Chapter 29 Aiden
Aiden
The fire drew soldiers from every direction. Except two that stayed in front of the mine entrance.
I took a deep breath and stepped out of the shadows, Maz at my side. We strode forward like two Wolves who had every right and reason to enter that gods-forsaken mine.
One soldier’s eyes darted to my mask, then away. He wouldn’t risk stopping us.
We brushed past them and descended the stairs. Deeper. Deeper. The worn soles of our boots made little noise even in the stone tunnel.
No torches lit our descent. I always thought that was purposeful. To instill fear in the prisoners being dragged down here. I remembered scrambling up these steps like a desperate rat when we escaped.
The darkness pressed on my eyes like an invisible weight. The smell of dirt and decay hit me with a hundred memories.
I staggered on a step, everything in my body screaming at me to stop.
Get out. Now. While you still can. Trapped. Trapped forever. You’ll never leave if you don’t run. Run. Run.
Sweat rolled down my neck and chest. My heartbeat galloped like a panicked horse. Gods, I’d forgotten how far down it was.
Maz jerked to a halt. His muffled breaths drummed against his metal mask. He must be feeling the same way I was.
I grit my teeth together. I clenched his arm where his tree tattoo lay hidden. Reminding him.
I felt more than saw him nod. We continued.
The stairs gradually leveled out until they met dirt. Metal lanterns on hooks lined the passages ahead and to the right. The tunnel to the right was new. At least as of the last seven years. I was sure of it.
The slow drag and rattle of chains sent another bolt of fear through my heart. A bald man in threadbare clothes with manacles around his ankles carried a bucket from the passage ahead. He didn’t even look up as he hobbled into the other tunnel. Chunks of sunstone winked at me from his bucket.
Either he didn’t see us or didn’t care. After all, when death was constantly looming, why care if it came from Shadow-Wolves, soldiers, or the very stone he had to mine every day?
I jerked my head, and we followed the prisoner. His shuffling gait made him slow, but I matched his pace.
The clang of hammers echoed toward us. Hope pricked my chest. The forge? Could it really be that easy?
The man stumbled into a large cave. The heat was intense, like Aquinon during Mynastra’s season.
I glanced around. No guards. No Korvin. Just a few sweaty men immersed in their work.
The prisoner dumped his sunstone into a large bin filled with other ancient chunks of the night sky and left. Never looking up. Never changing expression. Like we were ghosts. Or he was.
Did he have a family? Were they still waiting for him, or did they assume he was dead?
Focus. Forge first, rescue later.
Scowling, I put my hands behind my back and prowled the perimeter of the cave. Two large furnaces took up the center. A stone chimney rose from them and disappeared into the cave ceiling.
Fire bloomed over pools of molten black sunstone, each in a stone mold the shape of a weapon or a piece of armor. A worker pulled one out with sunstone tongs and rapidly sculpted it. Much like I’d seen a glass blower shape an ornate bowl.
The sunstone gauntlets and chest plate I wore seemed to tighten. This was where they’d been forged.
A tall man wearing a leather mask and apron poured sunstone chunks into a large dipper, then threw a handful of something into the fire beneath it. Fireseeds. The fire roared, engulfing the dipper. Cracks, sizzles, and an odd screaming sound came from the stone as it melted.
Maz nudged me and tipped his head to where two soldiers were rolling a cart of finished sunstone armor and weapons up a smooth passage. Another way out?
None of the workers looked up to question us. They acted as if we weren’t here. Perhaps they were used to Wolves coming to observe. Or they were too worried about hitting a quota to slow down, even for a moment. They probably assumed no one would be stupid enough or able to infiltrate this far.
Yet the first part of our mission had been shockingly easy. Kiera and the others had performed the harder task, hopefully making it out unscathed. Even if they had, they were still vulnerable, waiting for us.
Maz and I could leave right now. The soldiers were probably still distracted up on the ground. We had confirmation of why Renwell had stolen the fireseeds. We’d seen his forge churning out large quantities of weapons and armor.
