Chapter 18
TWO DIFFERENT BEASTS
ODELIA
“Everyone pair off.”
Rune’s voice is carefully neutral, but the fact that he wants us to split up at all makes my stomach flip.
Tavi moves to Elio, and it’s just Rune and me left when the others settle, passing torches to ensure each group has at least one.
On the far side, someone coughs, wet and hacking, and I wince as the sound echoes off the jagged walls.
“Each group takes a section,” Rune calls. “Don’t go too far in at first. We scout and return with any information that might hint at where we’re supposed to go.” He gestures, sending them fanning across the chamber. Soon they’re only visible in stark bits of torchlight across a lake of shadow.
When he turns to me, his smile is strained. “Looks like we’re up.”
Every tunnel in the section we take looks identical.
I run the torch along the outside of the door, passing it silently to Rune so he can lift it over the archway.
We fall into the routine of the movements, fingers brushing at every pass of the light, not daring to speak.
The quiet here feels sacred. Even whispers are punished, multiplied as they spirit off the walls like ghosts.
Silence has always been a sanctuary for me, a hiding place. Here it’s alive.
Waiting.
When we find nothing at the opening, we start with the first tunnel on one side.
I count fifty paces till we turn back again, then we enter the next.
And the next. It feels like hours in the dark, the flame reflecting off the runes in the walls, its smoke sitting low, clinging to my face and constricting my throat.
When we exit again, there’s commotion in the main chamber. One of the men is hunched on the ground, two arrows embedded in his bicep.
“They came from the walls,” his partner says.
“The arrows?” I ask. The bolts are heavy, but they look ancient, the wood splintered. It’s a wonder the mechanism still worked.
“Dozens of them,” the injured man grunts.
Rune kneels to check the arrow in his arm. “Someone go up top,” he says, throwing his chin at another group standing nearby. “Have them make a lift to get him up.”
“I’m fine,” the man objects. “The wounds aren’t deep. Just got stuck in the meat is all.”
Rune ignores him, instead looking up at his first mate. “Elio, I want you to go back up too.”
“Captain—”
“I’m not taking arguments, Elio. You’re already injured. This is as far as you go. Leave the arrow spitting walls to those spry enough to get out of dodge.”
I’m certain the words are meant to come out as playful, but Rune’s face is too tight, and a muscle in Elio’s jaw feathers before he opens his mouth to protest again.
Old, familiar anticipation floods through me as the tension rises, preparing for violence.
But Rune’s voice just comes out quieter, as steadfast as I imagine mountains might be.
“That’s an order.” He turns back to the men on the ground. “Which tunnel was it?”
“It—” The man hesitates, his eyes scouring the mess of identical tunnels before his shoulders fall. “I don’t know.”
Rune curses and stands, raking his hands through his hair as he moves away. I follow with the torch, and he doesn’t turn to see if it’s me before he tips his head back and speaks to the nothingness above us.
“I can’t keep losing people, Odi.”
I step in, trying and failing to keep my voice low enough the words won’t catch on the stone and come back to me. “He’s going to be fine—”
Rune finally turns, and the vulnerability in his eyes has two urges warring inside me: to step back, or to step into him, to be the tether that holds him above the raging of his thoughts.
We’re frozen, for a blink, the wound on my thigh throbbing with the memory of his careful hands.
For a moment, I wonder if he’ll call all of it off, go back on his word, ship me to Stonegallows for the trouble I’ve brought.
Instead, he sighs heavily, resting his hands on his hips as he takes in the shadows of the tunnels.
“Captain,” another pair calls from the fourth section. “We found something!”
It’s a . . . frog creature. Like the ones we’d fought.
The faded etching lies just inside the tunnel, invisible from the outside.
Rune’s eyebrows are pinched as he studies it, his arms glistening with the strange humidity that suffocates everything else in here. “I can’t decide if it’s a good sign or a bad sign.”
“Is this the only one?” I ask a man I recognize as one of the night crew, Jortan.
Rune directs the others on a targeted search, and an hour later we’ve found only four tunnels have small carvings—an amphibious monster, a curling centipede, a vine of pinwheeled flowers—and a coral-studded sea dragon.
“So we start with them,” I say, trying to hide my growing claustrophobia.
Rune nods. “It’s the only difference we can tell so far, besides the dead ends, arrows, and the one that’s caved in and leaking water.”
