Chapter 15 #2
I kissed his snarling mouth, still panting and quivering with aftershocks. “Mine,” I whispered, and—drunk on orgasm, exhaustion, and Wroth’s closeness—booped my finger on his nose.
Wroth blinked, awareness coming back into his eyes—satisfaction, serenity, and wonder, of all things.
He buried his face between my neck and shoulder. “Mine,” he whispered back.
For as long as we were Below. And it would have to be enough.
I pulled him down next to me, finally releasing him to allow my newly loose, languid muscles to relax.
I didn’t care that I was a mess, or that I needed a bath. I smelled like Wroth’s pine and sea scent, his powerful limbs were twined around me, and all the stress and horror and fear had been wrung from me like water from a dishcloth.
And then I thought of something, rolling over just enough to grab my pack and rifle through a pocket with one hand.
Wroth propped his head on one hand to squint at the flask I held.
“Apple brandy,” I said. “Shhh, don’t tell anyone.”
A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “I’ll be lucky to get you up and moving tomorrow.”
“Would you like some?” I took a sip of the sweet and spiced liquor, letting it flow down into my stomach where it expanded like a ball of warmth. “We’ll sleep like the dead.”
“Jesamin, love,” he said, and something thrilled in me while my conscious mind felt a spasm of pain. “I drink only blood.”
I took another gulp, just to pretend I hadn’t felt that pain. It was just a pillow name, a pet name. No one was genuinely speaking of love here.
“That’s a simple enough problem to solve. I drink this, you drink me.” I winked and spun the cap back on, sliding the flask back into my pack.
Wroth chuckled, his pale eyes glowing, but after a moment they became serious. His pupils narrowed, and the smile fell from his face as he studied me.
Despite the happy languor of afterglow, and the comfort of the brandy that reminded me of home, I felt another twinge. “What is it?”
He put his palm flat on my chest, laying me down, and pulled me closer. His hand rested over my heart, feeling the steady thump. With Wroth curled around me and the sleepy warmth in my body, I felt myself drifting off in the comfort of perfect safety.
“You have set my world awry,” he said slowly, as though the words were pulled from him against his will.
He went quiet, but kept his hand over my heart, and my heavy lids slipped shut. Somewhere inside me, the broken machinery of my heart was ticking softly, keeping time with his heartbeat.
It frightened me, how he seemed to be able to reach inside me and fix the things that I had thought rusted out and forever ruined…and yet the comfort and rightness of it was too much to resist.
The darkness of sleep was curling through my mind when he spoke again, so softly I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t part of the dream.
“And I don’t know if I can return to what it was.”
“So you have no idea where we are?” I pressed close to Wroth, arms wrapped tightly around my ribs as he moved the shelter door back into place. Now that we’d left the cell and were once more prey for the hellish nature of Liuridar, I felt exposed and vulnerable again.
It had been difficult to say goodbye to our shelter, which would live in my memories as a place of warmth and pleasure despite its location.
My clothes and boots had been dry when we finally rose, marking time by my pocket watch; I had eaten the gruel and made a quick cup of tea before we kicked dirt over the fire, wishing I had a packet of not-yet herbs in my kit.
The herbs weren’t as effective as a sanguimancer’s womb-lock, but it’d been so long since I’d needed them that I hadn’t thought to bring any at all.
Fortunately, I knew my moon cycle would keep me safe for another week, at least.
“Are we under the red map?” I asked, almost to myself, staring over the cliff before me into the depths of the lake.
Lights roiled and gleamed below the glassy surface, iridescent and beckoning, but there were shadows between them, vast and coiling and hungry.
Whatever was casting those shadows…I was quite sure I didn’t want to see them.
With an almost tentative air, Wroth slipped a massive arm around my shoulders, his fingers resting lightly on my shoulder. I leaned into him encouragingly and he relaxed, pulling me snug against his side.
As long as we were down here, I wanted to touch and be touched, to explore every facet of intimacy with him that I could, from the lustful to the adoring.
“Not below them, thank the ancestors. We’re still in the red levels.”
There was a sour note in his voice, and I craned my head to look up at him. “So what’s the bad news?”
Wroth took a deep breath, his chest puffing out.
“You’re correct. I do not know this part of Liuridar.