But that didn’t solve the problem.
I needed to see the rest. I wanted to see the cost.
Like I’d told the others in Frieda’s lodge, I didn’t care what Renwell planned to use these abominations for. Terrible things, no doubt. Whether to keep the people of Rellmira in check or to bring the world to its knees, it didn’t matter.
I wanted to stop him long before that could happen. I wanted to map this gods-damned mine like I had the Den. So I could tear this whole place down. Bury the evil that he forged here.
This mine was a stain on Rellmira’s history, and I intended to remove it forever.
I marched out of the cave with Maz fast on my heels. I could almost feel him vibrating with things to say, but we couldn’t speak here.
We passed another prisoner lugging a bucket of rock. I veered down the tunnel that would take us deeper into the mine. Purpose burned beneath my skin, leaching out any lingering fear.
The passage snaked downward, then opened up into the giant cavern from my memory.
Soaring support beams pierced the cave ceiling.
Wooden scaffolds wove over the rocky walls, prisoners lining them like ants.
Sunstone shimmered in the rock like veins of black blood.
Hammers pounded. Chains clanked. And the only human sound was that of helmeted supervisors barking orders from a raised platform in the middle.
It was like I’d stepped directly into one of my worst memories. Nothing had changed.
Except me standing here in an enemy uniform instead of the torn, dirty clothes of a prisoner.
But the burning in my heart was the same.
I needed to be here. I needed to end this.
“We should move quickly,” Maz muttered.
“Ships, then prisoners.”
He gave the barest nod.
We darted into one passage, then another, and then another. My breath came shorter, more stifled, with each turn. Gods, I didn’t remember this many tunnels. Weylin, and then Renwell, must’ve dug deeper into the cliffs, and not just for access to the sea.
I started marking the ones we turned into with a slash of my sunstone knife. It cut through the rock like it was sand.
Occasionally, the walls shuddered around us. And every time, my whole body tensed. There had been several cave-ins when we were prisoners here. All of them deadly.
Perhaps Renwell would bring down the mine before I could. But he probably wouldn’t get the prisoners out first.
I walked faster.
We ran into several dead ends, each filled with prisoners carving out tiny bits of sunstone.
Every time we backed out of a passage, I gave it another slash.
Finally, we chose a tunnel that smelled of the sea. My boots sank deeper into the damp earth, which gradually turned to sand.
The tunnel spit us out onto the beach.
A huge ship floated in the bay. The incomplete hull of another rested on a bed of logs.
We’d seen three when we rowed through the canyon. And the one at anchor didn’t look like it’d been through a battle. Which meant the third—the one that had attacked the Urzost village—was elsewhere.
My scowl deepened.
Prisoners swarmed over the beached ship, hammering boards into the hull. Renwell must have enough prisoners to work them in shifts, day and night.
Soldiers watched over them or sat around fires, drinking and eating.
No one had noticed our arrival yet.
I darted behind a large pile of rubble, Maz following, and we crouched, peering from behind the rocks.
“I count eighteen soldiers,” I muttered. “In addition to those on the cliffs.”
“At least thirty or forty prisoners,” Maz breathed. “It’s hard to tell them apart.”
I nodded, staring at the floating ship, plans building in my head.
Maz pulled back and nudged me. “There’s some fancy soldier down there by the unfinished ship. The general?”
I scuttled over to his side of the rocks. My gaze narrowed to where a short but broad man in polished golden armor and a long violet cape stood, gesturing at the partial hull.
Hatred seized my chest. High General Dracles.
The last time I’d seen him was amid the ashes of the people he’d massacred. He’d executed every other leader of the Pravaran rebellion in front of me. But when he came to me, he rested his bloody sword against my neck with a smile.
“Not you,” he’d said. “I want your death to take as long as possible, serving the king the way he deserves.”
He added me to a prison wagon with eight other strong young men. Two of them didn’t survive the trip. Six of them died in the mine. I was the last of that rebellion.
