Chapter 23
I hadn’t slept.
At some point in the night, I had gotten up and gone and sat on the ridge and just watched the basin below.
I wasn’t the only one.
Nicco sat across from me along the ridge, and I realized quite quickly he wasn’t there like me to stare at the puzzle below, but to deter soldiers who might have wandering fingers in the night.
In a way, I didn’t blame them. According to Baxley's description, these gemstones were worth a lot. But I had told them not to touch them, and they thought they could sneak them into their packs while I slept.
He hadn’t looked my way when I got up, somehow knowing I had no interest in picking stones from rocks.
He hadn’t even turned his head when he saw me settle down in my spot, my hood pulled low, and just watched the basin. The waterspouts fascinated me. I’d tried to discern a pattern, but the pattern was that there was no pattern.
It took me far too long to figure that out.
After Nicco had let two soldiers know he was watching and deterring their curiosity, no one else tried to get up.
He waited longer, then he too took his rest. Leaving me in my spot, watching the basin with an intensity I never knew I possessed.
I nodded off at one point, lulled to sleep by the sound of the waterspouts. I woke to a rough shake on my shoulder and to Nicco looking down at me.
“We’re ready to go down. Are you coming?”
They didn’t need me right now. They had reached their destination, but there was no way I was staying up here.
“Yes.” I was already pushing to my feet.
“You sure?”
I looked up at him as I picked up my pack. “Yes? You don’t want me to?”
Nicco gave me that flat stare. “If I didn’t want you down there, why would I be asking?”
“Because you like to confuse me?”
He let out a breath. “Gods, I swear you get more difficult the farther north we go.”
I looked around, settling my pack on my back and clasping the center strap like I always did. “We can’t get much farther, can we? This must be my most difficult.”
His lips twitched at my sass. “Let’s hope.”
He walked away, and I saw that everyone else was ready and eager to descend into the basin.
For once, I trailed them. We picked our way down the ridge to the basin below. Because I’d studied the pattern the night before, I did my best to pick out the path that avoided the waterspouts.
Some were drenched in warm water as soon as they stepped into the basin. Others made it halfway. I was almost clear when the last waterspout caught me. Baxley reached forward and pulled me away, so only half of me got wet.
Being cold in Crystallese was one thing. Being wet and cold was a whole other kind of misery. The initial blast of warmth was lovely, but it was followed by a cold so biting that not only my teeth chattered as we exited the basin.
Captain Marson had his men spread out to explore the rock walls, with careful instructions not to touch or take anything, the firm reminder that the land and everything on it belonged to the king of Crystallese.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about being reminded I was a possession of the king. A king I’d never met, who, as far as I knew, had never traveled beyond the comfort of his throne room.
I hadn’t known I was following the pull in my chest until a hand clasped my upper arm and pulled me back into a solid chest.
“Bunny? You running down rabbit holes?” Nicco asked me quietly.
I looked over my shoulder at him. “I…” I looked back and realized I’d been heading toward the opening. “Oh.” I tried to smile. “I was going to wait for you.”
“See that you do.” He let go of me, and I stepped back immediately.
“Do you know what’s in there?” I asked.
“No. Mining equipment, maybe.”
I nodded. I didn’t know what mining equipment looked like, so I said nothing, but as always, he read my face too easily. “You never knew this was a mine?”
I turned to look down the tunnel. “It’s a mine?” I asked him. The tug in my chest said no. “Then why is it no longer in use? It still has much to mine, no?”
Nicco was watching the soldiers. “Good question. One we need to find the answer to.”
“Why?”
My question caught him by surprise. His gaze was on me again, and I shifted under his scrutiny. “What do you mean, why?”
I fiddled with the strap on my pack. “The soldiers are doing the consensus and—”
“Census.”
I blinked. “What?”
“It’s a census. Consensus means agreement, which is completely different.”
“Oh.” My cheeks flushed at being corrected. “Okay. Well, the soldiers are doing that. I don’t know why mercenaries would be here.”
“Why shouldn’t we be?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. “You don’t seem the type to care about population numbers.” It seemed I had an answer after all.
Nicco’s head tilted back as he stretched his neck. His neck warmers were tucked under his chin, forming a thick scarf around his neck. His face was covered in a thick beard, and his hair was messy and unkept, yet he still looked as if he hadn’t suffered any hardship on this journey.
I almost laughed at myself for my inability to say he still looked good. Had he ever looked good? I mean, he looked good, but had I ever thought he looked good?
