Chapter 30 Aiden
Aiden
The supervisor’s body collapsed at my feet, his head a bloody clump. His helmet clattered against the rocky ground—a thunderstorm in the deadly quiet.
I stood, frozen, gasping for air. I felt like I was drowning in this gods-damned mask. Suffocating in my vengeance. That was who I was, deep down. A monster.
I dropped the club and faced Maz and the prisoners.
Maz had taken off his mask, his face white, his eyes grim. “The body,” he grunted.
I hissed a curse between my teeth.
But then Bruna spoke up. “Mazkull? Is that really you?”
His face softened when he looked at her. “Sigrid sends her love. Don’t tell her I spoke to you.”
Bruna’s eyes filled with tears. “She’s out there? Are you here to rescue us?”
Maz darted a glance at me. “Soon, I think. Just hold on a little longer.”
I grimaced. He shouldn’t be making any promises. I’d disappointed enough people to give me a lifetime of regret.
“Help us move the body into the rubble,” I said gruffly. “You can say a rock hit him when the tunnel collapsed.”
Bruna slowly rose to her feet, wincing. “He already reported the cave-in. More supervisors and workers will be here any moment.”
I growled, throwing my arms wide. “Then tell them there was a secondary collapse. You two, clear a hole,” I barked at the two prisoners with pickaxes who’d stopped digging to gape at me.
“We’ll have to spread the rubble more,” Bruna said, her hoarse voice growing stronger as she helped the other prisoners to their feet. “And we’ll have to create a few injuries of our own to be believable.”
“Fine, just hurry,” I snapped. This is your fault, that voice in my head taunted mercilessly. They could be executed for this. You did this to them.
Maz joined me in helping the prisoners clear out more dirt and rocks. Bits of sunstone glittered here and there. I grabbed a few and stuffed them into the supervisor’s pockets before I dumped his body in the makeshift hole.
Let the others think he was stealing from the mine, barring further investigation. The man was likely a worse criminal than any prisoner here.
I considered taking his ledger, but then his death wouldn’t look like an accident.
A few volunteers came forward and took turns smashing rocks against each other’s faces. No one complained. If anything, they stared at me and Maz with the faintest ray of hope.
It felt like a fist around my gut.
“Go,” Bruna said, now sporting a bleeding lip. “Before more come.”
Maz put his mask on and clasped her shoulder. “Are the rest of the prisoners in the cells off the main cavern?”
Bruna nodded. “Fifty of us rest in there once a day, leaving a couple hundred working. But our numbers change daily. The innocent die quickly here, and they’ve been imprisoning anyone who looks sideways at a soldier.”
“How many supervisors?” I asked, glancing up and down the tunnel.
“Thirty-seven, by my last count.” Bruna’s words came fast and frantic. “I don’t know about Dracles’s soldiers. Now go!”
Muffled voices echoed down the tunnel.
Maz and I darted forward, taking long strides toward the newcomers. Sweat trickled down my spine. What if this supervisor questioned us as well? We couldn’t fight our way out. There were too many. Not to mention the army at the entrance.
I spotted a narrow tunnel and shoved Maz into it. We flattened against the craggy rock wall. I held my breath as boots thumped past, followed by the shuffle of bare feet and chains.
I didn’t wait for the sound to disappear before I flew out of the tunnel. We all but ran down the passage, stopping only to check my tiny marks.
No shouts echoed behind us. Not yet. Gods, I hoped Bruna and the others wouldn’t be punished for my mistake.
We slowed down once we hit the main cavern. Barely. I felt like I was running for my life again. My window to freedom closing with every harsh breath I took.
A shout rose in the main cavern. For us? For something else? I didn’t stop to see.
Once we reached the uphill tunnel, my legs began to burn. We skirted around prisoners carrying their sunstone.
Almost there. Almost there.
My boots hit the stone steps. That thick darkness strangled my senses once more.
Holy Four, get me out. Let me breathe fresh air again. I need to live. I need to see her again. I need to find her.
