Chapter 8
Rollin’s words echo through the tunnel, as terrifying and blood-curdling as the scream he let out when he fled whatever lurks in that dark shaft. For a heartbeat, no one moves.
Then everything happens at once.
Rollin shivers on the stone floor, and Luceran looks at him as if that single sentence were a personal insult. A challenge. A declaration of defiance aimed squarely at a creature who has never tolerated defiance from anyone.
I feel the shift before I see it. A tightening of the air. A cold so sharp it burns.
Then Luceran surges forward.
I throw out a hand on foolish instinct, but he doesn’t even slow. Frost skitters off his cloak as he storms past me, the force of his passing snapping the air against my cheek. Rollin barely manages to lift his head before Luceran’s hand clamps around his throat and yanks him upright.
Boots scrape stone. Rollin kicks helplessly, choking. Pax swears under his breath.
“You think death excuses you,” Luceran growls, lifting him higher, “from the debt you owe?”
Rollin’s face purples, his fingers clawing at Luceran’s grip.
“Please…” he gasps.
Luceran’s lips peel back, canines glinting.
“Your debt is far from repaid. Would you pass it on to your wife? Have her throwing an axe at these walls from dawn until dusk, amongst all these men? They are no better than animals.” Rollin’s breath breaks on a sob.
“And your daughters… barely old enough to braid their own hair. They will remember you only as the pathetic gambler who left them to freeze. You will disgrace them in death, just as you have in life, you fucking coward.”
I gasp. Even Pax flinches. But Rollin… he shakes his head. Even while choking, even while Luceran’s words slice him open, even as his legs begin to go still.
“No,” he rasps. “Please, my lord. Don’t make me… don’t send me back in there.”
The fact that he fears something inside that tunnel more than he fears Luceran freezes my blood solid.
Luceran’s grip tightens, and the mine reacts.
Frost veins across the walls, trembling with the force of his power. His free hand rises, palm blazing with a blinding, unnatural blue.
Luceran is done arguing.Done listening.Done pretending mercy was ever an option.
He summons a slick ribbon of frost that ripples down the tunnel floor, then hurls Rollin along it. Rollin screams, scraping across the ice, clawing at it, leaving streaks where his nails shred, but he doesn’t slow. He’s flung straight into the white glare of the mine’s entrance.
Luceran goes after him.
He moves along that same frozen strip without slipping or scrambling. He glides, closing the distance between them in seconds.
I stumble after them, heart slamming against my ribs, but while Rollin scrambles to find his feet, Luceran is already weaving frost into shape. Bars. Walls. A cage. It forms in the blink of an eye, a prison of clear, shimmering ice.
With a flick of his hand, a gust of frost lashes out, scooping Rollin clean off the ground and hurling him inside. He cries out, crashing against the frozen floor before sliding helplessly into the opposite wall. The door seals behind him with a vicious crack.
Somehow Rollin manages to crawl toward Luceran, trembling uncontrollably. He grips the bars as he begs, but the moment his skin touches the ice he screams and tears his hands away. Angry red burns flare across his palms, the flesh peeling in strips.
“My lord, please!” he sobs.
Luceran tilts his head. “But is this not what you wanted?” His voice is smooth, poisonous, making my stomach twist. “I am not forcing you back into the tunnel, am I? You should be rejoicing.”
Rollin’s shoulders cave inward, unable to form a reply.
Pax steps to Luceran’s side, spine stiff, jaw clenched. I recognize that kind of anger. The silent kind. The kind that must stay buried if you want to keep your head.
“He is to receive no food or water,” Luceran continues. “And he will sleep in this cage.”
Pax swallows hard. “But my lord… what if he freezes to death during the night?”
Luceran’s reply is curt. “Then you will need to find someone else to fill his quota, foreman.”
“Lord Luceran,” I snap.
The echo rings through the camp, far louder than I intended, and every head whips toward me. Luceran’s last.
His upper lip twitches. It feels like a warning.
But I cannot swallow the words burning in my throat. I may be indentured to the Fae, but I am still Neve Devlin, and this is wrong.
“You cannot leave this man to die,” I say. “Not when there is something in those mines so horrifying, he would rather suffer your wrath than return to it. You must release him. You must find out what frightened him so badly.”
Silence tightens around us like a drawn bowstring. I feel it in my bones, ready to snap, ready to whip back at me with brutal force.
And then… Luceran laughs.
It is low and dark and cuts straight through the cold.
