Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The air in the tunnel seemed even more suffocating, the walls more oppressive than just an hour ago. Noah kept his gaze locked on Skye’s back, on the rigid set of her shoulders as she stumbled over loose stones. Austin still gripped her arm, proprietary and unyielding.
Noah fought the need to free her from Austin’s control and himself from the constraints of the two guards flanking him.
Behind them, Keir followed with the other two guards at his back.
Their formation negated any rash moves. Noah had calculated the odds a dozen times already.
Four armed men and Austin, in a space barely wide enough for two abreast. Sometimes, not even that.
Any attempt to reach Skye would end in bloodshed before he’d taken three steps.
He couldn’t afford to risk her being caught in the melee.
Nor could he risk his family. Getting Emily safely to the portal had to be the top priority. For now, at least.
A tremor shuddered through the tunnel, triggering a fine sifting of dust from the ceiling along with a fist-sized chunk of stone that struck Noah’s shoulder. He winced, stumbling slightly, but it was Skye’s gasp that twisted his stomach as a spray of gravel peppered her head and back.
Austin pulled her to him, shielding her with his body in a show of protection that curled Noah’s hands into fists.
He should be the one shielding her, steadying her, protecting her, instead of following powerlessly behind.
Ahead, Paige struggled over a series of boulders that had not been there earlier. She had a fierce grip on Brody, trying to haul him upward, but the boy’s short legs couldn’t find purchase on the jagged surface, and she lacked the strength to lift him while struggling to keep her own balance.
Noah pushed past Austin and Skye, not waiting for permission. “I need to help my mother.”
Austin’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing, simply gesturing to his guards to continue as they were.
Noah picked Brody up and swung him into his arms. The boy locked his arms around Noah’s neck with desperate strength and a faint whimper.
“I’ve got you,” Noah told him, shifting his weight to extend a hand to Paige.
She gripped it and he steadied her over the boulder, feeling the slight tremor in her fingers.
Her face was ghostly in the torchlight, streaked with dust and damp with perspiration, but her eyes still held that fierce maternal fire he’d admired since the day she’d taken him and Emily into her family.
“Hold on to me,” he told her quietly. “Stay as close as you can.”
She nodded, too breathless for words as they hurried forward.
Brody, coughing from the dust and trembling with each new rumble and rock fall, buried his face against Noah’s neck. “I’m okay, Noah, but I’m afraid the rocks are going to hurt Emily. Mamma too.”
The words tugged at Noah’s heart. “I know. But it will be over soon.”
“And we can all go to our new house?” Brody lifted his head, his eyes wide and trusting in his dirt-streaked face. “And Emily will be better? Mamma says when we get to our new place, they can make her better.”
Noah’s throat tightened. He wanted to promise. Wanted to give the boy the certainty he needed and deserved. But he’d made too many promises already that were likely to shatter against the truth, and he could not bring himself to add another.
“Maybe not everything right away,” he managed. “But hopefully before too long.”
Brody studied him with those impossibly wise eyes, then lowered his head to Noah’s shoulder.
Ahead, the torchlight illuminated Taran’s broad back. The litter he and Finn had carried Emily on when they started out lay discarded on the rocks. The newly fallen debris had made it too bulky and difficult to maneuver.
Taran cradled Emily in the protective curve of his arms, his shoulders hunched forward to shield her from the falling dirt and debris.
Holding the torch high, Finn moved several paces ahead of Taran, moving loose stones aside to clear the worst of the rubble. His shirt was torn across one shoulder where a falling rock had caught him. A dark line of blood traced down his arm, but he continued to move with relentless determination.
Another tremor, deeper this time, shuddered through the tunnel. Small shards of stone fell from a fresh crack in the ceiling. Noah instinctively dipped his head over Brody’s as he pulled Paige closer, but he couldn’t resist a glance back at Skye.
Austin’s voice cut through the gloom, sharp and venomous. “This is intolerable! Being stuck in this deathtrap is your doing, Skye. I should never have coddled you and allowed such an outrageous bargain in the first place. Believe me, it’s a mistake I will not repeat.”
Noah clenched his jaw so hard pain lanced through his temples. Every instinct screamed at him to turn around and rescue the woman he loved. But Taran’s whispered words in the deep cells held him back.
Trust her strength. She’s buying us the precious time Emily needs. Dinnae waste her sacrifice.