The thought of wrapping my arms around Kiera, of looking into her warm amber eyes, hearing her voice say my name—it flooded me with life.
I raced up the stairs with renewed vigor, Maz grunting and wheezing at my heels.
We burst out of the mine like the cornered wolves we resembled.
The two soldiers startled, eyeing us suspiciously. But we didn’t wait for questions.
The camp still smoked up ahead. We cut to the right, aiming for the gap in their wooden blockades. After wriggling through, we fled into the cool night.
Once we were out of earshot of the camp, Maz ripped off his mask. “Fucking Four, Aiden! You didn’t want me to kill him. You didn’t want to leave a trail. And then you crushed the man’s face! In front of all the prisoners! We were supposed—”
“I know!” I snapped, tearing off my mask and gulping in the grass-scented breeze. “I fucking know, Maz. But he wouldn’t stop, and I had nothing else. No way out. I had to.”
Maz kicked at a clump of grass. “I shouldn’t have stopped in front of Bruna.
It’s my fault the supervisor even looked at us.
I don’t even know why I’m yelling at you.
You only did what I wanted to do since I stepped foot in that gods-damned hell hole.
” He glanced at me, his eyes brimming with misery in the soft light. “Forgive me, brother.”
My heart clenched, some of the darkness bleeding out of it. “There is nothing to forgive,” I said with a sigh. “We can’t always win when we fight our demons.”
We lapsed into silence as we trudged back to our camp by the stream.
As we neared it, the hair on the back of my neck lifted. I stopped. Maz did, too.
The stream trickled peacefully by. Nothing but wind shifted the grasses along the bank. All was dark and quiet.
That was when it struck me. We hadn’t seen any patrols on our way back. We’d snuck around one on our way in, but not on our way out.
I silently unsheathed my sunstone knife. Maz did the same. We crouched in the tall grass and slid into the stream. The water rushed around my boots as I took careful steps, never splashing.
A horse snorted on the other bank. I froze, waiting for a shout or an arrow to strike my chest armor. Nothing.
I eased up the other bank and crawled through the bushes. Two horses, one pale, one dark as night, turned toward me.
I breathed a sigh of relief. Wicked and Valiant. They were still here. But where were the others?
“Do you think the border patrol took them?” Maz murmured, turning in a circle.
My gaze landed on a discarded sword next to a crumpled body. My mind blanked. I seized the body and turned it over. A soldier.
“Not without a fight. And why leave our horses?” I swallowed hard. “Search for other bodies.”
We combed through the brush but found no one else. Only the packhorse we’d taken. I left him untethered and happily grazing.
“Perhaps they were ambushed and headed for the gap back to Yargoth, like you told them to,” Maz said hopefully.
I shook my head, studying the bent grass and tracks in the soft dirt. “Hoofprints go northwest. Farther into Winspere.”
“Gods damn it,” Maz growled. “Perhaps we would all actually survive if any of us could follow a fucking plan.”
I didn’t have the strength, or even the desire, to argue with him. My plans had never worked, anyway. Why would they now?
“What’s that?” Maz asked, pointing his knife at a shadow streaking toward us through the grass.
I recognized that shadow. I watched for it every night.
I rushed forward and caught Kiera as she flung herself into my arms.
“You’re alive,” she whispered over and over in a choked voice. “You’re alive.”
I held her tightly, afraid to speak. Gods, she felt like a dream. Until something wet and warm trickled onto my cheek where it was pressed into her neck. The coppery scent of blood filled my nostrils.
I drew back and tugged her chin to the side, exposing her neck. The silver light glinted on a cut in her neck.
It seemed I would single-handedly be filling the Abyss tonight.
“Kiera,” I said in a deep, deadly calm voice. “Who did this to you?”
Her throat pulsed beneath my fingertips. “He’s dead.”
I pulled her chin back until her gaze met mine. “He’d better be.”
“Where are the others?” Maz demanded. “What happened?”
She slid out of my grip before I was ready to let her go.
“Border patrol from the woods ambushed us when we came back. We got away, but they want revenge for the other patrol. They’ve been pursuing us.
