Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
“We don’t know how injured she’ll be.” Serafina chewed on her lip, her brow furrowed. “We have to be prepared for the idea that we may not be able to get her out of the city right away—”
“The loss of the Shadowed Veil has made getting anyone out right now a problem,” Nyra said.
She’d traded her oilcloth coat for a simple dark cloak, her face haggard from lack of sun and her silvery hair dulled with soot to better blend in among the humans.
“If she goes missing, the Arcanum will put even more ships on their blockade. We’ll never get her through this time. ”
Loren clenched his teeth, biting back the sharp retort that wanted to break free.
Nyra wasn’t wrong, but it didn’t make it any easier to hear.
He just wanted his mate safe. Far away from the Shaws and any other humans that would try and use her for their own gain.
She’d suffered enough at their hands already.
“We’ll figure it out, Loren,” Serafina said gently. Finn stood at her shoulder, ready to catch her if she so much as swayed on her bad leg. “The most important thing is getting her out.”
Loren closed his eyes, turning his mind inward.
He’d started feeling her again three days ago—faint and strangely muffled, like he was listening to her through a closed door.
Finn had taken them as close to the Shaw house as he dared using the flood tunnels, guessing correctly that proximity would help strengthen Loren’s sense of her—but for some reason she still hadn’t answered him.
He brushed his mind against hers again anyway, praying that this would be the time she responded. That she knew they were coming for her.
But only silence answered him.
The shadows curled over his shoulders and down his arms, shifting restlessly across his skin.
They didn’t speak, their voices falling strangely silent just when Loren would have welcomed them most. None of his friends understood—not really.
Finn might love Serafina—Loren would have to be blind to miss the way his friend’s eyes softened when he looked at the healer—but they weren’t mates.
None of them would ever experience the nightmare of knowing that the other half of his soul was in danger and having to leave her there.
“Loren?” Finn asked.
Loren opened his eyes.
The shadows writhed around him, crawling across the damp walls. Searching for her. He pressed a hand against his chest, forcing himself to take a deep breath. The shadows came back to him willingly, consolidating and wrapping tightly around his legs. Except for one.
The smallest shadow lingered, hesitating at his feet before slithering up his body.
For a moment, he thought it would stretch itself across his shoulders like it always had with her—but instead it slipped down across his chest, bleeding away at the edges until it was no bigger than a moth.
The wisp slipped into the folds of his shirt, its slight weight resting right over his heart.
“Sorry,” he said. “She’s still inside.” He could answer that much at least.
“Good.” Finn blew out a slow breath. “Then nothing changes. Nyra will give us our way in by breaking through the blocked tunnel connecting to the dungeon under the house. Maerin has eight fighters in place already. They’ll go in first and draw the guards away.
Loren, you and Nyra will go in after, heading straight for Araya and Kai.
Get them, come out the way you came in, and Nyra will collapse the tunnel behind you to stop any pursuit. Easy.”
“What about the others?” Loren asked. “Maerin’s people?”
“Maerin handles things like this a little differently,” Serafina answered.
“Each of her fighters carries a sachet of somra’mor—Night’s Rest. In normal use, it’s just a sleep aid.
But dried and powdered—” she cleared her throat, not quite meeting Loren’s eyes.
“They’ll die in minutes. The Arcanum won’t get the chance to torture them. ”
Minutes—Goddess save him. Loren swallowed hard, his heart dropping into his stomach. It was one thing to sacrifice himself, but this…he couldn’t find the words.
“Thorne is already waiting here.” Finn tapped a spot on the map. “I’ll join him after I take Serafina back to the others.” He glanced up, meeting Loren’s gaze. “Are you ready to get her back?”
At the cost of eight lives? Araya would hate it. But these were Maerin’s people—not his. Her plan was their best chance at getting Araya out. So Loren choked back his objections, nodding sharply.
They split up after that, Serafina and Finn winding their way back the way they had come while Nyra led the way forward, pausing occasionally to consult a heavily creased hand-drawn map.
Loren recognized the maze of tunnels, the shape of Aetheris and the contours of the Shadowed Sea—but the labels shifted in front of his eyes, blurring and changing when he tried to focus on them.
Loren craned his neck, angling for a closer look—
“They’re enchanted.” Nyra shifted the paper toward him, pressing two fingers to a rune in the corner. Loren blinked, watching as the words steadied and the writhing lines suddenly snapped into place.
“Anyone but me does that and it goes blank,” she said.
“Impressive,” Loren said, meaning it.
Nyra’s neat hand covered almost every inch of the map, tiny triangles marking the safe houses with circles for drop locations, all of it accompanied by cramped columns of figures that made his stomach twist.
“Is that really how many fae we have in the tunnels?”
