Chapter 20
Chapter
Twenty
T he tunnel was dark, but my thoughts were darker.
“Is that … Is the entire mud quarter like that?” I asked as we gingerly traversed the uneven, rocky ground. It was darker than the queen’s soul down here.
“What, you mean poor, dirty, and decrepit?” Shava shot back, her voice echoing in the stone chamber. She was ahead of me somewhere. Not because I was afraid, but because she was more sure of herself.
I hated that.
“Where’d you learn the word decrepit?” I said before I could help myself.
Even though it was pitch black, I could feel the derision emanating off her.
“Gods, you’re such an ass sometimes,” she said back, her voice breaking.
I wasn’t sure what all the upset was about. It was a simple question; not an insult.
“Another girl you competed with, I bet,” I said, more to myself than her. I remembered her saying before that the other girls reaped with her taught her a few things .
I wondered where they were now. Married to Nobles? Dead?
It was such a waste, wasn’t it?
“Yes, say it. If you didn’t need me, you’d punch me in the nose,” I commented wryly, stumbling over a rock when I didn’t pick my foot up high enough. “Enough of this. I’m lighting a torch.”
I stopped and retrieved the little kit from my waist. We tried not to use it unless we had to. This was certainly an appropriate time.
“Took you long enough,” Shava goaded me. “I wanted to see how long you’d stumble around in the dark before succumbing. Can’t you just turn on your glowy skin?”
My eyes narrowed at her. Not that she could see them. Yet.
“Ha. So funny.”
I fumbled with the pouch in the darkness and the flint clattered to the ground. Shava made a tsking sound and snatched the materials from me.
“Allow me, or we’ll be here all day.”
“You’re in a pissy mood today,” I commented.
“Probably has something to do with being surrounded by idiots no matter if I’m in the mud quarter or the Seat or a cave,” she shot back.
I squashed the urge to squash her, because she was much better at lighting torches than I was, and my poor shins wouldn’t take much more abuse.
After a bit of grumbling, sparks flew, and then the small torch ignited, illuminating her dirty, tired face.
Not that mine was likely to look any better.
Shava led the way down the tunnel, which (now that we could see) looked much rougher and haphazard than the one that had led from the mines into the mud quarter. Rough lines and hack marks were etched deep into the stone walls, and the path wasn’t straight or even at all.
“Seemed like a rush job,” Shava said, not necessarily to me.
Silently, I agreed.
Continuing to study the marks as we walked, a pattern emerged.
“They’re all facing outwards, with the deeper cuts away from us,” I remarked.
Shava paused, putting a hand up against the wall to feel the deep grooves with her fingers.
“They dug outward from the capital,” she surmised.
I grinned. It was satisfying when someone could follow your train of thought.
“An escape tunnel then?” she asked.
“Or something else,” I murmured.
We continued our journey in silence. Eventually, the tunnel narrowed until we were forced on our hands and knees. I tried in vain to quell the burgeoning panic as all the memories of nearly dying in a cave surrounded me.
“Hey. It’s ok. We don’t have to press forward. Or I can, and you stay here.”
Shava’s tone was surprisingly gentle. That only made it worse. I didn’t need to be coddled. I didn’t need to be pitied.
But the thought of the walls closing in around me anymore made it hard to breathe.
“Z. Z? Zephyr?”
I tried to focus on Shava’s face, but the glow of the torch off her cheeks was distracting. She had nice cheekbones. And lips. I wished I could breathe. Why was it getting darker?
Her arms came around me, and though she constricted my chest further, something about the contact yanked my mind out of its panic. What was she doing?
I blushed as I came back to myself .
She was … hugging me.
“Don’t … don’t do that,” I wheezed, prying her off me and putting distance between us.
Her head tilted to the side, confused. I didn’t blame her. We’d fucked and kissed and done far more than simply put our arms around each other, but there was something intimate about the act and the circumstances that had me more anxious than my claustrophobia.
I didn’t like it.
“The tunnel has to end soon. Let’s push on,” I suggested, clearing my throat and looking stubbornly ahead into the darkness, and not at her.
I thought I heard a scoff from her as she pushed her way ahead of me with the torch. But I could have been wrong.
“Right. Always forward,” she remarked. We crawled forward.
Just breathe. You can always go back.
