Page 88 of Bound

How that glory intensified when he started entering her…

Not. Ever. Again.

It was time to push those beautiful scenes aside. To glue them into a mental scrapbook and not take them out for a long while. Not until far in the future, when they would only make her wistful instead of mournful. When she could traverse a tunnel and not stumble over her own two feet in delayed grief.

Or was this advanced anguish?

And did it matter since the result was the same?

That since her vision was so blurred, she missed the little steel lip that protruded from the ground below? And that now she was on her ass in the dark dust, tailbone bruised and outrage spiked?

“Rahmié Creacu!” The syllables were nearly hisses, turning them into verbal snake strikes. But unless she was mistaken, snakes did not keep up continuous attacks.

Or elevate those aggressions into sneaking footfalls.

Steps that were not hers.

She confirmed as much with a frantic glance down at her feet before tucking them beneath her backside. She was prepared to jolt up and run, though used her knees to scramble back into a shadowed alcove.

Until her head and shoulders bumped into something with a loud kwong.

She shrieked but then gasped, suddenly curious about the fog that her breath formed along a large plate of…

What?

Her attacker’s leg?

No. Not an aggressor. Well, not a real one…

She had just made acquaintances with a suit of ancient Arcadian armor. Ancient wasn’t entirely correct, since the kingdom was not yet three hundred years old. She deduced this had been strictly a ceremonial outfit for someone, though its thick tarnish had taken over a long time ago.

The armor’s condition matched the rest of the old spears, rifles, firearms, and devices of destruction in the chamber she had happened upon. None of it was shocking—Arcadians had been called to defend the kingdom since its inception, and a secret lagoon with an attached armory was a definite advantage to that end—but it was an odd discovery. How had she never known of this chamber’s existence before? Did that mean Ev, Syn, and ’Raz did not, either? Or Paipanne and Maimanne? And if that were the case, where exactly had she wandered to in the palais—if she was even in the confines of the place anymore?

And why could she not shake the sensation that she no longer roamed around here alone?

Which meant her adventuring mode was still stuck in idle, succumbing to mounting trepidation. Her nerves rattled harder as her ears perked and pricked, aware of more sounds than just her breathing. Sounds that seemed not normal, even for this hazy underground…

Like inhalations and exhalations that did not match her own.

And, carefully timed with each of those breaths, the pads of surreptitious feet. And the rustles of a moving body…

“Brickham?” She mouthed it more than spoke it, though it had enough air to be heard. But it was an empty effort. The man’s energy was her psychological balm. She was as sure of it as the sun on her face and the stars in her nights—and this new companion was not that.

Then who…?

Possibilities whizzed to mind. More flimsy assumptions. Requiemme or any valid palais staffer would have announced themselves already. Same, in gruffer style, for her brothers.

That left her with three choices.

It could still be her imagination. Or it was one of Samsyn’s scouts.

Or one of Trystan’s.

“Shit.”

That one remained beneath her breath too. She muffled it a little bit better by pulling her knees against her chin. But that did not prevent a deeper dread from invading her chest. Why did she sense that she might as well have shouted out the curse?

Perhaps…because of the pair of black-booted feet that slowly paced into her view?