Chapter
One
Kyle
If the straps snapped, I couldn’t let it hit the ground.
I couldn’t stop walking.
The carry pack bit into my shoulders with every step, canvas grinding against sweat-slick skin, the leather stiff with old salt and the splatter of monster blood. I hooked my thumbs under the straps and jerked them wider, dragging the weight higher. Something shifted inside the pack and stabbed between my shoulder blades. I reached back, fingers fumbling over buckles and knotted cord, and shoved the piece of loot to one side until the pressure dulled to a tolerable bruise.
All of me ached.
The descent had been slow, spiraling down damp stone steps, jagged and rough as if they had been carved yesterday with no thought to uniformity or function. My quadriceps trembled from breaking my weight on the decline and then carrying the load through the long stretches of the labyrinth corridors. My rear burned with that deep, grinding fatigue that had the single silverlining of letting me know that my ass was going to look ever finer than before… if I had anyone I wanted to admire it.
I could thank every shred of luck I possessed that none of the Barons were gay enough to discover I never should have been assigned to be their squire in the first place.
At least they didn’t expect me to fight.
They didn’t shove a blade into my hand or make me join in their utterly terrifying-looking training sessions. My job was simpler. Stay out of the way, carry what they killed for, clean their armor, and be neither seen nor heard unless they had need of me. I barely even had to cast a minor healing spell unless there were serious injuries, and Heacur became exhausted. Heacur was the Baron’s healer. He wore white with gold trim.
I wore the pack.
They had changed my schedule on me when I was assigned to them, moving me into trap evasion and minor healing. I hadn’t realized how useless the introductory classes were until I’d seen my first ranked battle and realized how any of the Proper Students could fry one of us lowly mundanes with a spell without even thinking about it. We weren’t even taught to protect ourselves.
At least now I knew how to detect traps, like the vines hanging down from the walls.
Their last squire had not lasted as long as me.
He fell into an acid trap.
I'd been with them for a year and a half now, and as job assignments went, being a glorified pack mule wasn't the worst, unlike the fish hatchery. I tried not to think of my time there. That kind of horror made even the Dungeon feel like clerical work, and it had been the first job they gave me when I arrived.
Despite the way the memories lingered in the back of my mind, firmly laced in with the terror of being discovered, I was grateful for it. If I had not worked there, I would not haveunderstood how carefully I needed to hide the circumstances of my birth.
I took a deep breath in, sucking in the cool, yet humid air.
This section of the maze was lush and beautiful. Moss layered the flat stones in thick, damp sheets that looked soft enough to nap on if they didn’t climb vertically up the slabs that rose to twice the considerable height of the group’s lycan, Vut. The walls towered at least twenty feet overhead, sheer and square cut, their edges softened by the green growth and beads of trapped moisture.
Vut had enough spring in him to clear that height. I’d seen him in the past coil and launch to at least that distance. Even with his shifted form chained by the bonds of the Order Goddess, he still had a serious pounce to him.
But he didn’t jump in here, because the ceiling was a trap.
A dense lattice of vines spread overhead, green and verdant, hanging slack in a gorgeous drapery. If you climbed high enough on the rough-hewn stones to brush against them, they snapped awake. They struck with the speed and force of a mantis shrimp, whipping down in a blur, wrapping whatever they could grab, and yanking the unfortunate victim out into the center. They were strong enough to crack bones and buckle armor.
So there was no climbing to the top of the maze to navigate our way through.
"The map is wrong," Vut snapped. He filled the group’s role of the mobile fighter, or a secondary tank. I didn't know of a group that didn't have a lycan in that position. They were fast, required less energy from the healer when damaged, and could fight their way through injury. The main downside of being around lycans is they tend to lose their temper.
That wasn’t a problem for the other fae and shifters, but it was for regular mundanes, like me.
We were disposable.
No one cared if a rampaging lycan accidentally hit us too hard.
I reached up to wad up my red jacket, the uniform of a mundane, shoving it up under the straps of the loaded carry pack to try to ease the bruising feelings. The Barons liked to sell every bit of loot we got from the Dungeons, so instead of equipping me in even old or worn-down armor, they made me come down here with nothing more than my cloth school uniform. It was no wonder their last squire died so quickly. When I got a glimpse of the Kings taking their new squire into the Dungeon, all dressed up in leather armor too big for him, I was downright jealous.
Providing armor was the least they could do.
