Chapter 6
Cassandra stumbled over an exposed root and landed on her face in the underbrush. She gasped as a stray branch stabbed into her ribcage. With her hands bound in front of her, she hadn’t been able to catch herself at all.
“Get up!” one of the Inetians said roughly, helping her back to her feet. He was young, younger than she was, with deep bronze skin and a tall, muscular build. His black hair curled around his ears, and there was something in his demeanor that made him look incredibly boyish.
“Get up, yourself!” she snapped, then gasped as another one of the Inetians, this one skinny and angular, turned and yanked at her bound arms so that she stood face-to-face with him. Pain, hot and sharp, seared along her shoulders.
“Watch your mouth, girl,” he snarled. Spittle splattered her cheek. “You’re not in any position to be giving lip right now.”
“Oh dear, I’m so terribly sorry,” she drawled, leaning away from the stink of his breath. “Tell me how your humble servant should go about groveling.”
The angular man shoved her backward, and she almost lost her footing again, but the younger man grabbed her arm to steady her.
“Watch her, Karim,” the angular man snapped, before turning and stomping into the darkness ahead.
Cassandra seethed. She knew the smart thing to do was to shut up, to keep her head down, to find an opportunity to escape. But she was just too furious. Furious at this entire situation. Furious at the Inetians and their ridiculous plans. Furious that they’d shot Arphaxad. Furious that she had allowed him to distract her enough for all this to happen in the first place.
Heat flooded her body at the memory of his fingers skimming along her jaw, of his breath on her face, of the promise that had lingered in his gaze. Fury flared through her again. Damn it all. Her sister had been right. She had lost her head when it came to Arphaxad Ilin Serra.
The Inetians had made quick work of their weapons, removing most of her knives—they had missed one in her boot, but right now she had no way to reach it— and Arphaxad’s as well. She had almost slugged the man beside her when one of the Inetians picked up her bow, pulled at the string, and then smugly slung it across his back. The queen had given her that.
When one of the men found the letters Cassandra had removed from the cave, she knew they were done for.
Arphaxad hadn’t even cried out when his arms were tied in front of him, but Cassandra had seen the way his entire body jerked with pain. The Inetian who had first told them to drop their weapons—Paarsav, she’d learned—had ordered the arrow removed from Arphaxad’s shoulder and the wound bound as the rest of the injured Inetians patched themselves up. No one had died.
“We don’t want him dying on us,” Paarsav had said. Arphaxad had given a coarse yell when the arrow was removed. Cassandra had followed his shout with a cascade of obscenities.
Now they moved in a quick line, heading back toward the ridge and the enclave in the valley below. It was dark now, too dark to see more than the dim outline of Arphaxad stumbling along ahead of her, his breath coming in ragged gasps with each step he took. Anger surged again, hot and sharp.
“Why don’t you dimwits just open one of your magic doors to wherever you want to take us?” she snarled to the younger man, Karim, who walked closely behind her like a good guard dog. He had been one of the lucky few to escape injury. “Or are you too afraid after what happened to your friend earlier?”
His hand tightened around her arm, and he gave her a shake that made her teeth rattle. “Do you want to die?” he hissed under his breath. “If you keep on like that, they’ll kill you, no questions asked.”
“Don’t let her get to you, Karim,” Paarsav called from up ahead. “They’ll be taken care of soon enough.”
Taken care of. She ground her teeth together. She would not let them get to her either.
The blackness of the trees parted, revealing the soft orange glow of enchanted orb fire from the enclave below. Cassandra wanted to be anywhere but near that cave again, near the chanters and the wrongness of the rift.
They made their way slowly down the ridge and into the enclave. She could see silhouettes moving behind the oiled parchment in some of the huts. Doors opened quietly as the party limped through the enclave. People peered out for a moment before shutting their doors again tightly.
“So, why are you here, Karim?” she sneered. “You couldn’t make it in Ineti? You had to resort to treachery to make a man of yourself?”
She could feel his hackles rising behind her. “Careful. You’re treading on shaky ground,” he said.
“Am I?” she said sweetly. “You don’t have to tell me if it’s truly too shameful.”
Karim’s hand closed around her arm. “Look,” he said shortly, drawing her up beside him. “I have as many questions about this whole debacle as you. And as for why I’m here—my uncle was removed from his position in Talah for something he didn’t do. And as a result, our entire family was cast out of the capital. The Inetian emperor is not a just man. He made it easy to turn against him. So don’t go assuming things you know nothing about.”