“Are you pleading on this man’s behalf?” he asks at last, voice deepening beneath a husky growl.
I want to shake my head. I want to say no, if only to save my own skin.
But I don’t. I can’t.
I nod. “I am.”
He takes a single step toward me, and I shiver as wind seeps through my coat, curling icy fingers down my spine.
“Have you not heard the stories, Neve Devlin?” he asks, looming over me, so close my breath catches. It is impossible to concentrate on anything but the rise and fall of his chest at my eye level, the cobalt runes along his collarbone flaring bright blue with each inhale.
“I don’t know any stories,” I lie quickly, forcing my gaze away from his broad, muscled chest, from the pale line of his lips. “I only know what is right in front of me.”
Impossibly, he steps even closer. Frost thickens my eyelashes, glittering at the corners of my vision.
“Well, it is I right in front of you, human,” he says, the word dripping disdain. “Your lord. Your master. You are indebted to me, and until that debt is repaid, the only concern in your short life is to ensure that each and every one of my desires is fulfilled.”
I tremble before him and squeeze my eyes shut, as if that could block out his presence, his power, his voice.
“And do you know what I desire now, Neve Devlin?”
I don’t answer.
His cold breath brushes my ear, and it prickles. “Ore. I want my fucking ore. And since this human you care so deeply for is too useless to get it for me, you can work his shift for him.”
Then… he’s gone.
I don’t dare open my eyes yet. I hear everything instead. His boots pounding through snow. Sprites shrieking at one another. The carriage door slamming. The crack of the reins.
“Put her to work,” Luceran calls, voice fading with the thunder of hooves until both disappear entirely.
Finally, I open my eyes.
I’m still shaking, but it has nothing to do with the cold. I don’t know if I cried, and if I did, the tears have frozen on my skin.
Pax stands in front of me.
He straightens, looking me over curiously. “That was brave.”
I start to shake my head, but he lifts a hand to cut me off.
“And stupid. Very, very stupid.”
I nod at that, a fractured breath stumbling out of me as my heart claws its way back into a steady rhythm.
He jerks his head toward the mines. “Come on. You’d best get to work if you’re to complete Rollin’s quota.” A small grin tugs at his mouth. “I’m sure me and the others can help you… some.”
Pax turns and I fall into step behind him. My mind spins.
What was I thinking?
One minute I’m determined to know my place, keep my head down, and survive.
Next, I’m arguing with my Fae master like some reckless heroine in a tale told around tavern fires.
And now, now I’ve earned myself a shift in the mines.
The mines with a supposedly haunted tunnel.
The mines where men hear their names whispered from the dark.
As if I needed to invent new ways to die.
As I follow Pax, as we pass by the cage of ice, I glance back at Rollin. He somehow finds the strength to lift his head. To smile. Even with bruises blooming across his face, even with a violet handprint cinched around his throat like a collar.
“Thank you for trying,” he rasps. “But it is no use. We will all die here, either by his hand…” He forces himself to look back toward the mines, his entire body trembling. “Or another’s.”
I pause. “What is down there?”
Rollin shudders hard, eyes glowing red with tears. “A demon,” he stammers, and he grips the bars despite the burn, despite the pain. “We dug too deep… we dug too deep.”
“Neve,” Pax calls from the mine entrance. “Come on.”
I nod, drag my eyes away from Rollin and follow Pax back into the dark.
Pax wastes no time putting me to work, though he keeps it to tasks even I can manage.
He shows me how to stack the freshly cut ore into the carts, how to brace my legs before pushing the heavy trolleys up the rails toward the scales.
My arms burn, my shoulders ache, and silver dust coats my lungs until every breath stings.
As for Rollin’s quota, Pax and a handful of the miners quietly shoulder most of the burden. They pass cartloads along the track with grunts and nods, pretending not to notice when I falter or fall behind. I’m grateful, but guilt gnaws at me all the same.
Time dissolves in the dark. There is no sun, no sky, only the drip of water from the ceiling and the clang of pickaxes echoing through cavern after cavern, and no matter how hard I try not to, I cannot stop glancing toward the narrow tunnel yawning beyond the sigils.
Vein Three.
Finally, as I cough out another cloud of glittering dust, I can’t hold my tongue any longer.
“What is down there?” I ask Pax. “Was Rollin telling the truth?”
Pax pulls off his gloves one finger at a time, each movement slow and weary. Then he leans back against the wall with a long exhale.