonal.
Adamas. Thick wooden beams prop up the ceiling, groaning now and then under the weight of the mountain above us.
We’re in the Mines of Faraengard. Levvi’s grave. Alden’s grave.
I shiver, and Ryot mistakes it for cold. He barks a low command, and someone shoves a shawl into his hands. He drapes it over my shoulders. So very gentle.
“Is she alright?” The voice comes from the man who brought the shawl—Aruveth.
I don’t answer. Instead, I turn in a full circle, studying the cavern.
There are thousands of people I don’t recognize, and they’ve nothing with them but each other.
They’re dressed in long, flowing robes but the brilliant colors are darkened by blood, dirt, and sand.
Their eyes are wide with shock, hollowed out by grief.
Memories rush back in a flood.
I turn back to Ryot.
“The Elder? Nyrica? Thalric? Caius? Faelon?”
Ryot’s mouth thins to a grim line. He threads a comforting hand through my hair, but the gesture only makes the terror worse.
“Faelon and Nyrica flew with the injured. Thalric is injured, and he’s with Nyrica.” He stops, takes a deep breath. He struggles for words. “The Elder didn’t make it.”
My stomach drops. My soul already hurts, and there’s another name missing from his list.
“Caius?” I ask, my voice rising in pitch.
“I’m sorry, Leina. Caius is gone, too.”
I press a fist to my mouth, trying to smother a sob. But it leaks out anyway, and the sound is brittle. Ryot pulls me back against him. I can’t move. I can’t think.
They’re gone. It doesn’t feel real. It can’t be real.
Someone is speaking—distant and muffled.
“I’m going to take her ahead while the others rest,” Ryot murmurs against my hair as he wraps his arms around me, but he’s not speaking to me.
My chest is tight, and I can’t tell if my legs are heavy from exhaustion or the strange numbness that’s spreading through me.
Suddenly, I’m being lifted. My body sways, but I don’t resist. It’s distant.
I look down and see strong arms cradling me, the familiar warmth of Ryot against me, his heartbeat steady and calm.
It contrasts with the storm silently raging inside me.
I want to say something, to push him away, to scream, to fight, to do anything.
But I can’t. I let my head fall against his chest, unable to summon the strength to hold myself upright.
He’s carrying me with sure steps. Away from prying eyes, from the curious stares—but not from the grief.
Ryot’s arms tighten around me, as if he knows and he’s trying to shield me from the pain, but it’s inside me. There’s no escaping it.
Irielle. Levvi. Alden. Mother. Father. Caius. The Elder.
My fingers clench tighter in his tunic and a single, coherent thought breaks through the shadows of the grief?—
At least I have him.
It’s a selfish thought. It’s horrible, but I can’t stop thinking it.
At least I still have him.
I don’t know how long Ryot walks, or how far we travel. Time is impossible to measure down here, in the suffocating deep of the earth. But he continues with those sure steps for so long that I start to doze, my arms wrapped around his neck, my cheek pressed against his heart.
Eventually, we start to climb back up. The air changes.
It shifts, almost imperceptibly at first. That metallic bite, that taste of adamas, fades, replaced by a fresh coolness.
It becomes lighter and carries the promise of open skies.
Then, the awful stillness of the air breaks with a soft whisper of movement.
A breeze weaves its way through the tunnels. It brushes against my face. A lifeline.
But …
“We’re going the wrong way,” I mumble against Ryot’s chainmail. He stops.
“Yeah? But I smell snow and the forest from this way. I think we’re almost to the surface.”
I crinkle my nose. Yes. I smell it, too, from the path to the right. But …
“We need to turn around,” I say.
There’s something here. Something important.
Something vital. My heart beats faster and my eyes spring open.
I wiggle, pulling myself out of Ryot’s arms. He sets me down, his brow crinkling in confusion.
He looks again at the tunnel to the right—there’s hints of sunlight up ahead.
But still, he turns with me to the tunnel to the left.
He smiles, brushing tender fingers against my cheeks before he grabs my hand in his.
“Alright, my rebel girl,” he murmurs. “Lead the way.”
I take a step forward, pulling him with me. As I walk, I take inventory of myself in a way I didn’t—couldn’t—before. The wound on my arm is nasty, but healing. My daggers are strapped to my thighs and my scythe is strapped to my back. I’m caked in dirt and blood and ash. I ache, and my head throbs.
My heart is shattered. Again.
I wonder briefly how many times it can do that, and I can yet rise. I squeeze Ryot’s hand with mine, and he squeezes back. Comforting. Soothing.
At least I still have him.
The tunnel to the left also leads gradually up, but not to the outside.
It winds around, going up and down. After another few hours at a brisk pace, we walk into a stope.
This one is higher in altitude than the one from earlier—the air is lighter, cooler, fresher.
It has the look of an abandoned mine. There are no men milling about, no mining tools, no piles of adamas to bring to the surface.
And yet, something is off about this room, unlike the others.
A heartbeat later, I realize why.
It's not set up like a mining stope at all. It’s a training room.
Weapons racks line the walls around a sparring pit in the corner.
Voices carry our way from another shaft, one that leads off to the side.
My heart beats faster. Ryot drops my hand, and he presses a finger to his lips.
I pull my daggers from my thigh holsters at the same time Ryot draws his sword. Ryot’s shield goes up.
Light spills into the end of the tunnel, lanterns glowing from a chamber off the stope.
The voices grow louder, and a hooded man ducks out of one of the chambers.
Ryot and I silently glide back into the shadows, backs pressed against the wall.
The man is armed, with a battle hammer at his side, made of adamas.
But he doesn’t notice us. He turns a corner and disappears from view.
But still, that pull drags me forward.
I step from the shadows and keep walking, ignoring Ryot’s furious shake of his head.
My pulse quickens; my breath catches. I lengthen my steps, determined not to lose the man in the maze. But before I’m able to turn the corner to follow him, the other voice we heard steps out from the room. I almost slam into this man’s chest because he steps right into my path.
My soul recognizes him well before my consciousness does.
Threat .
I’m already swinging my hand back, taking aim. I let my dagger fly. I won’t miss—I never miss.
And yet, I do.
Because Ryot threw up a shield that blocks my dagger and protects the man I tried to kill.
King Agis.
The king dismisses me with a single glance, as if I’m beneath his notice, even now, then turns calmly to Ryot—who is already rounding on me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Ryot shouts, aghast. “You can’t murder the king!”
“You were the one who said we would depose him!” I cry out. I stare up at Ryot in shock. Didn’t he say that?
“Not like this!” Ryot snaps, his eyes jerk to the king and there’s an apology on his face, in his eyes. Ryot turns back to me, shifting me a little to put himself between me and the king. “Through a tribunal! Through a system of justice. Not as a vigilante,” Ryot finishes.
I snort. “Oh yes. Because Faraengard has been so fucking just to Selencians for the past 900 years.”
Ryot winces, but he still shifts me even further back. I go to draw my other dagger, but Ryot grabs my hand, stopping me.
“Not like this,” Ryot says again, firmly.
“Yes,” King Agis drawls out in a familiar, achingly familiar, voice. “Let’s do wait for the tribunal.”
The king’s eyes—dark as the ocean glinting with ice—finally land on me and stay there, and the air leaves my lungs in a whoosh. His eyes are so like Elowen’s. So like …
My hand tenses within Ryot’s grasp. I’m missing something.
I have been this whole time.
I tear my gaze from King Agis to Ryot.
“Why?” I manage, through dry, parched lips.
“It’s the right?—”
“No!” I rip my hand from his, staggering a step back. “You tell me why.”