Nikella took us to a Winspere estate she knows.
Sigrid, Yarina, and I circled back for you two.
” She paused from her rapid speech to take a breath.
“But they’re still looking for us. We need to go. Now.”
Maz and I slid on our masks and grabbed our horses.
Kiera swung up behind me before I could offer. She pointed at the distant tree line to the north. “Yarina and Sigrid are waiting for us in there.”
We rode across the plain, the horses’ hoofbeats like thunder in the quiet night. Kiera held me tightly from behind. I handled Wicked’s reins with one hand so I could lay my gloved palm over Kiera’s cold hand.
We slowed down once we reached the end of the wall and slipped into the forest. Yarina and Sigrid met us with ready swords and twin sighs of relief.
“How did—”
“Later,” Maz interrupted Yarina.
She frowned, but kept her mouth shut. Maz rarely snapped, but I was in no mood to talk about the mine yet either. Besides, we were running out of night, and I didn’t feel like being hunted in the dawn.
Kiera slid off of Wicked and mounted Ozlow. “The border patrol is sweeping the woods, and they must’ve picked up reinforcements somewhere because there are fifteen of them now. We’ve been going slow and stopping to hide when they pass. We cannot let them trace us back to the Winspere house.”
Oddly, my lips twitched in a smile. My little thief was directing us like a leader. Like I usually did. But I quite liked this change.
We rode in a single line through the trees. Twice, we heard a distant noise in the darkness and dismounted, but no one emerged.
Impatience gnawed at me. Part of me wanted to gallop to this house and battle the patrol if they saw us. Then we could cross a few enemies off our list.
I was tired of hiding.
The third time we heard a noise, the shadows shifted in the trees, and metal glinted.
Everyone else dismounted and led their horses to thicker brush. Running would be impossible through here.
My hand slid to my knife. They were already hunting us. Why not hunt a few of them?
I silently dismounted and crept toward the noise. They weren’t using torches—probably to keep us from seeing them. But they crashed through the woods like soldiers who hadn’t grown up in a forest.
I had.
I glided over the pine needle-coated ground, darting from tree to tree until I found my mark. He was stomping over tree roots and breathing heavily through a severely crooked nose.
Ruru had told me about his escape from a border patrol.
I gripped my knife harder and waited until he passed by my tree. Then I stepped out behind him, wrapped my hand around his mouth, and slit his throat in one deft move.
He jerked and gagged, but no sound escaped through my fingers. I carefully laid him on the ground.
Kills like this were almost a relief. No horrible infectious guilt after. I didn’t feel like a mindless monster, as I had with the supervisor.
This soldier hurt someone I loved and was intent on doing it again. The consequence was simple in my mind.
The swishing and cracking of the rest of the patrol carried on east. It might be a long time before they realized they were missing a soldier. And even longer to find him.
I hurried back to Wicked and found the others already mounted.
The air was thick with tension. Maz, Yarina, and Sigrid immediately rode on. Kiera waited for me to mount. I couldn’t see her face, but I could feel her silence and the worry in it.
Perhaps she understood. Perhaps she didn’t. But I would always do whatever it took to protect my people.
We rode without further interruption until we reached a large clearing in the woods, just as a gray, misty dawn rose.
A stone manor with wooden shutters and three smoking chimneys faced the plains of Winspere. Several other shorter stone buildings were scattered around the clearing. Workers in large, brimmed hats were already busy hauling buckets of feed to the animals within. Chickens darted about the yard.
I smelled bread baking and hoped to all the Four that Nikella’s friend would feed us.
I was about to head for the stable when Kiera hissed, “Wait.”
The others pulled up short and looked back at her.
Her gaze was fixed on the front of the manor where several saddled horses waited. None that I recognized.
“Those horses weren’t there when we left,” she whispered.
Nikella suddenly appeared between us. Kiera jerked to the side, nearly tumbling from Ozlow. But I wasn’t surprised. Nikella had lived in the forest as many years as I had.
She looked up at me, a rare bleakness in her dark blue eyes. “Korvin is here.”