What had caused the tremors and collapse of so many tunnels in this section of the mountain? And what did it mean? The End of Eras? The Giver’s judgment upon them all Above? Would their tunnels soon be flooded with more of the condemned? The Cursed?
She lifted a hand to press against the cool wall of the lava tube, willing it to remain strong and steady. There hadn’t been any other tremors after that disastrous one, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be.
She didn’t believe the six of them, now five, were daemons, like Dae had always thought. Daemons were not created from humans, the Words were clear on that. But they weresomething, something bad, something deserving of eternal torment. She had no doubt that when these flame-strengthened bodies failed—and Brandr’s death before Elianne’s arrival proved they could—that they’d find an even worse torment. A place with no relief from the flames, where the heat actually burned them and there were no cool lava tubes into which they could retreat.
Her hand shook the closer she drew to the ice wall. She could feel it long before the glow from the miniscule stream of lava she called up glinted off its flat surface. Usually he was the one to summon her to a meeting, with a quick burst of frost through the tiny channel he’d trained her to find amidst all the hardened layers of obsidian and basalt. When she’d sent the pulse of lava through it, knowing it would create a blast of steam somewhere in the palace above them, she’d expected the answer quickly.
She’d never abused the connection. Only one other time in all the years down here had she initiated contact, and it had been for an emergency then too, when one of their far-reaching tunnel systems kept collapsing, making it impossible to obey the commands he’d given them.
He had to know she asked for a meeting now for something equally important. But it had been days, by her best estimate, before he’d responded.
Days in which she’d had plenty of time to assume the worst. To wonder if the End really was upon the world Above. To wonder if the king, their only link to humanity, was dead. If his death meant they’d die too.
Ember had brought up the possibility also, worry in her blue eyes. She’d been fiddling with her long blond braid as she broached the subject around what usually would have been their supper fire.
There’d been no supper. Only fire.
Dae hadn’t flinched. Just said, “If he doesn’t call us before the last of what you’d been carrying is gone, then we go to the wall and melt it. Or we go to the surface and gather snow. Or we cut through the rock and access a forbidden spring. We will not die of thirst.”
Proof he’d thought it through, yes. Probably immediately. And simple enough, if the king was dead and hence not there to punish the thanes for those forbidden actions.
Food would be harder, though. They couldn’t just gather that from the end of a lava tube unless they followed one of the geodesic vents into a dome.
Longing squeezed her chest so hard she splayed a hand over it to try to lure it into relaxing.That is no longer your home. A truth she’d been reciting for what she estimated to be decades, from the small hints the king dropped like breadcrumbs now and then. He so rarely gave any indication of the passage oftime, but there were cycles to his appearances, both official and unofficial. She’d pieced them together as best she could.
He stood at the wall already, the glow from her creeping flow finding its way through the clear ice and casting his face into a haunting rendition of itself. All lit-up angles and shadowed planes.
As she drew near, he melted the wall in one moment, erected it again behind him in the next.
Her fingers slid off the wall. He trusted her—or himself, more likely—enough to remove the barrier between them but never enough to remove it between her and the world beyond.
“What has happened?” She stopped several feet away, though even there, the cold radiated off him, making her shiver. She could warm the passage with lava, even will a flame into existence over her palm—but if she tried it, he’d leave. “We experienced a quake that didn’t come from the mountain, and our supply area collapsed into a flow. We have no food or water.”
The king was so still she thought for a moment he hadn’t heard her. Then a muscle ticked in his jaw. “That’s why you signaled.”
“Yes.” Because he expected it, she lowered her head. “You know I would not disturb you if it weren’t an emergency, Your Majesty.”
Dae refused to call him that, refused to acknowledge him as king at all. But then, Dae had lived during the reign of Isidor’s father. Dae was most likely older than Isidor himself—something she still had trouble wrapping her mind around.
Only the Blessed should live so long.
A rumble came from the king’s throat, and he did something she’d never witnessed him do before—ran agitated fingers through his golden hair. “I will return with supplies as soon as I can gather them. For now…” He sent water down the cool channel opposite her magma.
So easy. So simply he saved their lives.
She could imagine the angle of Dae’s scowl, the temper burning in his eyes.“He could supply us with a never-ending stream,”he’d said more than once,“instead of diverting the springs away from us and threatening to punish the thanes in our domes if we reach for them.”
He could. But he didn’t. She understood that it was another way to control them, and she didn’t have to ask why.
They were dangerous. Cursed.
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” She could smell the water, pure and fresh, absent the minerals and sulfur that had been in all the springs in the dome she once called home. Her tongue felt dryer than the lands of the Sun People.
“Go ahead.”
She didn’t need to be told a second time. Elianne dropped to her knees beside the channel and scooped handful after handful to her lips, until mouth and throat both felt normal again.
When she looked his way again, she saw his fingers had curled into his palm—another indication of frustration he rarely indulged. “It seems the cost of betrayal keeps increasing every moment.”
