Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Ophelia
As I blinked my eyes open, dusk cut harsh shadows across the room. A heavy weight settled across my hip. Tol’s arm.
We’d slept all day—the most rest I’d had in weeks—and at some point, I had curled into him. I looked up at the relaxed lines of his face. His lips were set in a peaceful smile that even the bruise on his cheek couldn’t mar.
My stomach flipped when I remembered kissing those lips just hours ago. Fear threatened to bubble inside me, the sharp edges of a heartbreak I was still healing from prodding against my mind.
No, I coached myself. Don’t retreat. Because I didn’t want to succumb to that fear with Tol. I wanted to allow him to soothe those jagged parts for me, rather than let them tear us apart.
“What are you looking at, Alabath?” he whispered.
“Nothing,” I sighed, burrowing closer to him, telling fear to take a reprieve.
Before my eyes could close, voices rose from the dining room, feet stomping up the stairs, and our bubble of bliss burst. We both shot up.
“Window?” Tol asked.
“Window.”
We threw our leathers back on, cramming the rest of our belongings in my pack and strapping on weapons.
I tossed the Vincienzo dagger to him as the door burst open and three Engrossians charged through.
“Nothing like a good wake-up call,” Tol said, hopping over the bed and driving his dagger into the first warrior’s neck before he could raise his ax. “Window, Alabath!”
I jumped to the ledge, but the second Engrossian was closer to me. He grabbed my boot, tugging me back.
Latching on to the top pane of the window, I swung my other leg up, toe catching him in the chin. He released me with a grunt, head cracking back as he fell.
“Go!” Tol shouted.
He fought off the third Engrossian, dagger to ax, backing toward me. In my mind, that ax landed on Tol again. The memory of his blood coated my cheeks and the air between us.
Looking around, I grabbed Tol’s wineglass from the night before and threw it at the Engrossian. He ducked, the glass brushing his shoulder as it sailed past.
I climbed out the window, fingers digging into the greenery that grew up Wayward’s facade, and scaled down. Tol was above me.
When my boots hit the ground, a fourth Engrossian rounded the side of the inn.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Tol cursed. His hair stood up on one side from sleep, but he had a white-knuckled grip on his dagger.
I ripped Angelborn from my back, launching her at the Engrossian. She stuck in his shoulder, and he fell with a thud.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Tol said, retrieving my spear. A crowd was forming around us—warriors of all clans whispering about the Engrossian dead before them.
I caught snippets of musings, “Is that the Revered Mystique?”
“What is she doing here?”
“It must be her.”
I whirled toward Tolek. “Now,” I ground out, a hint of pleading in my voice, and he whistled for Sapphire.
Tol wrapped his hand around my wrist and tugged me toward where she galloped around the corner. As he was hopping up behind me, the final Engrossian—the one I’d thrown a wineglass at—burst from Wayward’s entrance. The door banged back against the wooden facade, the boom hushing the crowd.
“Alabath!” the warrior called after us.
“Fucking Angels,” I cursed. How had they found us?
The Engrossian jumped on his horse, speeding after Tol and me, his black armor swallowing up the sunset streaming between the trees. They moved with a preternatural grace, sweeping beneath branches as smoothly as we did.
“My queen has need of you,” he taunted.
Tolek’s arms tightened around my waist. “Tell your queen to suck Bant’s golden cock. Ophelia isn’t hers.”
In response, the Engrossian launched a knife that sailed inches above Tol’s shoulder. Hot fury boiled within me at it all. The queen, her foot soldiers, and the uncanny ownership she felt over me. Spirits, even the claim the Angels had over me.
Ever since Damien’s first appearance to me, I’d become a puppet, strings warred over by agents of fate.
“I’ll kill her,” I growled.
“I’ll fight you for the honor,” Tol responded. “How far are we from the mountains?”
“A few miles.” Wayward’s small town was hidden among the trees not too far from the rocky base of the Mystique Range.
Still energetic in his pursuit, the Engrossian released another knife in our direction. Sapphire zigzagged through the trees.
“Caves?” Tol asked.
I nodded, picturing the deep caverns cut into the mountains like burrows, like the one I’d seen on the raid with Barrett.
If we could get away from our attacker, we’d be able to hide there for the night and continue our trek home in the morning. Hopefully—
Another knife whistled behind us.
I ducked, but Tol pushed himself up behind me, nimble fingers snatching the dagger from the air. The blade sliced his bare hand, but he barely grunted. Without a breath, he flipped the weapon around and sent it flying back toward its owner. The squelch and echoing thud told me enough.