I’d thought of hunting him down once or a dozen times. But my target had been Weylin. Then Brielle or her son would’ve forced him to retire, humiliated and unwanted. Which was worse than death for a man like him.
“Incoming,” Maz rasped.
I jerked, hearing the stamp of booted feet almost too late. Maz and I scrambled around the rubble, partially exposing us to the beach, as two soldiers marched out of the tunnel.
I clung to the rocks like a beetle, praying we still blended in.
We needed to leave. Our luck was bound to run out.
As soon as the soldiers were clear, I tapped Maz’s shoulder and pointed to the tunnel. We peeled ourselves away from the rocks and hurried back into the mine.
Seeing Dracles had rattled me. Shaken old memories loose. I felt like I had in those years trapped here. Mired in the dark, ugly feelings that had festered inside me every day.
I needed to tear this gods-damned place down. And I needed to bury Dracles in it.
But he had an army. I didn’t. Because I was the dead son of a forgotten king. I was the sole survivor of a rebellion people only talked about in whispers.
No one. You’re no one. The familiar whispers crept back into my mind. Worse than that, you’re a failure.
I ground my teeth together and tried to force the old weakness away.
We came to the fork in the tunnels. I cut a horizontal line under my slash. A symbol that this was the way. Hopefully, we would be here again soon.
We followed my marks back through the tunnels, the distance somehow seeming farther than ever.
A row of prisoners that hadn’t been there before lined the next tunnel. They sat on the ground, chained together, as a few others took pickaxes to a collapsed tunnel. A supervisor in a dented helmet stood nearby, head bent over a ledger while the prisoners sweat and bled.
My stomach churned. How many had died under the rocks just now?
I hated to leave them. We could easily cut down the supervisor, but we couldn’t lead the prisoners out of the mine without being questioned. And a dead body could tighten security before our next attack.
I forced myself to keep walking. I made it a few steps before I realized Maz wasn’t with me anymore.
I spun around to see him standing in front of a woman. Her hair was shorn to the scalp, but the tattoos on her bare arms and legs told me she was a Dag.
Dread curled my hands into fists. Fucking Four, Mazkull, don’t.
She slowly looked up at his mask, a glimmer of hatred lighting her dull blue eyes.
I marched forward, about to drag him away, when he whispered, “Bruna.”
Confusion wrinkled her brow.
Now that he said the name, I remembered her. Long brown hair and a merry laugh. She and Sigrid had been inseparable.
I jerked Maz’s arm.
“Excuse me, did you just speak to one of my prisoners?” the supervisor demanded from behind us.
We both stiffened. Maz reached for his sunstone knife. I shook my head.
Stay calm. Stay quiet.
I turned on my boot heel and kept striding down the tunnel. This time, Maz kept even with me.
“Wolves aren’t supposed to be here!” The supervisor’s strident voice followed us. “Stop! Show me your papers this instant before I report you to the High General.”
I halted immediately. Bold of him to threaten a Shadow-Wolf.
My muscles trembled with restraint as I sauntered back to the supervisor. The man’s smug smile splashed scarlet over my vision.
“Good dog,” he said. “You must show your papers when asked. And according to my schedule,”—he waved his ledger in front of my mask—“no Wolf shipment is due for another three weeks. So let’s have them.” He snapped his fingers and held out his hand.
I’d strangled every carnivorous shadow that had stirred in my chest while creeping around this pit.
But those demons reared their heads one by one as I stared at the man’s outstretched hand.
Then at the ledger of sordid deeds he carried, like he was measuring grain, not people’s lives.
Last, my gaze fell to the sunstone club at his side, so familiar I could almost feel my bones breaking beneath it.
As they had seven years ago, when another supervisor leered down at me, waiting for me to surrender.
Those shadows—every warped remnant of fury and hatred—swallowed the last bit of light from my mind.
I seized the supervisor’s hand and wrenched until I felt several finger bones snap.
He shrieked, stumbling back.
I yanked the club from his belt and snarled, “Welcome to the Abyss.” Then I cracked it against his skull.