Forcing himself to keep moving, Noah took Paige’s arm and pressed on, recoiling when a deep, percussive boom from somewhere behind them shook the tunnel so violently they all struggled to stay on their feet. Brody cried out, clinging to him as Paige stumbled to the rock-littered floor.
Looking back, Noah saw that a section of ceiling the size of a wagon had fallen to the floor not thirty paces behind them, sending a wall of choking dust rolling toward them like a grey wave.
Ahead, Taran hunched lower over Emily, turning his back to the blast of dust. Noah gripped Brody tighter, helped Paige up and tucked her tight against his side as the cloud engulfed them.
For several seconds he couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, could only feel the grit scoring his eyes and the boy’s fingers digging into his neck and shoulders.
Noah strained to hear Skye’s voice but could only hear a chorus of coughing behind him.
“Ceiling collapse!” Finn bellowed from ahead. “Move faster!”
They pushed on, still coughing, stumbling, fighting their way forward through air thick enough to chew as the sound of more collapsing stone echoed around them.
After the worst of the dust settled, Noah glanced back. The passage behind them no longer existed. Tons of stone and earth sealed off the space where they’d been just moments ago.
Everyone stared, momentarily frozen. Two of the guards whispered urgently to each other, their voices tight with terror.
“Silence!” Austin snarled, but the authority in his voice had weakened. His eyes darted from the wreckage to the widening fissures in the ceiling above, and Noah saw something he’d never seen on Austin’s face before.
Fear. Genuine, unvarnished fear.
“Dinnae stand there,” Taran yelled. “Move!”
Battered and bruised, and after what seemed like hours of tremors, falling rock and choking dust, they finally made the last turn and reached the spot Austin had indicated the portal should be.
Noah’s stomach dropped.
Still nothing but solid stone, indistinguishable from every other section of wall they’d passed. No shimmer, no light, no ripple in the air he was told to expect. Just cold, dead, immovable rock.
“Mayhap ’twill be a wee bit safer here, against the portal wall,” Taran said to Paige, indicating the slight overhang of natural stone. “If ’tis a portal at all,” he added, glancing at Austin.
Once she’d settled with her back to the wall, Noah knelt and carefully laid Brody in her lap. He curled into her immediately, pressing his face to her shoulder. Paige pulled him tight, moving her lips against his hair in words too soft to hear.
“Rest while ye can, Love,” Taran told her, his voice impossibly gentle given the surrounding carnage. “And whatever happens, dinnae let go of the lad.”
Noah moved to Taran’s side. His sister’s face looked ghostly beneath a film of dust, her lips faintly blue in the dim light and her breath so shallow he was tempted to place his hand beneath her nose to confirm it existed at all.
“Let me take her,” he offered. “Give your arms and back a rest.”
“Nae.” Taran’s voice brooked no argument, though his arms must have been screaming. “She stays wi’ me.”
Finn appeared at Noah’s shoulder. “I’d like to take a turn, if you’ll allow it.”
“I thank ye, but nae.” Taran looked down at the child in his arms with something so fierce and raw that Noah had to look away for a moment. “She stays wi’ me all the way tae…” he blinked the moisture from his eyes. “All the way.”
Noah checked the rest of the group for injuries, finding scrapes and bruises on everyone, another shallow gash on Finn’s shoulder, and a slight cut above Paige’s left eye, smeared with blood that she’d wiped away without complaint.
He moved toward Skye, needing to see for himself that she was unharmed.
Austin stepped between them. “She’s fine. Tend to your own.”
Skye’s green eyes met Noah’s, and the look that passed between them carried the weight of everything they couldn’t say. She gave him the smallest nod, as if saying; I’m all right. Don’t provoke him.
Noah forced himself to turn away.
As he moved through the rest of the group, he noticed the guards had drifted to the edge of the tunnel, their vigilance crumbling along with the walls around them.
Two of them sat with their swords across their laps, their eyes fixed on the ceiling rather than their prisoners.
The other two stood close together, muttering in low, rapid voices, not bothering to heed Keir’s movements as he went to join Finn.
“Will ye let the lass sit?” Taran asked Austin, indicating a space beside Paige. “She needs the rest.”
“She stays with me,” Austin snarled, mimicking Taran’s words as he paced anxiously in the narrow space, but always within reach of Skye. His composure seemed to fracture with each new tremor and rockfall.