I’d expected to find her standing behind me with her chin raised in defiance and ready to fight, but she was only a few feet outside my cavern. Her mouth hung open as she gazed at the tunnel in horror, and the faint red hue of her skin had faded until she was nearly white. Zorn stood near her. Sometime during the night, he’d left my chamber to stand watch outside of it.
“What are we doing here?” she whispered so low I barely heard the words.
Sick of her games, I strode back toward her. I still had no idea what I was going to do with her, but I certainly wasn’t going to stand here talking about statues. “This is where we are staying.”
“You’ve been staying inEldorata?”
The way she said the name caused one of my eyebrows to raise. I’d never heard of Eldorata before, but she said it with a reverence that had nothing to do with awe and everything to do with terror.
“If that’s what you call this place, then yes, that’s where we’ve been staying.”
“You idiots.”
I stopped to scowl down at her, but she still looked a little too shellshocked to be aware of me.
“Have you seen him?” she asked.
“Seen who?”
“Mytaz,” she breathed.
More of my anger faded when her eyes darted from me to the statues and back again. I had no idea why she was so upset about a bunch of statues, but I didn’t think anything could rattle her this much… except for me.
“We haven’t seen anyone else since we arrived here,” I assured her.
“We can’t….Ican’t stay here. It’s too dangerous. If he’s alive….”
Her words trailed off as she gazed at the statues.
“If he’s alive, what?” I prompted.
She didn’t seem to hear me as her eyes settled on something further down the hall. I’d never seen an expression like what crossed her face. It was a mixture of amazement, joy, and then such utter sorrow that I felt her sadness stab into me like it was my own.
Bale shoved past me and sprinted down the hall toward the statue of the woman who once held the bowl I used to help clean her. Zorn’s hooves clattered over the rock as he plodded toward me.
I glanced at my mount before following Bale down the hall. She fell to her knees before the statue and reached for it before pulling her hands back. They hung in the air as if she was uncertain what to do with them.
“Fiora,” she breathed. “Oh, Fiora.”
She reached for the woman again and gave an anguished cry when her hands traced the delicate contours of the woman’s face. Then she lowered her forehead to the woman’s and did something I’d never expected to hear my Chosen do, she sobbed.
That sound mystified me more than anything else in my life. My step faltered as Bale kept her head against the woman’s while she embraced the statue.
“I’m so sorry,” she lamented. “I’m so sorry.”
What was going on here? I gazed from Bale to the statue and back again as I stopped beside her. I had no idea what to do, no idea what was happening, but somehow I found my hand resting on her shoulder in a gesture I think was meant to comfort.
I didn’t comfort anyone; I didn’t know how to do such a thing, but apparently, I did.
I started to ask why she was crying over a statue and who the woman was, but it wasn’t the time. So, I simply stood with my hand on her shoulder as she hugged the statue.
And then, from the direction of the entrance, the clatter of hoofbeats rebounded off the walls.
* * *
Bale
Wrath’s handtightening on my shoulder alerted me to the approaching danger more than the hoofbeats heading in our direction. Struggling through my haze of sorrow, I tore myself from the past as I lifted my head from Fiora’s.
