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“Who says I’ve been wronged?” Her voice quavered, however. She did think she had been wronged and yet she still defended Rig.
He maintained his stoic expression, but something inside him melted a little. She didn’t realize it, but she had a point. Rig wasn’t entirely to blame. His parents or keeper should have been taking care of him. If anyone was to blame...it was the future Minister of Goblinborn Affairs, who spent more time thinking about Jael’s job than his own.
He grunted and resumed walking. The thrum of the Bifrost called to him from around the next bend. Perhaps he was imagining it, but the magic seemed to be whimpering.
The cool light of the Bifrost mingled with the warm blue-green of the active runestones as they stepped into the chamber. Jael extinguished his amulet runestone he’d been holding to guide them.
Behind him, the human girl gasped. “What is this place?” She sounded breathless as she peeked around his shoulder. He shot her an amused glance but supposed she had a right to be curious.
From what he understood, they didn’t have runestones on the surface. They had no need of them.
But he didn’t have time now to answer her questions. He swept his eyes over the chamber, his heart skipping a beat as his stomach clenched.
A dozen new lines had split the rock walls, crawling up the ceiling and across the floor. Heat flooded from the jagged cracks, the magic fresh and strong.
He should have brought Math with him. Rock and bone, he needed the extra set of hands now. He released the goblinborn with a stern point to the corner.
“Stay there.”
Rig made a face, his lips twisting beneath his sharp cheekbones, but he sulked over to the corner and threw himself down. The girl remained where she stood, head thrown back as she gawked at the chamber. The flickering runestones brought out the blues in her wide, hazel eyes, glinting off the broaches and beads strung across the front of her apron.
She didn’t belong here, her skin browned and freckled by the sun. And her hair: he had never seen hair like hers. It was red, a deep shade, and she had so much of it. It fell down her back, a tangle of waves and small braids. Freckles dotted her nose and cheeks, yet another reminder that she lived above ground, far from the tunnels he called home.
He’d never met a human before.
Jael tore his gaze away and searched the chamber for his pack. It lay a couple of yards away, runestones spilling from the opening. He snatched one up and moved to continue his work. The sooner he finished replacing the stones, the sooner he could rid himself of Rig and the goblinborn’s kidnapped human.
They were distractions, complications, and he didn’t need either of those things right now.
He was on his third runestone when he heard footsteps behind him. The girl stood at his elbow, peeking around his shoulder to watch him work.
“What are you doing?” Her whisper sounded almost reverent.
He suppressed a smile and wondered if all humans were so curious and impressionable. He’d heard that they were more susceptible to things—to the elements, to sickness, to magic.
“These are runestones,” he said at length. He hesitated and then handed her the dead stone he had just pried from the iron casing. She cradled it in both palms as he inserted a new stone and swiped his finger in two circles to activate the binding.
“And there! What do you do there to make the stone glow? And to what purpose?”
He moved down the wall to the next sconce. “The binding rune. The runestones help to keep the Bifrost contained.” He swept a hand to indicate the throbbing lines around the chamber. “Otherwise, they run wild and make the tunnels unsafe.”
She turned her attention back to the stone in her hand and seemed to debate something. Then she lifted a finger and traced the circles on the stone. She’d been paying attention. When nothing happened, her expression fell then turned sheepish.
He couldn’t help it: a chuckle slipped past his lips. “Not everyone has an affinity for runes,” he explained. “Humans less than most.”
Heat flamed across her freckled cheeks, and she coughed as if to hide her embarrassment. “Of course.” She set the stone on the pile he had been collecting to take back to Imenborg.
She paid attention to details: he had to give her that. Just not enough attention to avoid being bespelled by mischievous little scamps.
The Bifrost hissed as he moved to the next faulty runestone. Easy, he thought, I’m coming. But the magic thrummed against his attempts to soothe. Such temper! He frowned when the clasp he was working with refused to open.
“It’s so warm,” the girl murmured to his left.
He grunted an affirmative and pulled a small knife from his belt to pry apart the prongs locking the runestone in place.
“And so pretty. It almost seems—alive—somehow.”
He suppressed a surge of irritation. Her chattering was a distraction he had no time for. There was something wrong with the prongs on this clasp. They simply refused to open...