He released her and pushed her back along the trail in front of him. Cassandra stumbled again in the darkness, and for a moment, she felt sorry for him. He was young. He likely hadn’t done anything to deserve that kind of treatment. But it didn’t make what they were doing any more justifiable. “I’m sorry you felt you were forced into this,” she said quietly.
Karim gave a gruff laugh, laced with surprise. “Thanks. But you have nothing to be sorry about.”
Her heart ached. People always had reasons to justify their choices—that was something she had learned after years in this business—but it didn’t make those choices right. She let her eyes wander to Arphaxad as he moved ahead of her, the angular man close on his heels. She could tell it took all his concentration to keep moving, to not let the pain overwhelm him. All over again, she wanted to rip every last one of them to shreds.
They stopped before the mouth of the cave, and Cassandra’s stomach dropped. The entrance hadn’t changed physically since she and Arphaxad had fled only a few hours before, but the sense of wrongness, of darkness, of power gone horribly wrong, had increased tenfold.
The angular Inetian shoved Arphaxad to his knees by the entrance. Arphaxad said something she couldn’t catch, which earned him a cuff in the head.
“Hey!” Cassandra called out as Karim gestured for her to kneel beside Arphaxad. “You must feel like such a man when you hurt the injured and defenseless, huh? Does it make you feel powerful?”
“We should have killed you in the forest when we had the chance,” the angular man spat.
“We don’t know who they are yet and what they know,” Karim said a bit uncertainly. “Paarsav seems to think they’re higher ranking than they look. That bow is too nice to belong to a peasant. And they had information on them. Information that could give us away.”
“Are you scared?” Cassandra taunted. They should never have been captured in the first place, not by these brutes, traitors to their emperor and country. How could she have been so stupid?
She glanced over at Arphaxad. He swayed beside her, his usually sharp gaze glazed and unfocused. Blood was seeping through the bandage around his shoulder. She swallowed, forcing back the fear that rose in her chest. He should never have been here, with her, in this stupid situation. If she hadn’t let him get the best of her in Medira . . . But that wouldn’t change anything about what the Inetians were doing.
“We’ll get out of this,” she said as much to herself as to him.
He turned his head and then winced. “I’m sorry, Cass,” he whispered.
“Don’t be,” she snapped. “I got us into this mess. I’ll get us out.”
“Just you?” he said, a bit of the familiar sarcasm returning to his tone. “I think we’ve played equal roles in this.”
“If that will make you feel better,” she said, “then sure, it’s all your fault.” She thought she saw his mouth curve slightly.
“No talking!” the angular man commanded. Arphaxad ducked when the man’s hand came toward his head. Cassandra almost launched herself at him at the same time that Karim said, “Quit it, Ankar.” The man scowled but didn’t try swinging again.
Paarsav had disappeared into the cave, and the others lingered outside, casting nervous glances toward the entrance. Most of them had probably seen what had happened inside earlier. She didn’t blame them for wanting to get as far away from the place as possible. She had no desire to go in there again.
Paarsav emerged a few minutes later, the white-haired chanter—Gustav—following on his heels. Cassandra blinked. He was much younger than he had looked from afar, especially with that shock of white hair. He couldn’t be more than ten years older than Cassandra.
“We found these stragglers up on the ridge,” Paarsav was saying, jerking his head toward Cassandra and Arphaxad. “She had these on her.” He showed the chanter the stack of papers Cassandra had removed from the cave.
Gustav’s eyes snapped toward her—a piercing, icy blue, like the peoples of the Alliance in the south—and Cassandra only just kept herself from shuddering.
“They certainly know what we’re doing here now,” Paarsav continued.
The chanter moved toward them, his eyes narrowing as he approached. A heady sense of power clung to him, as well as the deep wrongness of the cave.
“Why did you come here?” His voice was gravelly, as if something had torn through his throat more than once over the years.
“We didn’t mean to, sir.” Cassandra simpered, widening her eyes and trying to drum up as much innocence in her voice as possible. “My fiancé and I got lost in the woods. We saw light coming from the valley and thought we must be near someplace that could help us!” She leaned toward Arphaxad, who gave her a skeptical sideways glance.
The chanter stared at her. “Just a girl and her fiancé, lost in the woods, armed to the teeth and able to wound six extremely well-trained soldiers.”
“That’s right,” Cassandra replied.
“She’s lying!” Paarsav snapped. The chanter cast him a tired glance.
