Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
“By all means, take your time, Miss Yarrow.” Kane sighed as Erinna peered around yet another corner.
“I’m making sure we’re not being followed.” Erinna’s throat went tight. “And don’t call me Miss Yarrow.” That’s what they called her mother before she drowned at sea. Before pirates ensured nothing would ever be recovered.
She shot a deadly glare at Kane.
If he was bothered by her distaste, Kane didn’t show it. In fact, it almost looked like he enjoyed her frustration.
He opened the side of his coat with a flourish, revealing the blade resting at his hip. “You forget who you’re with. If anyone tries to stop us, they’ll be dead before they can scream their mothers’ names.”
“That kind of arrogance will get you killed,” Erinna warned, but knew somewhere deep in her bones that Kane was right. She’d seen a glimpse at how deadly he could be. How easy it had been for him to butcher trained Tarthan soldiers.
He winked. “Hasn’t yet.”
Erinna rolled her eyes. “Yet is the operative word, Atwater.” With a few more cautious turns, Erinna finally found what she was looking for.
Wedged between the crumbling walls of an old pleasure house and launderers was an unassuming pile of debris and dirt. A pile that concealed the entrance to an old witchstone mine.
For the first time in what felt like ages, Erinna felt the warmth of hope. Maybe we can actually do this, she let herself believe.
Moving below ground was the best way to remain hidden from the patrolling soldiers. With Tarth’s most wanted pirate, and an escaped aberrant, it would be the difference between freedom and death.
Erinna crouched by a heap of dried hay and loose gravel, pushing the detritus aside to reveal a door sculpted to blend seamlessly into the cracked cobblestones.
“Oh,” Kane said in a tone that was almost approving.
With that, the remaining fear she harbored for him had finally melted away. Replaced by growing irritation.
“Anything you want to say?” she asked, the words sounding more like a threat. Daring him to challenge the little patience she had left, and find out what would happen if he pushed too far.
“I’m impressed. You make a fine smuggler.”
Erinna’s jaw tightened. “I’m not a smuggler.”
“No?” Kane leaned back on his heels, an infuriating smirk playing on his lips. “Then I guess I’m not a pirate.”
A sharp retort rose to Erinna’s lips, but she bit it down. She knew his type, and they thrived on attention and adversary. It would serve her well to stop giving him what he wanted.
With renewed focus, she turned her attention to the much more important task of getting them below ground, into Broman’s old witchstone mines.
A small arcanum-infused lock was carved into stone. The safeguard against entry, known only to Broman’s inner circle and the Yarrows.
Even if someone managed to disarm the lock, they would have to navigate the tunnels below. Someone would have to be desperate or stupid enough to chance the perilous maze of an abandoned witchstone vein.
Attempting to navigate the twists and turns of the mines without any sort of wherewithal was a sure way to send you straight to the Realm Beyond.
Starvation was the best-case scenario if you took a wrong turn too many. Erinna herself would prefer a cave-in. It was faster.
She bent down, fingers poised above a few small stones, ready to shift them into place and release the locking mechanism, but paused. She’d be taking down the infamous Kane Atwater of the Hellish Rebuke.
She gazed over her shoulder at him. There he stood, hovering above her, blocking out the sun and casting her in shadow while he waited for her to complete the task. Inez’s hands remained clasped around his broad shoulders, arms swimming in the large coat.
Erinna swallowed. “How do I know I’m safe once we’re down there?”
“Don’t be naive, Yarrow. With that mark on your arm, and the aberrant in your custody, your days of safety are numbered if not gone already.”
“I meant from you.”
The corner of his lips twitched in amusement. “You’re not. But I’m not going to kill you. I made a deal with your father. Besides, I don’t kill without a good enough reason.”
Erinna raised a brow and couldn’t help but ask, “What are good enough reasons then?”
“If they cross me or stand in my way.”
Erinna opened her mouth with a retort, but it was clear Kane had run out of patience. “Open the hatch now, or the next question will be the last thing you speak.”
Another hawk sounded in the distance.
Another chance a mage’s summon would spot them.
Chills ran up Erinna’s spine, and she turned her attention back to the coded lock. He wouldn’t kill her, so he said, but she wouldn’t let her mind wander to the types of suffering one could experience before death.