“You don’t think it hints at what we’ll have to face, do you?” I could do without ever encountering a giant knife-legged bug again.
“Here,” he asks, “or as we find the keys?”
“Either?”
He doesn’t answer, his jaw feathering as he mulls over the question. My eyes rest on the final icon. Sea dragons are more myth than anything. Aren’t they?
We’re interrupted by those looking for orders, and he directs most to stay, selecting three other pairs for the marked tunnels, reminding them if they come across traps or get wounded to trace their steps back.
I follow him towards a tunnel slightly left of centre, palming the hilt of the bone dagger that’s still sheathed at my waist.
He stops and brandishes an arm, inviting me forwards in an absurdly prince-like fashion. “Since this island had the frogs, we’ll start with this one.”
I pass him, the wariness balanced by relief to finally be making headway.
I’m not afraid of the dark, but the narrow space sets me on edge.
“Last one there’s a rotten sea slug,” I sigh as he follows, bearing the torch high.
For a hundred paces, the walls are straight and unchanging, but the ground slants down as the walls start to curve, and the air shifts. Stales.
Goose flesh rises on my arms. “How long do you think it’s been since anyone has been in here?”
“There’s no way to know. I supposed we’d have to wonder how old the map itself is.”
I trail my fingers over the rough walls as we walk. “You think the map is as old as the temple?”
He shrugs. “I think it would be close. No one has seen an elemental map for hundreds of years.”
“Will any of the ocean’s temple goers be grateful it’s been discovered?”
“Some.” His voice is careful. “I mentioned earlier it would have been abandoned the moment it touched open air. A portion are incredibly dedicated to the old gods, so the fact that this one is above water now won’t sway them.
With any luck, the map’s treasure will hold all sorts of relics.
They would be the true prize, when compared to your glittering things. ”
I grin. “Well you’re welcome to them. I’ve no use for—” The ground falls away, and I gasp, jerking Rune’s arm to stop him from moving forwards. It’s another drop. A sweep of the torch reveals it’s about the same as in the main chamber. Rune is already lowering himself to the edge.
“Are you sure we’ll be able to get back up?”
“I’m sure,” he says, landing lightly and laying the torch on its side before lifting his arms up to help me down.
I find it too easy to relent, bracing my hands on his forearms while his fingers wrap firmly around my waist. He sets me down so gently I don’t feel it in my injured leg—then he doesn’t let go.
His warmth draws me closer, and without thought, I slide the tips of my fingers over the heat of his arms, firmly aware of the stone wall at my back and how it might feel to be pressed into it, the cool rock holding me steady against his relentless need.
I blink, nearly overtaken by a consuming, heady adrenaline.
His eyes are molten in the torchlight. His grip tightens for a breath, as if he can anticipate my sudden urge to flee.
“Rune—”
He yanks me closer, slamming my chest into his. His grip is like iron, and I melt for it, every part of me going limp with relief. I lift my face to his, the blaze low in my stomach greedy now, insistent.
But he twists me away, his fingers hooking painfully into my side as he whips his sword out with the other hand. The rock clangs, the steel screaming in my ears in angry echoes.
Then silence.
He picks up the torch, and holds it over the body of a reptilian creature with a stinger on its tail. It’s strangely flat, the colour of dark stone. It had to have been completely silent, invisible in the dark.
“It was waiting on the wall,” he says, his chest heaving.
My heart pounds too, my emotions somersaulting over themselves. “How did you see it?” The tunnel is pitch black where the torch doesn’t reach.
“Darkvision,’ he says. “I assumed you would have it too.” His eyes sweep over the flush in my face. I don’t know what else he sees. “Perhaps I should lead from here?”
I nod, swallowing, letting my face fall to hide the embarrassment that snakes up my spine.
The silence envelopes us again. The walls shine, weeping puddles onto the floor.
“Salt water,” Rune says. I don’t ask him how he can tell.
Time retreats, replaced by subtle changes in the rock around us. The etchings disappear, then the smooth finish roughens to natural stone. Bits of it litter the pathway. I’m careful to avoid the added noise, but Rune crunches over them, the sound like a beast grinding bones in its teeth.
“Do you have to do that?” I ask, after the third time.
“Do what?” He doesn’t look at me, but his smile betrays him. He’s bored.