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Chapter 28
Everyone waited at the rendezvous point for Grimm and his team. The resistance members all looked haggard, with droopy, bloodshot eyes, dark undereye circles, and serious stubble. Clearly anxious to leave, they cracked their knuckles, swung their weapons, or fidgeted.
That same trepidation crawled through me, and I counted on my fingers, trying to keep the panic at bay.
Flare leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, that cocky surety shining through.
Phantom remained at the cave’s exit, either keeping his distance or scanning the area, I assumed keeping an eye out for any sign of danger. Sunlight brought out the reddish hue in his hair and the copper in his skin.
Sea God, he was beautiful.
“Go on,” Shadow said, giving me a gentle push on the back. “Talk to him.”
I set off, my mouth drying and my mind emptying of any thought, but my nerves were bubbling in my stomach. How was I going to broach this subject? What would he say? Was it already too late? Would he forgive me?
“See anything?” I asked Phantom as I approached.
Sea God!Was that all I could muster? I was so nervous, I was shaking.
“Looks clear to me,” he mumbled, his cool indifference heightening my unease.
Sunlight crawled across my skin, and my senses soaked it up, having been tucked away in the depths for the last two days. Crisp mountain air, full of the scent of pines, dew, and decaying leaves, met my nostrils as I took a breath. I placed a hand on the sun-warmed rock and glanced down the mountain at the valley below. The forest would provide some cover for three quarters of the trip, but then it opened up, and we’d have to cross a large section of rich farming land.
“Everything all right?” I asked, unable to find the right words.
“Thinking about my father,” Phantom said, rolling a stone beneath his boot. “I worry that his health might have failed.”
A fair concern.
“I’m excited to meet him,” I said, trying to catch his gaze, but it returned to the forest below. “Maybe he can teach me the ancient dragon dialect.”
A regretful expression flashed across his face. “Once we rescue him, I’ll be taking him back home to our village.”
What? So that was it? He’d made up his mind to leave. That wasn’t safe. The mirror had revealed his trouble with goons back in his town.
“Phantom, please don’t go,” I said. “I know you’re in some kind of trouble back home. Is that why you’re father is in the slave camps?”
“Who told you?” he asked, his eyes narrowed.
“I saw it in the mirror,” I admitted. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want you to think me stupid,” he said, his cheeks turning pink.
“What happened?” I asked.
He sighed, leaning against the cave’s edge. “You know the ancient coins I told you about?”
I nodded, remembering his story about finding them in the trenches he dug.
“I bragged about them to friends at the tavern one night. A woman, a wily witch, overheard and bought me a drink. She slipped a drug in it that made me drowsy, and when I slid off the table, the bartender threatened to have me thrown out.”
I pressed a hand to my forehead.
“She offered to take me home,” Phantom continued. “While I was asleep on the chair, she stole them.”
Sea God!No one could be trusted in this world.
“I needed that money for my father’s medicine,” Phantom admitted, his features twisted in an expression of guilt and humiliation. “I borrowed money from the wrong man. A loan shark. And when I lost a job and couldn’t repay it, they took my dad to the pirates, and they threw him in a slave camp.”