Erinna clicked the last stone to the correct combination, a pattern that had been burned into her memory, and lifted the well-hidden hatch.
Shadow and darkness welcomed them down below.
“There are witchlights further down the path, just stick close to me and—” Erinna didn’t get the chance to finish.
Kane held Inez tight against his back as she struggled against his hold, her eyes wide in terror as she stared down into the darkness. Kane seemed perfectly unfazed by her struggles. He stepped to the edge with a grin and jumped.
The shadows swallowed them whole.
Erinna’s mouth parted in disbelief as she found purchase on the metal ladder and started her descent. The door moved back into place, shrouding them in subterranean night.
There was nothing but silence and inky black beneath the city streets. Erinna gripped each rung of the ladder as she descended.
The moment her feet hit stone, light exploded behind her.
Erinna whipped around, heart pounding. Kane cupped a ball of fire in his palm like it was nothing. The flames cast restless shadows on the tunnel walls, painting his face in amber and darkness.
A conjuror.
The pirate was a conjuror.
The kind of mage who could call upon an element with a thought, bend it to their will. One who could burn you alive before you even drew breath to scream.
Of course his element would be fire. Reckless and unrelenting.
Kane caught sight of her poorly concealed distress and smirked.
“Let’s go,” Erinna huffed, brushing past him to continue their journey through the underground.
They moved in tense silence. Winding through tunnels that grew more narrow with every turn. Erinna counted the intersections to maintain her bearings—twelve, thirteen, fourteen turns with only a few dozen more to go.
The air grew thicker, and eventually the walls pushed them so close, Kane was nearly walking on top of her. The proximity of his body warmed her as he followed behind. It was simultaneously comforting and unwelcome.
Nothing but the echo of their footsteps and the dripping of water along the walls could be heard as they moved.
For the first time, Erinna wished the pirate had something to say. Something to chase away such choking silence.
Of course he would be quiet now, when she couldn’t ignore every drop of water, every scuffle of small paws across the stone, and wind that sounded a little too much like whispers. The kind of whispers that usually came with the cold touch of the dead.
It’s not them, she told herself as another damp, cold gust of air breezed by her cheek. The last time she was down in the abandoned vein, the experience was far from pleasant.
Those achingly frail shadows with their barbed whispers of vengeance had found her.
It was the last time she felt her Talent, thank the gods.
That night had been the first time she tasted her father’s whiskey and drowned herself to blackness in hopes of forgetting.
It had worked for the most part. One random bloom in the last ten years was a fluke.
Erinna shivered at the memory and tried not to startle as a damp gust of air brushed past her cheek. She chanced a look over her shoulder, eying the man who held the flame in his hand aloft like a torch. Small breaths came from Inez as she drifted to sleep on Kane’s back.
Gods, how Erinna craved a good night’s sleep and perhaps a strong vintage to help her get there. Any reprieve from this madness. Her body was tense and sore, unable to relax given the circumstances.
Kane was the opposite. He looked far too at ease for a man who had just escaped the gallows and who was the most wanted pirate in the kingdom. Erinna didn’t know why that bothered her so much.
Eventually, Kane’s footsteps grew louder as he scuffed his sole across the stone, sending small rocks skittering in his wake. One bounced harmlessly off Erinna’s own boot as he settled himself beside her.
“You’re doing that on purpose,” she accused, refusing to look his way.
“Doing what, exactly?”
Erinna didn’t have to see Kane to know the smile that graced his face. She could practically feel it as he looked at her. “Walking like a wild horse in a library. You’re drawing too much attention.”
“There’s no one down here. Unless it’s ghosts you’re scared of bumping into?” He knocked his knuckles against the tunnel walls.
Now Erinna did turn. “Afraid of cave-ins, actually. But I suppose pirates are more familiar with drowning than being buried alive.”
Kane’s smile grew. “We’re adaptable folk.” His shoulder brushed against hers in the narrow passage. The heat from the flame in his hand, and the proximity of his body, flushed her cheeks.
Erinna would be more irate if she wasn’t internally grateful to have something else to focus on.
“Which way?” Kane asked as they came to another intersection. Erinna studied the junction, noting the rusted iron markers someone had driven into the rock decades ago. “Left, the right passage is already flooded.”
They continued.
The passage finally widened, and yet Kane remained just as close to Erinna as he was before.