Chapter 10 #2
The darkness of the tunnel opening made my skin crawl.
It was damp and musty in there, with a hint of rot.
The tunnel was wide at first, but no one bothered to light a torch, relying on their ability to see in the dark.
But even Naga eyes needed a hint of light to see, and soon, it felt like I was half-blind and surrounded by nothing but hostile warriors.
When I flicked out my tongue to draw scents deep into my lungs, I could smell Aser’s musky scales beside me and the lighter notes of Astrexa.
There was leather and stone, many different male scents, and only faintly could I locate the unique notes that made up Reid.
It felt like an impossible distance separated us, though in reality, it was no more than thirty feet.
I wanted his arms around me, his warmth at my side.
I wanted him to hold me so I could feel safe, but every foot traveled deeper into the mountain brought us closer to Bitter Storm’s hordes, to danger.
Haven was starting to sound like its name—a haven of safety.
Now I wasn’t just picturing Reid’s arms to protect me, but Zathar and his best friends.
What I wouldn’t give to see my brother’s kind eyes, the gruff but hulking form of Iave, or Corin with his cleverness and penchant for exploding things.
It kept me sane as we traveled through the dark to concoct stories in my mind about how the three of them—and Reid—would take care of this bunch and rescue me.
If there was one thing I’d learned in life, it was that you couldn’t count on anyone to come to your aid.
They were nice fantasies to have, but if I wanted to get Reid and myself out of here alive, I had to do something about it myself.
At some point, I realized that something did emit a light in the tunnel—gentle veins of an unidentified substance shimmered with the barest hint of luminescence.
Like a web of pinkish vines, or maybe it was ore inside the rock—I didn’t know.
It was just enough to see by, and the farther we traveled, the brighter their glow seemed to become.
Now I was thinking about rock and wondered faintly how heavy a mountain was. What if it collapsed on top of us?
The voices of Aser and Astrexa, as they conversed, seemed to bounce off the stone too, jumbling their words together so that I struggled to hear what they said.
When I did catch snatches of their conversation, it made my stomach turn.
They were becoming fast friends, united in their desire for power.
It was a friendship that was bound to fail someday, but it boded nothing but bad things right now.
If I wasn’t mistaken, Astrexa was trying to convince Aser not to pursue me, but to allow her to defeat me in front of his warriors.
Then she would be the undisputed Queen of Thunder Rock, and they could join forces as he wanted.
I could not hear what Aser replied to that proposal, but I was certain it was exactly what he wanted, so why wouldn’t he agree?
The sounds that came from ahead of me in the tunnel made me think we were almost at our destination.
It felt like everyone picked up the pace, eager to get home, while I wanted to drag this out as long as possible.
I smelled their Hearth Cave long before we reached it—a particular kind of stench that was hard to describe.
Latrines, campfires, and bodies packed together, their scents combined with the various trades.
The leather workers, in particular, fouled up the air.
I had never considered what all those scents inside a cave would combine into—it wasn’t good.
There was light, though, when we left our tunnel and entered a huge, massive cavern.
The roof soared high above my head, and hundreds of wooden huts covered the area.
Naga moved everywhere—hundreds of them—and many were younglings or warriors.
With a shocked breath, I realized that if I ever did see a female, she was always accompanied by a spear-wielding warrior.
And there were shockingly few of them. Too few.
“This is your stop,” Astrexa drawled when our party halted just inside the massive cavern.
I glanced around, surprised and uncertain about what she meant.
We were on the edge of the sprawling, packed-together, and very crowded village inside a mountain.
No building stood out in particular, and all of them looked old and ramshackle, as if they had been there for a very long time without any improvements.
When you did not need to worry about rain and wind, I supposed your building standards might slip a little.
When my orange-speckled guard grabbed my upper arm in a tight squeeze, I knew Astrexa and Aser had come to an agreement.
He grinned malevolently as he squeezed my biceps, forcing me to turn to the left.
I saw it then: a wooden door set into a stone wall.
Another Bitter Storm male swung it open, exposing the dark interior with a hard dirt-and-stone floor.
“In you go, Princess,”Aser told me, grinning so his upper gums were exposed.
He straightened his already very straight, dull-brown robes as if he were wearing royal vestments, pleased as can be.
My guard forced me inside, swinging me through the doorway with some momentum so that I tumbled forward.
Flinging myself angrily back upright with a hiss, I was just in time to see that they were tossing Reid in after me.
I had my claws outstretched, intending to scratch my spotted captor, but managed to sheath them just in time to avoid injuring him.
He caught me around my waist, and the two of us twirled sideways, almost like we were dancing.
The door was swinging shut behind us, leaving me with a last look at how they carried the net-tangled Khawla deeper into the Hearth Cave. Then, we were alone, trapped in the dark, with nothing but dirt and rock to accompany us.