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“There are no children!” he yelled without slowing his pace. They rounded a bend in the tunnel and pounded up the incline toward a wide, open hall braced with stone pillars that made him think of the grand corridors in Elysium, not of the narrow tunnels here at Imenborg.
Behind them, the shadows pursued, snarling like rabid dogs, ravenous and relentless.
We are coming for you. We are coming for you. We. Are. Coming.
The corridor stretched on forever, nothing ahead of them except pillar after pillar after pillar. He despaired that there would never be an end to this nightmare.
This living nightmare.
“There!” Anrid gasped and tugged him off balance as she tried to redirect him.
He followed her lead and darted between two of the pillars and toward a sliver of icy white light coming from beneath a closed door. He released Anrid as he skidded to a halt and pushed hard against the door to force it open. It groaned and resisted, but he pushed the heavy stone door inward enough for them to squeeze through.
The shadows snarled right behind them.
“Help me close it!” He heaved against the stone, but it caught on something. Anrid leaned her shoulder against the rough surface to help him.
The door eased closed one inch, and then two. Anrid screamed as black tentacles of shadows wedged themselves through the narrowing opening. But Jael continued to push with every fiber of his being. The door eased another couple of inches.
With an infuriated howl, the shadows disappeared beneath the slamming of stone upon stone.
Jael hit his knees, hard, and pressed his forehead against the door as he gasped for breath. Anrid sank down beside him, her back to the door. Her fingers splayed across the floor to brace herself, only a hair’s breadth from his left knee.
Her chest rose and fell with erratic breaths as she twisted her neck to peer up at him. Questions swirled in the depths of her eyes, but she said nothing. They stared at one another, nothing between them but ragged breaths.
He blinked, and they were back in his room.
No, in her room. He glanced around at three dozen gawking faces huddled around the edges of the room. Half of them were crammed onto the beds as if trying to get away from something. Little Medda’s blood-curdling screams echoed through the too small chamber.
Rock and bone, he needed to find them a bigger room.
He eased back onto his heels and braced his hands against his thighs. Anrid sat beside him in a tangle of blankets and lumpy pillows, her hair torn from her braid and spilling around her nightgown.
Heat filled his cheeks as this fact registered. He glanced down at himself, appalled to see he wore only his loose-fitting tunic and knickers that fell just below his knees.
At least he had gone to bed with a shirt on. Thank the runes for small mercies.
“Uh-NEE?” Rig choked out from the bed where he clung to his screaming sister.
Anrid’s head snapped up and focused on the children for the first time. “Oh, my darlings. You’re all right. Is everyone all right? Everyone is here?”
Relief—not his own—flooded Jael’s senses.
The children took this as permission of some sort and tumbled off the beds and over one another in their haste to get to Anrid. When her lap filled, the children turned on Jael. He caught a little fellow in his arms and fell backward, bracing himself with an awkward hand behind him. He repositioned so that he sat securely as two more goblins swathed in much-too-large tunics dove into his lap.
The door to the bedroom swung open and hit the wall with a bang as Kora staggered in, his white hair tangled and standing up in places. He wore nothing but a pair of loose trousers tied at his waist. “By the stones, what’s all the yelling—” He broke off when he saw them huddled on the floor. His mouth hung open.
Jael met Anrid’s gaze as they sat together on the floor with weeping goblinborn huddled as close to them as possible. Hands touched him from all sides, on his shoulders, arms and thighs. Little Medda even had a hold of his bare foot, hugging it to her chest as if it were a treasured doll she feared she might lose.
Anrid broke eye contact first and hugged Rig tighter against her side, her other arm trying to stretch around two more children without displacing a third that wouldn’t fit onto her legs.
“Hush, children, hush,” she called out. “Please, hush.”
The crying grew quieter but didn’t cease. She licked her tongue across her lips, appeared momentarily helpless, and then cleared her throat. She began to sing.
Anrid had a lovely voice, it was low and gentle, and the melody that spilled out of her haunted him with breathless beauty. She sang about winter, and nighttime, and other things he didn’t understand, her world so far above his.
So far above him.
