Chapter Twenty #2
I can see Kaelen, too. But the pit was in total darkness when we fell in.
Like he’s reading my mind, Kaelen nods at my chest, and I glance down to see that the amulet is glowing again. No giant beams of light, at least not yet, but a strong enough glow that we can see what we’re up against.
“It’s like a magic torch,” I say, marveling, and then realize some of that pink haze must still be mucking up my reasoning abilities. “I feel kind of floaty.”
“I think you need to hold on to this,” he says and pulls the key out of his pocket.
It’s slender, the length of my thumb, and ornate. When I hesitantly take it from the prince, I find it’s heavy, too. But I don’t care enough about a key to examine it just now, so I shove it deep into my pocket and sit here, panting.
Kaelen puts an arm around my waist and, for a minute, we three sit like that. Huddled together, concentrating on breathing, glad to be alive. When Bern shivers against me, it wakes me up to another problem. The cold.
“We’re going to freeze to death if we don’t get out of here. In Garethan’s Compilation of Bodily Humors and Healings, he writes that—”
“Soli.” Kaelen closes his eyes and sighs.
“What?”
“You don’t have to quote your sources. Don’t you realize by now that I believe in you and your unbelievable wealth of obscure information?”
“Right.” I feel my face heat, which I don’t mind, since it’s the only part of me that’s warm. “We could get hypothermia. It happens when the core body temperature drops to a dangerously low level. The body loses heat faster than it can warm back up.”
“That’s bad, I assume.” His face is grim as he looks past me at Bern, whose entire body has started to shake.
“Very bad. We could die. And since we’re injured, it’s even more important we get warm.
” I look up and up and up to the dimly lit opening of the pit.
The draugr isn’t there, or at least he’s not leaning over and looking down at us.
But the stone walls don’t have many ledges or even small protrusions. I don’t see how we could climb back up.
And beneath us, there’s nothing but icy, rushing water.
“On th-th-the bright side,” Bern stammers.
“On the bright side, what?” I tighten my grip on him when he wobbles.
“Th-th-there’s no bright side. I just wanted to say something hopeful,” the soldier mumbles. “Lady Soli, tell my nan—”
“No! We’re not doing that,” I snap. “No last words, no ‘in case I die’ monologues. This isn’t a bard’s song. We’re going to get out of here, and you can tell your nan everything you want to tell her yourself.”
He grins. Not much more than a twitch of his lips, but I decide to take it as an encouraging sign. “She’d like you. You’re as bossy as she is.”
“Bossy?” I’m not sure if I’m flattered or offended. I never had the chance to be bossy before. Freedom is changing my personality already.
Kaelen chuckles. “When you’re right, you’re right, Bern.”
“What are we going to do?” Bern asks me.
“We need to swim out of here,” I say reluctantly. “The problem is that I can’t swim.”
“Yeah, I kind of got that when you almost punched me in the nose while I was trying to rescue you from drowning,” Kaelen says wryly.
“Oh, th-that’s good,” I say fervently. “Keep embarrassing me, because I warm up a little when I blush.”
His eyes narrow, and he leans toward me. It seems like a strange time and place for kissing, but I’m okay with it. When I raise my face to his, though, Kaelen touches my forehead and frowns.
“You’re bleeding and ice-cold. Bern is in worse shape. We need to get out of here, and we need to do it sooner rather than later, or we’ll be too cold to function.”
“I agree.” I hear my words slur, but since I can’t really feel my face, I don’t let it bother me. “How are we going to do that?”
“We have to swim.”
I look down at the water rushing past beneath my boots.
“I just told you I can’t swim. Bern can’t, either—not that his arm works, anyway.
So, how are you going to manage with both of us?
” I point at the jagged opening in the pit’s wall where the water rushes out.
“We have to go that way, because otherwise we’d be fighting the current.
But there’s no light in that tunnel. We’d be swimming in the dark—”
“Your amulet,” he says.
“Mostly in the dark, at least until the amulet quits lighting up, like it did with the wolves, and there’s an even bigger problem. Much bigger problem. We—”
“Don’t know how long the tunnel is, how big it is, if there’s any air to breathe if or when it narrows,” he says. “I know. But I also know that we have no choice.”
“Maybe our friends will rescue us.” I look up at the opening to the pit. “There’s rope in the wagon. They could throw it down and—”
“If they could, they would have d-d-done it by now,” Bern says, his voice not much more than a whisper. “We have to assume the worst.”
Pain twists through me at this obvious truth I’ve been ignoring. “We can hope for the best.”
“We can always hope for the best,” Kaelen says, twisting to take off his jacket. “But we need to act on the information we have now.”
Despite the overwhelming danger and threat of imminent death, I can’t help but stare at his muscular chest in his wet, clinging shirt.
“Um.” I swallow. He’s ridiculously gorgeous. It’s unfair, really.
He glances at me, and then his expression turns smug. Smug and … hungry, when he studies my own wet clothing.
“I—”
“I know,” he says, his eyes determined. “Not the time or place, but we are going to finish that discussion, Solitude Grace.”
“Me and which Kaelen?” I mutter.
“S-Solitude?” Bern smiles a little before sadness rises in his eyes. “So pretty. Lil’s name is—was—Lilybelle. Almost as pretty as she was.”
Then he slumps against me.
My breath stops, and I shake him. “Bern! Wake up. Wake up!”
“Soldier!”
Kaelen’s snapped command must reach the military training ingrained in Bern, because he visibly struggles to open his eyes.
“Yes, sir,” he mumbles.
“It’s now or never,” Kaelen says. “Soli. Listen to me. No matter what, you can’t fight me. I know it will be instinct, especially if we get caught in any tight spots. But I’ll be towing you and Bern both, and—”
“I know. I’ll try,” I whisper. I don’t know what else to say, because I don’t want to lie to him, even unintentionally.
I’ll do my best not to struggle, even if the river pushes us into a space so small we get jammed together, water over our heads and in our noses and mouths and lungs and …
“Maybe you could leave us here. Go swim on your own, find a way out, and come back for us.” I look up again.
“You could even come back through the cavern and use a rope?”
He captures my chin in his hand. “We can’t do that. You know we can’t. First, if—when I make it through, I don’t know how far I’ll be from here. Or if there will be an entrance from there back into the tunnel system to the cavern. Or if the draugrs—”
“Yes. I know! I was just … testing you.”
Astonishingly, despite everything, he grins at me. And then he kisses me and drops into the water. He holds a hand up for Bern, who doesn’t seem to know what’s happening anymore. I gently nudge the wounded soldier off the ledge and into the water, and Kaelen catches him. Then he nods at me.
I can’t do it.
I try to force myself off the ledge, but I can’t.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but everything I’ve had to face since the king’s guards first took me from the library has used up all the bravery I had.
” I raise my chin. “I’ll just stay here.
You and Bern go, find a way, and I’ll wait here.
I’m perfectly fine on this ledge. I’ll just think warm thoughts and—”
Kaelen reaches up and yanks me down into the water.