Starside

Chapter 26 #2

There’s murmuring above. I don’t dare breathe. I don’t dare move.

Then there are steps as the warriors keep going, right past the hole. They’ll find it eventually. I hear calls for torches.

It’s more than we have.

I tense, fear like ice in my veins as I realize we are beneath a mountain. In pure and utter darkness.

My breath hitches. I feel around for anything I can, which is mostly Raker. I get close to his hood, and he rears back.

“Your fear, Aris?” he says, that cutting voice back. Any hint of patience is gone, like it never existed in the first place. “Get over it.”

It’s said like an order, a general telling his warrior to do something, without any room to argue.

I swallow.

He’s right. I’m not going to make it out of here if I can’t even get a full breath.

I remember what I did in the forest when I encountered that screaming woman. My memories were a tether. A light through the darkness. I can do this. I have no choice.

“I will,” I say.

“Good.” He turns. I hear his steps, getting farther away.

Desperately, I stumble forward, trying to follow in the direction he’s moving, not wanting to be left alone again.

My pulse picks up when I can’t reach him, when I don’t know where he’s turned.

I hear a deep, rumbling sigh before he grabs my arm.

Together, we walk through the darkness.

Walk is generous. He all but drags me, because it’s almost impossible to walk quickly when I can’t see even an inch in front of my nose.

The tunnels are narrow. I know that, because the wall scrapes my arms every few seconds. My breaths echo. The air is stale. It feels like—it feels like I’m trapped.

But I focus on the steady heat of Raker’s long fingers around my elbow.

I focus on his and my breath merging. I use his strength to steady myself, for even though my strides are cautious and unsure, his are not.

He walks just as smoothly as he does in a field.

He is like a blade cutting through everything, bending the world to his will.

I cling to that strength, try to let it call to my own. If he is not afraid, then I will not be. I slow my breathing. I steady my steps.

Then I pluck one of those remaining memories I covet.

I think about the time my father told my sister and I the story of how he and my mother fell in love.

They were neighbors. They had known each other their entire lives.

His father died young, so my father had to help his mother take care of the family.

He would travel far away, to where thicker trees still grew, cut them down, then drag the wood back to the village in a sled.

There wasn’t time to play in the streets, like the other children, but he would watch them as he cut that wood.

He admired my mother from afar. He said she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.

He said he liked the way she threw her head back when she laughed.

She was doing it that day, as she and the other children played a game.

The wolf came from nowhere. Its ribs were visible through its flesh. It was starving. It grabbed my mother by the back of her dress and dragged her through the streets, all the way into the forest, a patch of trees that were sickly and half-rotted. She screamed.

The other children ran away, but my father grabbed his ax and ran after her. He ran right into the woods.

Before the wolf could take a bite out of her, he chopped the fabric from her dress, freeing her.

And—as my mother added—it wasn’t the fact that he saved her that made her fall in love with him. No. It was the fact that he did not kill the wolf, even though he had an ax in his hands.

Instead … he brought it food.

It came back. And my father fed it again. And again.

What my father loved about my mother was that she forgave the wolf. She had mercy for it too, and she found flowers with soothing properties, to mend the scrapes on its paws. Little by little, the wolf became a friend.

Of course, the first thing my sister said after the story was over was that she wanted a wolf as a pet. And that, if one attacked me and she saved me, could we keep it?

I still remember the look our parents gave each other. Like maybe they shouldn’t have told us the story after all.

And I’ll never forget the love in that expression—like an entire lifetime of memories was trapped in that one look.

I blink, and the darkness is just as deep as it was a few minutes ago. But it has lost some of its weight and teeth.

“Can you see anything?” I ask, wondering how Raker is walking so assuredly.

“A little.”

“How?”

He waits a few moments before answering. It’s like every word has to be dredged out of him. “We trained in tunnels sometimes.”

I frown. “I didn’t know there were tunnels on Stormside.”

“There are several.”

I suppose there’s a lot about our side that I don’t know. “And what … what was the rest of your training like?”

His voice is sharp as a scythe. “If you’re looking for a distraction from your fear of the dark, then this isn’t it, Aris.”

I don’t know why the bottom of my spine curls every time he says my name. Even if it’s with irritation, like just now.

It’s been weeks of this, though. Just like he sees right through me, to my weakest points, I see right through him.

I exhale heavily. “That bad?” Is that … is that the suffering he endured? The one the Gardener spoke of?

He huffs a cruel laugh. “You don’t know what bad means, Aris.” His fingers tighten against my skin. “You don’t know what fear means. Or pain. You don’t know any—”

“You don’t know what I know,” I say, my voice coming out so sharply, it cuts him off. He doesn’t say anything in response.

Silence. For several moments, it’s just silence.

Then curiosity overtakes me, and I break it. “How many people have you killed?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “I lost count a long time ago.”

“Hundreds?”

A pause. “More.”