“Where did you get this?” he asked, holding up the letters Cassandra had taken from the cave.
She shook her head. “I have no idea what those are,” she said.
“Of course not,” the chanter sighed. “Who do you work for?”
“She already told you,” Arphaxad drawled, “we got lost in the woods and—”
The chanter waved his hand. “Please don’t treat me like I know nothing. That’s beyond me. And I had hoped it was beyond you.” He leaned forward. “I’ll say it again. Who do you work for?”
“That’s none of your business,” Cassandra said through gritted teeth.
The chanter turned to Paarsav and sighed. “Take them in. We’re going to have to seal this place up anyway. Whether they’re with Medira or Rendra or Ineti doesn’t really matter, as long as they’re not alive to get their information out.”
Fear stabbed through her chest. Seal the place up? What did that mean?
Paarsav jerked his head toward the cave entrance, and Karim pulled on Cassandra’s arm, helping her to her feet.
“How do you know we haven’t gotten the information out already?” Cassandra blurted. “We know who you are, what you’re trying to do. And it’s a coward’s road.”
The chanter turned to face her. His lips curved. “So now you change your tune,” he said. “Not so lost, I think.”
“Not lost at all,” she snapped, shaking Karim’s hand off her arm. He let her go but didn’t move away. “What’s your ploy?” She straightened her shoulders, meeting his icy gaze with more confidence than she felt. “What could Amanakar have promised to make you think overturning the Inetian emperor was remotely a good idea? That teaching these . . . these boneheads magic that they will clearly misuse and destroy the rest of us wasn’t ridiculous?”
The chanter’s lips twisted. “You think you understand us, what we want, what we’re striving for. But you do not,” he said coldly.
“We might if you told us,” Cassandra said. “Medira, Rendra, even Ineti, might help if you asked for it.”
The chanter shook his head, his eyes incredibly cold. “You would like to think that, wouldn’t you?” he said. “That, in my experience, is not the way the world works.”
Fury surged through her again in a frightening wave. She understood why the chanters might feel jaded, scorned, oppressed by the world—they believed so strongly in something, and they had been cast out again and again because of it. But it still didn’t explain why they’d strike a bargain like this.
“Then tell me,” Cassandra pleaded. “You don’t have to do this.”
Paarsav shuffled uncomfortably behind the chanter, exchanging looks with the other Inetians. They smiled in a way Cassandra didn’t like. “That’s all I needed to know.” He nodded to Paarsav. “Bring them in. We can’t hold it for much longer.”
Paarsav nodded to Karim and the angular man. Karim closed his fingers around her arm again, but he hesitated, as if torn by what they were about to do.
“Get off her!” Arphaxad cried, lunging to his feet. The angular man tapped him lightly on his injured shoulder, and Arphaxad doubled over, letting out an involuntary roar of pain.
“Stop it!” Cassandra snarled, trying and failing to pull herself from Karim’s grasp. Karim just dragged her blankly toward the cave entrance, even as she thrashed and screamed. She didn’t care that she wasn’t dignified. Getting away was all that mattered now.
The pale chanter led the way, followed by Paarsav, then Cassandra and Karim, and Arphaxad and the angular man. The inside of the cave was more oppressive than she remembered—the darkness, the wrongness, pressing in on them as they were dragged along toward the cavern with its door and the rift and its horror.
This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. She had to get back to Rendra, to the queen. She couldn’t leave her sister alone in the world again. This was not how she was going to die!
The ground shuddered for a moment, and they all paused to brace themselves. Karim swore. Fear sliced through her chest. The sound of the chanters rose from the cavern ahead, a cacophony of voices, the cadence jarring, shattering, as if they were slowly breaking apart, losing their battle with whatever had been torn apart in the explosion earlier that day.
“Something’s wrong,” Karim muttered uneasily.
“You think?” Paarsav snapped as the ground shuddered again. The chanter said nothing.
She could hear Arphaxad’s labored breathing behind her, and she wanted to reach out and touch him, to let him know that she was here, that she would get them out.
The cavern opened up just as it had before. Below, Cassandra could see the twelve doors winking at intervals around the space. And there, toward the back, was the ring of chanters, their hands clasped, swaying as they spoke their parts, the words and cadence weaving together in the air, crackling with power, before it was funneled toward the thing that hung at the back of the cavern—that black, roaring nothingness.
“Move!” Paarsav barked, following the pale chanter as he made his way carefully down the wooden staircase set into the stone.
