Imara
THIRTY-THREE
The Crimson Vale spreads before us in the gray dawn light, and every instinct I have screams to turn back.
We’ve been traveling for two days—moving through the night, resting in whatever shelter we could find during daylight hours.
Kharvek’s body has become my compass, his arm around my waist during the long marches, his chest against my back when we sleep.
I’ve stopped thinking of these touches as new. They feel necessary now. Essential.
“You’re shaking.” His breath warms my ear. We’re crouched behind a ridge of rust-colored stone, watching the Sanctum rise from the valley floor. Seven levels of fused stone and bone and iron, pulsing with the crimson glow of blood-wards.
Home. If a slaughterhouse can be called home.
“I’m fine.”
His hand slides from my waist to my hip, pulls me tighter against him. “Liar.”
“I prefer ‘strategically optimistic.’”
A sound rumbles in his chest. Almost a laugh. His lips find the curve of my neck, press a kiss to the pulse point there. “We don’t have to do this today.”
“Yes, we do.” I turn in his arms, face him.
In the pre-dawn dimness, his features are all shadow and sharp angles—the heavy jaw, the filed tusks, the one eye that sees and the one that doesn’t.
Beautiful in a way I never expected. “The Matron can track us anywhere now. Every hour we wait is an hour she uses to prepare.”
“Then we stop waiting.” He cups my face. His palms are rough, scarred, capable of crushing bone. They cradle my cheeks as if I’m made of glass. “But you don’t have to pretend you’re not afraid. Not with me.”
The permission undoes something tight in my chest.
He’s the only person who’s ever seen behind the mask—and he didn’t use it against me. I’m still not sure what to do with that.
“I’m terrified.” The words crack on the way out. “I’ve been dreaming about destroying this place for a decade. Planning it. Living for it. And now that we’re actually here—”
“Now it’s real.”
I nod. Let him hold me for one more breath. Then I pull back and focus on what needs to be done.
“The emergency channel.” I pull a small mirror from my pack. “Tomek should be watching for the signal.”
The dead drop is exactly where I left it three years ago—a hollow in the rocks near the Vale’s northern boundary, marked with a symbol only my network would recognize. I place the mirror inside, angle it to catch the rising sun. Three flashes. Pause. Two more.
Now we wait.
Kharvek settles against a boulder, pulls me down beside him. I don’t resist—lean into his warmth, let his arm wrap around my shoulders. His fingers trace idle patterns on my arm through the fabric of my robe.
“Tell me about Tomek.”
“He maintains the drainage systems.” I watch the horizon for a response signal. “Started working in the tunnels when he was twelve. He knows every passage, every junction, every forgotten route beneath the Sanctum.”
“Can we trust him?”
“He’s been feeding me information for six years. Helped me sabotage three breeding rituals. Smuggled out two children who were scheduled for sacrifice.” I pause. “He hates the Matron as much as I do. Perhaps more.”
“Why?”
“She harvested his daughter.”
Kharvek goes still. His hand stops moving on my arm.
“He watched,” I continue quietly. “They made him watch. Said it would teach him the cost of disobedience. His wife hung herself three days later.”
Silence. Then: “And he kept working for them.”
“What choice did he have? Run, and they’d hunt him down. Fight, and they’d kill him before he could accomplish anything.” I turn my head, meet Kharvek’s gaze. “He chose to wait. To watch. To gather information until he found people who could actually use it.”
“People like us.”
“Exactly.”
A flash of light from the valley below. Return signal—Tomek acknowledging receipt. Three flashes back: meet at the secondary location.
“He’s coming.” I rise, brush dust from my robes. “The entrance to the drainage tunnels is half a mile west. If we move now, we can be underground before full sunrise.”
Kharvek stands. Reaches for my hand. Our fingers intertwine—automatic now, instinctive.
“Lead the way.”