“You actually dug this with a ...” Kolden pokes my blunt chisel out past the tapestry he’s stuffed behind, giving me privacy while I change my top. “Withthis?”
“It wasn’t always that stumpy,” I murmur, threading my arms through the holes of Rhordyn’s shirt—his leather satchel on the ground at my feet, pulled from the urn on our dash down into the palace’s bowels. I pull the shirt over my head, unable to stop from shoving my nose into the fibers and drawing deep.
Sating my lungs full ofhim.
That dome inside me rumbles so much a little bit of crystal flakes off the otherwise perfect surface.
Shit.
The shirt tumbles halfway to my knees, my legs clad in comfortable leather pants, feet bare, hair loose and heavy since I lost my hairpin in the burrow. The sheath Rhordyn gave me is bound around my thigh, my dagger snug inside.
I buckle Rhordyn’s sword across my chest, tuck his leather satchel into my knapsack, then slip the handle over my shoulder and bunch my hands into fists, feeling more myself than I have in …
Too long.
I pluck my wooden sword off the ground, picturing Rhordyn’s wisteria vine tangling through my fingers, up my wrist and arm, infusing me with mighty strength.
“I’m good,” I rasp, tightening my hand around the hilt. “Let’s go.”
Kolden edges back and looks me over, gives me a firm nod, then wrangles his square body into the very small, very round hole again and wiggles through. Once his boots aren’t tenting the tapestry, I pull it back and clamber in after him, crawling over blue dust and a few remaining shards of stone.
Poking my head out the other side, I scan left and right down the tunnel dimly lit by our torch lying on the ground, the acrid smell of death and decay coming to me on a soft breeze that whistles around corners.
Kolden stands about four feet below, reaching up with empty hands. He shed all his golden armor back in my suite, left only with what he was wearing beneath—simple brown pants and a blue tunic—his gold-tipped spear strapped to his back, tawny hair half down and draped around his shoulders.
“You’ve explored this tunnel?” he queries. “There’s a hive of passageways beneath the palace—remnants of the old structure that was torn down years ago. Are you certain this one goes to the right place?”
“I’m certain.” I hand him my sword, which he places on the ground, then maneuver my body until my legs are hanging over the edge, waiting for him to grip my waist before I drop.
He settles me on the ground amongst a litter of stone shards, and I wipe my hands on my pants. “I ran it this morning to check if it goes to the right place,” I say, picking up my sword. “Barely made it back in time for the trial preparations. This way.”
I take off to the left.
Kolden’s on my heels, accompanied by thewhooshof our flaming torch as we power through the tunnel that dips and rolls, like it rides the waves of the ocean’s currents—the ocean I can almost feelpushing down on us from above with its mighty force.
The tunnel becomes short and wide, then so tall and narrow we have to turn sideways to edge through. Some segments of the walls are smooth, others sharp enough to slice a hide.
This tunnel … it wears so many emotions that when I ran down here this morning, without myownstuffed deep, some areas made me want to curl up and cry.
We continue chasing the stench of death until we’re spat out through a small entryway on the other side of the burrow’s domed feeding arena lit by blazing torches. Cainon’s father is tucked on his side, eyes closed, bunched near the center where a torrent of rainwater gushes down from the sky-hole and pours through a grate in the ground.
Fierce bursts of light spill down from the angry sky, igniting the glassy veins carved into his flesh. The dried, jagged threads of blood that have leaked from it—stitched across his skin.
He’s rumbling in his sleep, every deep, even breath a rockslide, making the hairs on the backs of my arms stand on end.
“He’s chained,” I whisper over my shoulder, settling my wooden sword and knapsack on the floor. “Earlier, he was sleeping at the edge of that white line, and his chains were pulled taut. He can’t reach us.”
The storm continues to bang its drum as Kolden follows me around the arena’s edge, sticking to the outer side of the white line that maps the entire circumference. Despite knowing we’re safe, I keep a watchful eye on the slumbering form, though it’s not until we near the mouth of the prison-cell tunnel that I notice something in a sporadic burst of light flashing down from the leaky sky-hole.
A flop of iridescent curls …
A pointed ear with crystal thorns lining the shell …
Somebody’s tucked beneath the monster’s arm.
My feet stop, that dome inside me creaking as I take in the deep bite mark on the Aeshlian’s neck, his closed eyes, lips slightly parted. I look at his chest, willing it to inflate.
Willing him tobreathe.