I take a stuttering breath. So many lives … gone at his hand. This same hand that is now steering me through the darkness.

I shouldn’t be shocked. I know his reputation. I have seen him in action.

“The only way you get good at killing is by killing, Aris,” he says.

He’s right. And maybe that’s been my biggest flaw all along, the biggest threat to me reaching the gods and getting my revenge.

I am not as heartless as Raker. I can’t just turn off my emotions. And … and it makes me reckless.

“Have you ever been anything else?” I ask quietly. There is nothing but our voices in this tunnel. “Anything beyond the killing?”

I can’t imagine him as a child. Laughing. Carefree. Hell, I don’t even know if he has a face. I don’t know if he’s badly wounded, or monstrous, or anything at all.

Did he have a family? Was he born into one of those orphanages where the children are trained to fight from the time they can walk? Is that how he joined the king’s guard?

I want to ask. But—but I don’t want to ask anything I won’t answer, if he turns it on me.

It doesn’t matter.

That’s the question that quiets him, and turns into miles and miles of walking in endless silence.

And I can’t help but wonder why.

We walk in darkness for a full day.

The tunnels groan and shift around us, as if constantly being shaped with magic, and Raker guides us through different paths. He’s our compass, moving assuredly, and I really hope he knows what he’s doing.

I start to fear we’re traveling deeper underground. That maybe there is no ending, and we’re forever lost in the maze of the mountain. Maybe we’ve just been walking in circles. In this darkness, I’d never know it.

Even my memories can’t keep cold terror from settling in the pit of my stomach. Or, after a day without rest, my legs from wobbling.

They finally give out, and Raker only plucks me from the ground and drags me along again. “I can’t,” I say, blinking away dust. My voice is just a rasp. My body is spent.

“You can” is all Raker says.

And the fight in me that rises at those words, that wants to scream at him … it is enough. It is enough for me to dig into that pit of strength again and find more.

His hand is still splayed against my spine, where he fisted the fabric of my shirt and pulled me to my feet again. It’s a large steadying presence, keeping me upright. His fingers are long across my sword. But he doesn’t take it. He just keeps his hand there.

“How are you not tired?” I ask.

“I am,” he rumbles.

He doesn’t sound it. He doesn’t feel it. That hand is radiating strength, and I am taking it, as if leeching some of his years of training.

I take a rattling breath. “My third fear,” I say. “Of … of dying in a stupid way … I—”

“You are not dying in these caves, Aris,” he says, with so much credence that the next words die in my throat.

“Okay,” I say instead. I believe him. And I steal some of that confidence too. I focus my mind not on if I will make it out of these caves, but when. I imagine rays of sun spilling into these tunnels of darkness.

And I keep walking.

Hours later, I finally see it.

Sunlight. It hurts my eyes, after all this darkness, but I keep looking. Everything in me wants to run toward it, but I don’t need to. It’s … getting closer, like it’s barreling toward us.

I frown, and that’s when I feel something else. The bite of magic, just like in the Storm Woods, an energy pulling all my senses toward it, begging me to give it my full attention …

I don’t think. I grab Raker and shove him against the wall as hard as I can. I press myself against him.

“Don’t look,” I say. I close my eyes tightly.

Then, all at once, there’s fire at my back, the suffocating heat of this demon, or whatever it is, begging us to look. To make those flames grow so large, they might flow right through these tunnels.

Look, it whispers, its voice calling to my blood, to my wants, as if to pull them out one by one. Everything you desire, I have it. Right here.

It feels like it does. I can almost taste the whisper of everything I’ve ever wanted right behind me, so close I can see it in my mind. So close, if I just look, it will be mine.

My body trembles with the need to turn around and have everything I’m envisioning. And it’s not just innocent wants that it has pulled from me. No, treacherous wants sear along my skin in flames so hot they draw a whimper from my lips.

I lean harder against Raker, to get farther from the flames … but also, for other reasons.

And instead of pushing me away, like he always has, Raker curls his hands around my hips—

And pulls me closer. I draw in a ragged breath, in pure shock. I don’t know if it’s an attempt to hold me still … or if he actually wants to touch me. But no one’s ever dared, and I’ve never even gotten close to this, what with my markings. And in this darkness, with our eyes closed …

All these buried wants are clawing out of me, and I’m trying to stop them, but part of me doesn’t want to.

My palms are against his armor. Our chests are flush—and his is rising and falling just as rapidly as mine is.

His breaths are labored. His body … it’s trembling, like he’s fighting something too.

Slowly, my hands slide up to his neck, giving him plenty of time to stop me, but he doesn’t. My fingers brush against his pulse … and it’s racing. I need more. I—I need to keep touching him.

“Raker,” I say in a strangled whisper, lifting to my toes, to be anywhere near his significant height.

Like a seal has been broken, his fingers slip beneath the hem of my shirt, and my blood ignites.