Karim looked like he was going to throw up. For a moment, Cassandra thought she might have a chance to break free, to flee, to slip into the darkness of the cave, dart through one of the doors and disappear. But there was Arphaxad bleeding behind her, and she knew she could never do it, could never leave him here to die.
The pulsating nausea from before returned as they neared the ring of chanters. Cassandra could see the sweat standing out on their foreheads, the exhaustion in their faces—the terror as well.
Karim forced her onto her knees as close to the rift as he dared go. She hardly noticed the stone biting into her knees; the rift was there, close, a yawning, horrible thing. She wanted to run, to scream, to get as far away from here as possible. Arphaxad was forced down beside her.
He looked even worse now, his face pale, his gaze wandering. Rage flared in her again. She would not let him die.
The pale chanter shouted something Cassandra couldn’t understand to the swaying ring. For a moment, the chanting faltered, then came back in a frenzied roar. The ground shook again, this time more violently, and Cassandra couldn’t help the cry that escaped her throat.
“Get out!” Paarsav roared. The angular man didn’t have to be told twice.
Karim lingered, looking down at her, his gaze conflicted. Cassandra tipped her chin at him, her eyes flaring defiantly. In a movement so quick Cassandra almost missed it, Karim slipped a knife from his belt. Then he was beside her, hastily sawing through the bonds around her wrists. Blood rushed painfully through her hands as the ropes fell away, and he knelt next to Arphaxad to do the same.
“What are you doing, soldier? I said, get out of here!” Paarsav roared again.
“Thank you, Karim,” Cassandra said, a lump forming in her throat as the ropes around Arphaxad’s wrists fell away too. Karim gave them a grim nod.
“Here,” he said, shoving the knife he’d used to cut their ropes into her hand. “You need this more than I do. I hope it offers you some sort of protection.” Then he turned and bolted after Paarsav.
Cassandra’s fingers closed around her knife. As she slipped it into her boot, she suddenly felt as if there might be some hope in this darkness after all.
“We have to get out of here!” Arphaxad yelled beside her, scrabbling to his feet. The earth shook again, and a scattering of stones rained down from above. Cassandra gripped his arm to steady herself. Blood was flowing through her stiff hands now, and she had to grit her teeth to keep from crying out from the pain.
A hand came down on her shoulder, shoving her back down. Cassandra raised her head, locking gazes with the pale chanter. He shook his head slowly, as if daring her to get to her feet. “Stay down,” he growled. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Some of the chanters broke the circle and fled for the stairs toward the cave entrance. The circle tightened as the chanters left behind joined hands.
“We have to bring the roof down now!” someone shouted. The chanting rose into a frenzied crescendo as more chanters peeled off and made a dash for the entrance.
Cassandra gave a cry of rage and desperation as the ground shook again, more violently than it had before, and she was tossed to the ground.
“Cass!” she heard Arphaxad cry. His hand closed around her arm, and he dragged her backward, toward the rift.
“What are you doing?” she cried, but her voice was swallowed up by the deep rumble of the roof coming down around them.
And then he was throwing his body over hers, her head cradled between his hands. His face, his body, was so close, she could feel the beating of his heart.
“Get off me!” she cried, pummeling her fists against his chest. “You can’t do this, Phax!”
“Keep your head down, damn it!” he snapped as debris rained down around them. The cave was collapsing. And with it, their final hope of escape. She gave a deep cry of frustration. This was not how it would end. Not after what they’d seen. Not after what they had found out. No one was safe—not with Amanakar’s idiotic plan. Not with the white-haired chanter egging him on.
A sob burst from her chest as Arphaxad grunted and the ground roared beneath them. He couldn’t do this, protect her like this. She couldn’t let him.
“Stay still,” he murmured in her ear. “I’ve got you, Cass.”
Damn him. She clutched at the dark material of his tunic, pulling him closer. If this was the way she had to die, it wasn’t the worst way to go, locked together with him. As they had always been. As she had always wanted it to be.
The roaring grew to a deafening crescendo as debris rained down around them. The earth shook, and Cassandra buried her face in Arphaxad’s good shoulder to keep herself from screaming. She wanted to memorize the feel of him, the heat of him, the way his hands were stroking her hair, the way her body molded perfectly to his. She felt him shudder as debris bounced off his back, and as he pulled her closer, she thought she heard him murmur her name.
Then, in a great, shuddering roar, the world turned black.