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“You don’t have to tell me about that. I’ve been looking. But I don’t know who would have taken it. The only people who knew about it were you, me, and Anrid.”
“And Kora.” Math’s voice held a sharp edge.
Rig began to cry louder. He covered his face with both hands and wailed so loudly, they couldn’t continue their conversation had they wanted to.
Jael leaned to frown at him, wondering what had initiated this renewed sense of despair. “Whatever is the matter?”
The goblin child wouldn’t look at him. “I did a bad thing,” he sobbed. Tears trickled from between his fingers. “It was me. I took the bad book.”
Anger mingled with confusion as Jael struggled not to smack the child on the back of the head. “What were you thinking?” he demanded. “That’s a very bad book, Rig. You could have gotten hurt. You could have hurt everyone else—what did you do with it?”
Rig lowered his hands at last, fingers sliding down his face to fall idle against the tabletop. “He told me it would help. That it would help Uh-NEE stay with us. That he wanted to help Uh-NEE. I just wanted to help.”
“Who did?” Math coaxed.
Rig’s mouth screwed up with renewed despair. He laid his forehead right down on the table and sobbed afresh. “He said the bad book was hurting Uh-NEE and that he wanted her to get better. Wanted her stay with us. Help the Frost not shake all the time. He said he wanted to help.”
“Who said this, Rig?” Jael hadn’t meant to raise his voice, but he did.
“P-p-prince Kora!” he wailed.
Ice flooded his veins as Jael bolted from the table so fast, he dislodged half the children, who scuttled out of his way with frightened squeaks.
“Where are you going?” Math called after him.
But Jael didn’t spare a moment to answer. Instead, he bolted from the playroom to shake answers out of Kora before he brought the mountain down around their ears.
Chapter 33
The cavern around them reeked of stagnant water. Somewhere in the shadowed corners, water dripped against stone. Anrid huddled beside Medda, limp on the ground where the elves had deposited her sling when they stopped to rest. Her skin exuded heat when Anrid pressed a palm to the girl’s forehead.
And she still had not so much as blinked an eye or stirred a muscle.
It had been hours. Hours.
Anrid’s body felt as if she had been running uphill, although their progress through the tunnels hadn’t been that strenuous. It was almost as if a part of her was pulling back toward Imenborg even while she forced her feet to step onward—an almost tangible tug of war.
It hurt.
She rubbed her aching chest with a grimace before checking the bandage around Medda’s forehead to make sure it was secure. Thanks to Trap’s careful work, the stitched wound no longer bled, but Anrid needed to keep it clean and dry. She squeezed Medda’s limp fingers and waited for a reaction.
Nothing happened.
Anrid rolled her eyes closed, battling the despair. She wondered if Jael could feel her worry and if it scared him not knowing what was happening. But when she reached out, tentatively, she found she could barely sense him. The connection had grown frail.
What would happen if it snapped?
Swallowing a thick lump in the back of her throat, she rose and eased around a squat stalagmite growing out of the floor of the cave. The dark elves reclined a few yards away, whispering amongst themselves. They fell silent as she approached, as if loathe to allow her to hear their conversation. She licked her lips and folded her hands together, squeezing her fingers hard to ground herself and find the courage to speak.
“I beg your pardon, but when will we be continuing? I think Medda might be getting worse. There are indications of fever—”
“We’ll be staying here for a while.” Talos cut her off without raising his head from the ornate knife he ran back and forth against a whetstone.
She flinched but stood her ground. “Her head wound is severe,” she repeated, more firmly. “She needs to see a healer as quickly as possible. I don’t understand the delay.”
He said nothing, and neither did anyone else. Snick, snick, snick went the blade against the stone, almost as if it were laughing at her. Anrid waited for him to say something—anything—or to at least look at her to acknowledge her presence, but he bent to his work as if she didn’t exist.
The blade dug a little deeper.
