“They don’t talk much, both of them,” Enya whispered to Lory. “Don’t trust strangers, even when the leonthor brought them here.”
They followed the tunnel, Lory tripping over her own feet until her eyes adjusted to the near-absence of light. Roughly hewn obsidian walls framed them, the unfamiliar scents a cool draft carried toward them speaking of a world Lory had not yet laid eyes on. Something floral and humid. Then they rounded a bend in the tunnel, and the savory smell of fried meats wafted into Lory’s face. Another grumble rolled through her stomach.
“What is this place?” Keeping the wonder out of her voice was an exercise in self-restraint, but growing up on the streets, where trust meant being cheated out of a next meal or losing a place to sleep, she had learned young that letting on what she was fascinated with was never a good idea. Naturally, Khayrivven was the exception. There was no pretending. She was enthralled to the bone with the allure of that man.
With a deep breath, Lory smothered the onslaught of anxiety coming with the thought of the Flame-born whose life depended on her return to the outpost.
No, she couldn’t fully trust these people, either, but they might know something that would help her get out of there. Anything that would help her return to Khayrivven.
“Just a cave in the Amrin Mountains,” Enya replied over her shoulder, guiding Lory through an opening on the side. “A sanctuary for the likes of us.” Her self-deprecating laugh multiplied on the stone of the small cave they stepped into, sending another shudder of fear down Lory’s back. Her encounter with Ricca’s sound magic had left a lasting impression when it came to echoes and what harm they could do.
“This is our kitchen.” Enya pointed at the fireplace by the side of the cave, close to the cave mouth, where a fire was smoldering in a circle of rocks, a crooked pan sitting on a grate, strips of meat sizzling and hissing in the heat. “Or at least, that’s what we call it.” Another brief laugh; this one lit up her face as she met Lory’s gaze. “Hadrick likes to spend his entire day here if I don’t keep him occupied.”
The wink in his direction told Lory there was something more going on between those two—the long-lasting, more-than-just-friends type of relationship that survived hardship but also came with a sort of bitterness because it wasn’t the type of fated love that had been written in fairytale books. Not that she’d had access to such books as a child, but her mother would recount stories to Evven and her to distract from their hunger with stories she’d once read when they found a place to rest for the night.
With a shudder, Lory shook off the memories—all except for that of her mother’s face.
“Bread?”
Lory nearly jumped out of her skin when Hadrick offered her a fist-sized loaf from the side, tearing her out of her thoughts. “Thanks.”
Hadrick dropped the bread in her open palm and bustled off toward the cave mouth, busying himself with a pile of rocks, which he shifted half a foot for reasons Lory couldn’t fathom.
While Lory tore a piece off the loaf and put it into her mouth, Olive wandered to the fire, scooping a few slices of meat onto a wooden plate and sitting down against the wall.
If they’d been living here long enough to have a ‘kitchen’, this cave couldn’t be a temporary home. “How many Flame-born live here?”
It should have been the first thing Lory asked, but she’d been too occupied with her own fear and getting back to the outpost to consider that these people here might be as trapped in this place as Lory was.
Another rumble sounded from the shadows, but this time, the leonthor remained hidden in the dark seams of the cave. Lory cocked her head, straining to spy the creature. If he was holding them all captive here, she’d have a word to?—
“Not trapped those people we have,”the leonthor’s voice popped into her mind.
Of course—of course it had trapped only her. Pointedly ignoring the creature, Lory followed Olive to the fire and sat down across from her, chewing on her bread as she observed the flames. A small, steady fire crackled in front of her, not wavering with the breeze.
“Hadrick and I arrived here a year ago.” At Enya’s remark, Lory almost choked on her bread.A year.“Olive joined halfa year ago, but some of us have been here for over a decade, lived with the seasons of the mountains, and survived on what they provide.”
This time, Lory’s breath did get stuck in her throat. “A decade?” The ‘why?’hung in the air, a heavy cloud filled with hail and thunder.
Enya merely shrugged. “Ulder’s decree to kill all magic wielders has quickly turned man against man on the streets of Criulias. The right price gets people to do despicable things. Neighbors are ratting on their neighbors if there’s as much as the suspicion of magic, eager for a handful of coins. And if it’s fire magic, Ulder’s soldiers hunt us down and drag us back to the duke’s estate forquestioning.Living in a cave for a decade is less painful than any encounter with the tools they use for their interrogations, believe me.”
On the other side of the fire, Olive squirmed slightly at the mention of said tools, but she hid it well, her face emotionless and her fingers clenching hard on the edge of the plate as she glanced at Lory.
“So you’re refugees from Criulias?”
“From all over the kingdom,” Hadrick answered, putting down the last rock and nodding at his handiwork. With a sigh, he pushed up from his half-kneeling position on the dusty floor and rolled his shoulders. “Enya and I are Criu; Olive here is from Sen Dunai, but we have plenty of Naolapians around here, too.”
“And when he says plenty,” Enya amended, “he means about a quarter of us.”
Lory’s stomach did an ugly roll at the image of people fleeing their homes in hopes of a better life elsewhere in the Brestolyan provinces and finding the mountain range separating the north and south of the kingdom the only safe place—the mountains, where guerrilla warfare was happening and soldiers were patrolling at all times. If this was the safest location in the kingdom, perhaps this kingdom had more problems than Lory had dared to believe.
“What about the Criu rebels?”
Enya raised her brows, shaking her head at Hadrick, who had opened his mouth, ready to release either a curse or a really offensive statement that Enya preferred Lory not hear, judging by both of their expressions.
“Whataboutthe rebels?” The woman gave Lory a stern look, rogue waves falling from her bun as she shrugged as if the armed Criulian units roaming the mountains were none of her concern. By the fire, Olive studied the meats on her plate with the intensity of the sun while Hadrick cleared his throat, sitting down next to the young woman and helping himself to some breakfast.
When Lory didn’t speak, Enya continued. “The Criu rebels fight for a free Criulias, not for the freedom of magic wielders. Most of them would deliver any of us to the duke’s doorstep in exchange for the pardon of one of their friends locked in the dungeons beneath the estate. The Flames are on their own in this war.”