“Impressive,” I panted, stressed nerves still tingling, ears perked for signs of pursuit.
“I know,” he murmured, laughing and pulling me tighter against him with his uninjured hand.
No hooves rang out in the trees as we ran. It was only Sapphire, Tol, and me, hearts pounding in sync below a dusk fading into night.
“That one,” I directed Sapphire after we’d been riding in silence for miles.
“Why that one?” Tol asked, curious.
We’d passed a few caves already, looming entrances spotting the base of the mountains, but at the nearest one, the second pulse beneath my skin sped. I couldn’t put a name to it, that instinct twisting through my body.
“It feels right” was all I said, and Tol took it as explanation enough.
We dismounted, and he headed inside, taking Sapphire by the reins. I threw one last glance over my shoulder, sweeping my gaze across the trees, but all was quiet.
Tolek was already getting out the mystlight lantern when I entered, a pale sheen falling across the hard-packed dirt floor and gray walls.
Using a bit of water from our canteen, he cleaned the blood from his hand, the cut already healing over.
The tunnel stretched into the distance, my skin prickling as I looked toward that darkness.
“Don’t set up yet.”
“Why not?” Tol asked.
I couldn’t explain the pounding of my pulses, the feeling that the walls breathed.
“I want to see what’s back there.”
Tol sprang to his feet and held out his hand.
I looked at his fingers for a moment. Why did every movement between us suddenly feel weighted?
He put no pressure on me, behaving as he always had.
The only difference was I now knew what purpose lay beneath each gentle brush of his fingers and teasing hook of his lips.
Though, I think a part of me had always known—the part that dared to kiss him. The part that felt free, that relented to the wild abandon he encouraged of me. There was a passion within me that only came alive in Tolek’s presence, muted when he wasn’t around. The part that belonged to him—
No, it didn’t belong to him.
Because Tol hadn’t asked me to give any piece of myself up, especially not after everything I’d been through.
But the quickening of my heart when I looked between his outstretched hand and his carefully shuttered eyes told me that I might one day want to give it all to him. All of those broken pieces he’d so delicately held together, even when I hadn’t realized he was.
I crossed to him, gravel crunching beneath my boots, and it felt utterly right when my fingers curled between his.
I’d unknowingly but willingly traded a piece of my heart for a piece of his years ago. For now, we’d share those, guard them between us, and see what happened.
He squeezed my hand, and that silent promise was sealed.
With a mischievous flick of my brows, I swiped up the lantern and pulled him farther into the tunnel, following Angelborn’s pulse within my own. Sapphire treaded slowly at our backs.
For a long time, we walked in silence, listening to the Spirits breathe within the walls around us.
The tunnel narrowed, the ceiling dropping slightly, but a sense of power thickened the air, pressing down on us. We shuffled over dirt paths, winding deeper into the mountains, and the magic stirred my blood.
“How deep do you think these tunnels go?” Tol voiced the question I’d been avoiding answering myself.
“If I had to guess, I’d say they cover the expanse of the mountains.
” Snaking passages stretching from one territory to the next, weaving through our source of magic.
My chest tightened, a cold sweat beading on the Bond at the back of my neck.
The tattoo seemed to come alive in here, nearer to its purpose, but my skin prickled, like eyes bored into it.
I whipped my head toward Tol, but his gaze was roaming the tunnels, cataloging every inch. A wind rolled through the corridor. His hand twitched toward his dagger.
“They must have been used for something.”
“Maybe trade routes? For things they didn’t want to haul up the mountains?” Even as I suggested it, it felt wrong.
Unease sank in my stomach, but I forged ahead, glad to have Tol’s steady support at my back as that second pulse pounded beneath my skin like a beast ready to be unleashed.
Every step we took, the pressure was more pointed.
Finally, the mystlight fell across a doorway in the rock ahead of us, wide and arching.
I hurried toward it, the pulse quickening, tugging my gut until I was practically lurching forward. I pushed past that feeling, burst into the dark cavern.
And froze.
Empty walls towered over us, hard to see through the darkness swallowing up the space outside the circumference of our lantern. Branches stretched off the circular room, deep pathways into the mountains.
As I walked, holding the lantern higher, I realized three walls were carved with wide steps, climbing to the top.
No, not steps.
Seats.
Aimed toward where I assumed a stage would have been.
A theater.