Immediately, the path forked ahead of us. One path narrowed and went off to the left, and another to the right. Though it narrowed, the ceiling went higher, so at least I wouldn’t have to crawl. I didn’t want to go down either, though. I longed for sun and the open air of the desert.
You didn’t always get what you wanted.
“I can take one, and you take the other.”
I knew Shava would suggest it the moment we saw both paths.
She handed me the torch (since we’d used my materials to make it) and made her own.
“What’s the plan? Meet back here?”
Seemed reasonable. Too reasonable to object.
“Fine,” I grit out. I turned down the path on the left and didn’t look back. Her footsteps retreated as she took the one on the right.
It took hours. Sometimes I had to crawl on my hands and knees, other times I had to set the torch down and force my body between cracks and crevices. I didn’t give myself time to think or panic, only to push forward.
Only forward.
The more I pushed, the better developed the tunnels were. After the third hour, I could comfortably walk again in a corridor-sized path, and noticed other tunnels branching off from the one I was in. I resisted the urge to take any, lest I became lost for good.
Not that someone hadn’t already thought of that. Vertical white slashes were etched into the wall at each intersection. It was obvious they were labels, marking my path as one vertical slash, while all intersecting tunnels had more marks.
That would be a side quest for another day.
Eventually, a breeze slid by my face, carrying fresh air.
And voices.
I paused, carefully setting my torch up against the wall so the flame could continue to burn. If it went out, I wasn’t sure if I had enough supplies (or practiced skill) to get another one going.
Creeping up towards the fresh air, I found a large boulder across the path. But to the side of it was a large gap that I could slide through.
“More patrols. What good will it do?”
Fireguards.
“One of the girls went missing after they fed the other to the dragon. You know how the queen is about her girls,” remarked a second voice, raspy and low.
“Dunno why they all try to run away. It’s a better life than anything we had, eh? Free food, clothes, a soft bed. Why, I’d suck a Noble dick for all of that!”
The Fireguards laughed, and I tried to count. Three, maybe four in total.
I waited, and their voices and footsteps faded away into the distance.
Girl. Shava. They were looking for Shava.
Should I feel jilted? No one was worried about me? It was probably for the best. I was known for disappearing for days (even weeks) at a time as I got lost in my research.
Besides, people always knew when their pretty possessions went missing.
Pushing myself through the narrow wedge in the stone, I emerged under the large dome at night. Above me loomed a large cliff and the castle itself, imposing from this steep, impossible angle.
The tunnel led right from the mud quarter to underneath the palace. Interesting.
I should go back and meet Shava.
And yet … I still likely had hours yet before it was dawn. Plenty of time to sneak into the castle and gather my notes and a few more materials to perform the next ritual … or three.
And food.
And another robe. A pillow wouldn’t be amiss either.
Hmm. Perhaps I’d have to find a few more satchels.
I was feeling pretty productive. I had several satchels of supplies—and my notes, and had run into no trouble at all.
Suspiciously so.
Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I didn’t linger as I gathered everything and made my way back out of the palace, towards the boulder with its fissure that held the tunnel.
Or tried to.
“There you are.”
I turned, satchels swinging haphazardly as I struggled to unsheathe my dagger while burdened down with my bags.
My heart pounded wildly in my chest as the figure grabbed my wrist, flaring my blood magick in my panic.
Golden light illuminated a familiar face, however more haggard and worn than I was used to seeing it.
“Vession,” I managed weakly. “You startled me.”
His dark shadow in the corridor gave credence to why the boys always referred to him as a great bat. I wasn’t sure what his presence here meant for me. “Where have you been? The queen has been asking questions. What have you done ?”
The golden sigils on my arms, face, and neck had faded back into my body, but Vession continued to stare at my skin as though it would come back any moment. I really needed to learn how to control that.
I arched an eyebrow. So my absence had been noticed, and by the queen herself. “The queen herself?”
Vession shook my wrist, his worry and fear turning to anger. “You have always been too smart for your own good. Go back to whatever hole you have found where she cannot find you. There is little I can do for you now.”
I wasn’t sure if he was talking about my status with the queen or the dangerous magicks I experimented with, but with the way his eyes lingered on my skin I had a fair guess at which one scared him more.
“The queen won’t find me,” I said, deliberately misunderstanding.
His eyes studied me .
“You are much too intelligent for this,” he cautioned, voice low.
I yanked free of his grasp. “Excuse me if I don’t think being too smart is a bad thing. Good day.”