Whoa. No. I needed to stop.
“I don’t care,” he said, seeing my look, his eyes narrowing like he knew I was no longer focused on the question I’d asked. “You asked why I cared about numbers.”
“I know what I asked.” I didn’t admit I was so distracted by his looks that I’d forgotten the question.
I pushed my head back and pulled the tail of my braid over my shoulder.
My braid had grown looser than ever, and I considered redoing it while we waited for whatever Captain Marson and his men were cataloging.
“You bored waiting?” Nicco asked suddenly.
I looked up from the leather tie of my braid. “Yeah?”
“Baxley, you’re up,” he shouted over his shoulder, then walked into the tunnel, and I followed him.
No one followed us.
As we walked through the tunnel, Nicco told me from ahead that it was called a mining shaft. It was dimly lit, but I could see the seams of the gemstones in the rock running like veins through the rock.
“These aren’t ice rocks,” I told Nicco as we walked.
“No. They appear to be one solid thing, more than individual rocks.”
“The ones above are colored.”
“Idle conversation doesn’t suit you, bunny. Are you nervous, or do you have a specific question?”
I flipped him the finger behind his back. The truth was, it was both.
I was someone who lived my life in the open, and I was quite clearly walking down into whatever lay beneath the surface of Iskaeld. “I wanted to ask why Baxley mentioned the ice rocks and why we haven’t seen any ice rocks?”
“Do I look like I work in a mine?”
“You’re a truly wonderful conversationalist.”
He stopped, looking back at me, and raised a brow. “You’re nervous.”
I refused to meet his gaze. “Maybe.”
He stepped back a few steps to stand alongside me. “And here I thought you were fearless.”
Well, that was rude. “I am. Usually.”
“Do you want to go back?”
“No.”
He looked pleased by the speed of my refusal. “Come on then. Don’t think about it. Just pretend it’s the stars above you.”
He pointed upward, and I looked up and saw them. Small, big, medium, all sizes of ice rocks above us, making the tunnel look like the night sky.
“Oh…”
“Yeah, it’s impressive,” said with the most unimpressed tone ever. “You can tell people you were guided down to the underworld by a sky of diamonds.”
“Asshole.”
He grinned.
Diamonds.
“I’ve never heard that word before,” I told him as we resumed walking. “Diamonds, I mean. I know what the underworld is.”
“Really?”
I nodded. I couldn’t take my eyes off the gemstones above us. “Baxley called them diamonds, and it was the first time I’d heard the word.”
“You call them ice rocks?” He smiled, as if that amused him. “I think I prefer that.”
We walked farther down. The ice rocks became less frequent as we descended, and soon, I couldn’t deny that I was pressing closer to Nicco’s side.
“Now I know you’re not afraid of the dark,” he murmured beside me as he moved his arm a little to let me crowd him.
“True.” But how could I tell him that my heart felt like it was coming out of my chest?
“So were you waiting for the dark and for us to be alone to press against me, bunny?”
I thought I felt a hand skim along my back. It didn’t make me step away. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
Nicco laughed, but he didn’t tease me anymore, and somehow I was closer to him than before and neither of us mentioned it at all.
My magic was pulsing, throbbing inside me. It was all I could hear.
And still, I kept walking.
The tunnel narrowed more as we descended, the walls pressing closer, the ceiling dropping in increments so gradual I only noticed how much when Nicco had to angle his shoulders to pass through a section that had been wide enough moments earlier.
The diamonds thinned as we went deeper, then stopped entirely, and the walls around us were just rock.
Plain, dark, cold rock.
The moonstone Nicco carried threw shadows that moved with us.
“Is that mine?” I demanded before I could stop myself.
“Maybe.”
“Nicco—”
“Shh.” He looked around. “Feel that?”
I did what he said without argument, and I felt it against my skin. “It's getting warmer,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Because it’s hotter in the core?”
His smile might have been the first genuine one I ever saw from him. “You listen well, bunny.”
“You need to stop calling me that,” I grumbled.
“Why?” He smirked. “You literally followed me down the rabbit hole, bunny.”
“Shut up.”
I pressed my hand briefly against the tunnel wall. The rock was not exactly warm, but it was less cold than it should have been at this depth, in this country, in the middle of what passed for winter at its worst. Something beneath us generated heat that had nowhere to go but up.
My magic was not helping me think clearly.