I doubt anyone does. Even with the sanguimancer excursions, very little of the deep city is marked on the maps, and this is undiscovered territory.
I’ve never seen this lake before, and it’s likely no one else has, either.
At the very least, they never returned to speak of it. ”
I nodded. “Lovely.”
“Quite. So we’ll be mapping it ourselves on our return to the expedition.”
“One lake of unknown but likely malicious quantity, mapped.” I drew a scribble in the air.
He looked down at me, but rather than incredulous, he seemed amused. “Does nothing perturb you?”
I swallowed a laugh. If only he had seen me shivering and sobbing after the river spit me onto its banks, convinced I was alone and doomed. “It’s only that I’d rather die laughing, I suppose. Death could come at any moment. I want to make sure I’ve smiled before it happens.”
And the thought of that instantly killed any desire to laugh at all, because it was feeling more and more like the most possible outcome.
Even with a fiend at my side, guarding my back, there was a feeling here. A palpable sensation, almost like a memory, the bone-deep knowledge that everything in this place wanted to consume us and leave nothing behind.
It was in the air, a subtle reek of something predatory just around the next bend.
It was in the earth, the ground underfoot almost seeming to shift, as though it wanted to spill me over the side of the cliff and into those summoning depths.
And the water…after that terrifying ride through the river, I knew it hated me just as much as everything else.
I had only escaped those drowning currents through luck and desperation.
Yes, this place hated us. The beings that had molded it had felt nothing but contempt for this place and the people in it, and had infused every speck of dust, every drop of water, with their abhorrence.
As though Wroth had read my thoughts, he squeezed me again, his hand slipping down to take mine. My hand was dwarfed in his grip, but there was something comforting in that.
“I won’t allow you to die,” he said roughly. “Come. Let’s be away from this place.”
We set off along the cliff, following the sheer wall that was pocked with slave-quarters like a honeycomb. They extended high overhead, a few ancient ladders still clinging to the walls between them—the rotted wood and leather lashings crumbling to dust.
I avoided brushing against them, settling into an easy walk at Wroth’s side. He kept me between him and the cliff wall, his tail lashing as we followed the edge of the lake.
The lights from the city on the other side bobbed and swayed like will o’ wisps. I found myself glancing at them more and more frequently, sometimes slowing until I was several steps behind Wroth, or shaking my head to get the dancing pixies out of the corner of my eye.
“Don’t make me blindfold you,” he growled under his breath. “It won’t be amusing and you won’t enjoy it.”
“They’re driving me mad,” I muttered back. By unspoken agreement, neither of us wanted to raise our voices in this place.
“I’m quite sure that’s their purpose.”
“They want me to walk off the cliff.” And that was true, at least; they were calling me, catching my eye and holding me in thrall, beckoning me towards them even with a depthless lake between us.
“And are you going to give the shiny little bastards what they want?” Wroth’s ears swiveled backwards, his heavy brow rising.
“Don’t be absurd.” I caught up several paces, ensuring I was close enough to brush his elbow with every other step.
That was our other unspoken agreement—it might’ve annoyed us to no end in any other situation, but it felt safer to touch while walking, if only as a reminder that there was another living being at my side.
If the will o’ wisps wanted me, they’d have to break through Wroth’s beguilement over my mind and body, and good luck to them.
“But it feels so wrong. Like a part of my mind is splitting off without me, and sometimes I can’t tell if it’s me thinking those thoughts or not. ”
“A common occurrence here,” he agreed. “Only because we are so deep, near the heart of their power. Plenty of others have been lost to imagined enticements, following them right off cliffs or into sinkholes, or worse.”
“Is it happening to you, too?” I narrowed my eyes at him. If we both lost ourselves, then it didn’t matter even if we were walking in each other’s pockets. We’d go blithely skipping off to our deaths together.
“Not to the degree that you’re experiencing, no. I won’t say I’m immune, but I’m as close as it gets. It cannot fully beguile me.” He glanced at me, eyes lingering on my face. “Liuridar possesses nothing I want that I do not already have within reach.”
I opened my mouth to inform him that I didn’t want anything from this place, either, not when I had him with me, but I closed it again, because that would be a lie.
The chthonium coin was still in my pocket, heavy and cold. I wanted the Artifice of the Fae. I wanted their knowledge, their history, their secrets.