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“Then I love it. What is it?”
“Looks like a sewer runoff. There are a bunch of them. Most of them have metal grates inside, preventing anything but small pieces of debris from getting through. But one of them looks damaged. I went inside a few yards, and it goes all the way up to a utility hall. It’s super narrow. We’re going to have to go through it sideways, but there has to be an opening into the fortress somewhere in that passage.”
Kingston grimaced and Jayce looked pale as he spoke. Fuck. Disgusting grime and tight spaces. Their worst nightmares.
“It’s the only way in.” Jayce shrugged helplessly.
“Of course it is,” Kingston groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“You’ll live,” Kai said shortly.
But I had already dragged them through hell for long enough, and the guilt was beginning to wear on me. I met Jayce’s gaze. “Do you want to wait out here?”
“What, like a lookout? Do we need one? Who’s going to be patrolling the sewers? There weren’t any guards there when I looked.” His brow furrowed in confusion.
“I just meant if you aren’t comfortable—”
He lifted a hand, cutting me off. His usually relaxed, easygoing expression tightened into something fierce and determined.
“Look, Piper, nothing’s comfortable about this. It’s a jailbreak, not a spa. If I wasn’t planning on going all the way with you, I wouldn’t have come at all.”
I glanced up at Kingston, who was glaring at me just as fiercely as Jayce. “You heard the man,” he growled. “We’re getting Xero out of this place. Together.”
I smiled, almost ashamed of myself for doubting them. A wave of gratitude swelled in my chest, cutting through the pain that still roared in my head.
“All right then,” I said, forcing myself to stand. “Let’s do it.”
The sewer was about a thousand times worse than I had imagined it from Jayce’s description.
Everything was coated in a thick layer of foul slime, and the smell of it burned my throat and made my eyes water. We slipped and slid as we made our way through the chute, holding onto each other whenever we could, trying unsuccessfully not to touch anything around us.
Those efforts were rendered utterly futile when we reached the utility hall; it was such a tight squeeze that my ass and breasts slid along the walls no matter how I positioned myself. Hot, stale air made me wish I’d been turned into an undead thing instead of a succubus, just so I wouldn’t have had to breathe.
Jayce led the way, followed by Kingston, then me, with Kai bringing up the rear. It was slow, suffocating work, but after a while, I felt the whisper of fresh air against my cheek.
“There’s a draft,” I whispered. “Look for doors!”
“Got one,” Jayce said a moment later. “Stay back and stay quiet. I’ll check out the situation.”
I could hear the barely suppressed panic in his voice, and mentally commended him for not just charging through the door as soon as he found it, just to get out of this confined space. He slid the stone panel a
side, and a powerful breeze flowed into the hall, filling my desperate lungs with new air. He slowly disappeared, then ducked his head back in.
“It’s a closet,” he whispered excitedly. “And it’s empty. Come on!”
We piled out of the hallway into a utility closet large enough for all of us to stand without touching. It felt luxurious after the utility hall, almost excessive. The pull in my gut grew so strong that I began walking without thinking, and I was a heartbeat away from opening the door when Kai captured my wrist.
“We can’t save him if we’re caught,” he murmured, worry glittering in his eyes. “Careful.”
Releasing his hold on me, he pulled the door open barely a crack and peeked out.
“It’s a long, wide, stone hall,” he whispered. “Torches on the walls.” I could practically hear the eyeball in his voice as he added, “Very dramatic. No people that I can see. Anybody sense anything?”
Jayce inhaled deeply through his nose, then shook his head ruefully. “Nah. Although I can’t smell much besides the sewer all over our clothes. That’s fucking up my senses.”
“Shit.”
He chuckled ruefully. “Yeah. Literally.”