“Sixty in the main safe house.” Nyra pulled a battered metal flask from her belt, uncapping it with her thumb and taking a long swig.
“We used to get them out by sea before we got anywhere close to these numbers. But without the Shadowed Veil…” she shook her head, glancing at the shadows curled around his feet. “Never thought I’d miss it.”
She held the flask out. Loren took it, the liquor burning like fire all the way down his throat.
But it wasn’t enough to settle the guilt churning in his stomach.
Araya had lowered the Veil to save his life.
They’d talked about Eluneth, what it would mean for the fae in exile.
But neither one of them had considered what it would do to the fae here.
“I’m looking at land routes, but even those are risky.
” Nyra stepped carefully around a puddle.
“Papers, checkpoints, villagers who might report a sudden influx of strangers… No forged documents will survive an inquisitor’s scrutiny.
” She sighed, her expression grim. “What we really need to do is stop pulling them off the street.”
“Stop?” Loren stared at her. “But—”
“I know.” She sighed deeply, suddenly looking more exhausted than Loren had ever seen her. “It’s the same as leaving them to die. But the more we bring in the harder it is to stay one step ahead of the patrols.” She stopped walking, scrubbing a hand over her face. “We lose either way.”
Loren swallowed against the tightness in his throat, suddenly very aware of the slight weight of the little shadow over his heart. “I’m sorry.”
Nyra laughed humorlessly, snatching her flask back. “It’s not your fault, Loren.”
“Isn’t it?” Loren asked.
She had been the first to try and warn him what would happen if he took Araya from the Shaws without a plan.
He hadn’t listened. He’d nearly let the shadows kill her, enraged by her insinuation that it would be better for all of them if Jaxon Shaw found Araya’s lifeless body.
But everything she’d warned him about had come to pass. The crackdowns, the patrols—all of it.
“You’d still tell me, wouldn’t you?” Loren stared down at his boots, watching the shadows ripple across the stone instead of meeting her eyes. “If you thought I was doing the wrong thing?”
Nyra paused mid-swig. “What exactly are you talking about?”
“Eight people are going to die tonight.” Loren stared at the wall ahead of them, the rough stone slick with moisture. “Araya would never agree to something like this. I don’t—” His voice caught. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to live with it.”
Nyra stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language. “Do you actually think they volunteered for you?”
“I—yes?” Loren blinked at her, caught entirely off guard.
Wasn’t that what everyone was tactfully avoiding saying out loud?
That eight fae had stepped forward to die just so he would have a chance at rescuing his mate?
And not just them. He was putting his friends at risk too, and the fae hiding down here in the tunnels—all without any sort of guarantee he’d succeed.
“Loren—” Nyra sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I love you, but sometimes you’re an idiot.”
She capped her flask, shoving it back into her belt.
“No one here is waiting for the fae monarchy to rush in and save them,” she said. “You didn’t dazzle them with your amazing shadow powers. They want revenge.”
“Revenge?” Loren echoed, staring at her.
“What—you think you have a monopoly on hating the Shaws?”
Nyra started walking again, ducking under a low-hanging support beam.
“Every fae down here has spent twenty-five years being ground under the heel of Garrick Shaw’s boot,” she continued. “You gave them a chance to hurt them back. That is why they volunteered.”
“But—” Loren quickened his pace, barely managing not to smack his head on the ceiling. They must be getting closer to the surface, the floor under their feet sloping steadily upward.
“No buts,” Nyra tossed back over her shoulder. “No one here is going to follow you because dara’el chose you. No offense meant—” she added hastily, casting a wary glance at the darkness around his feet. “But if you put the Shaws and every human like them in the ground? They’d follow you anywhere.”
They didn’t speak again after that. Loren ducked his head, hunching his shoulders to squeeze through a narrow spot.
The shadows clung to his ankles, their silence as heavy as his own as he turned her words over in his head.
But Nyra’s focus was on her map, her sharp eyes darting from the parchment to the wall, studying something only she could see.
“We’re here,” she said.
The tunnel opened up around them suddenly, widening into a shallow chamber. Eight fae waited along the edge—all female, their ears clipped and their skin scarred. Some had lost fingers, eyes—one had even lost her tongue, her hands flashing in sign as Nyra approached.
“They’re ready when you are,” Nyra translated.
Loren nodded, swallowing hard. He forced himself to meet each of their eyes, taking in their determined expressions, the weapons fashioned from kitchen knives and trash heap scraps. None of them were going to leave here alive.
“Thank you,” he said finally, his voice low. “This is a debt I’ll never be able to repay.”
He stepped back, glancing over to Nyra where she stood with her hand pressed against the wall. The little shadow fluttered against his skin as the bond pulsed in his chest, an aching pull that told him everything he needed to know. His mate was there—beyond that wall. And he was going to get her.
He nodded sharply. “Do it.”