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Isla’s grin was just as gentle as she lofted onto her toes and pressed her mouth to his.
You are mine.
He was grateful that whatever void festered inside him didn’t push her away. When they broke apart slowly, he rested his forehead against hers.
“We’re going to be okay,” she whispered between them. A reassurance, a question, a plea. And hearing it from her lips, knowing the mental hell she’d been going through these past few days, meant everything.
He tilted his head down to kiss her nose. “We’re going to be okay.”
Isla took a step back, her hands going to the straps of her pack. After speaking with Ezekiel, they’d prepared for a small night of exploration, though that talk had taken a bit more out of them than he’d expected. He didn’t want to take her too far down into the tunnel he’d found himself in a few days ago, especially with the bane and her being unable to shift.
“This was the lake you washed off in?”
Kai hummed in affirmation, remembering how he’d been in there, finally not feeling like he was on the brink of death. And healing too, but too slowly. “We should almost be there. Not long after that hill’s decline, the slope feeds into a forest, and it’s hidden with the brush.”
“Let’s keep moving, then,” Isla said, taking the lead and plowing ahead.
He may have given her a few extra steps just to appreciate the view.
Unlike when he’d been here on the Equinox, the passage did not beckon him as it once had. All was quiet. Internally, at least, around them, the forest felt alive—charged. The creatures of the darkness seemed intrigued by them, keenly watching as they moved through the thickets.
The scent of the tunnel hit him first. Acrid and vile. A clear echo of the abhorrent scent of the Wilds and its dark and twisted magic. Given how far away they were from the Wall, from Phobos, the odor probably should’ve been concerning.
At the precipice of the cave’s mouth, Kai peered into the blackness, barely lit by crystals in the walls, as if the Goddess and her light had been chased away from here. The stone floor, to his surprise, was splattered with dried blood.
His blood.
“Goddess above,” Isla breathed, crouching to the pour. “It’s so much.”
Apparently, he’d gotten hurt much worse than he’d thought.
Isla’s wide eyes drifted further inward, tracing his bloodied path. “How did you even make it back home?”
Kai blinked. “I…recovered?”
Isla stood with a hand on her hip, and Kai could hear the ratcheting up of her heartbeat, the quickening of her breaths. He couldn’t deny also struggling with confined spaces, but from what she’d told him, for her, they were a nightmare. Why would she have proposed coming here at all?
He placed a gentle hand on her back. “We don't have to do this tonight, Isla.”
She glanced up at him, hesitance flickering in her eyes before that warrior’s steel settled over it. “No. If…if war is coming, coming soon, then we should understand all paths that leave us vulnerable—or that we can use. Getting the markers is important to map it all.”
She took a sidestep from him before reaching back and drawing her sword, the metal sighing as it was released from the sheath. Kai couldn’t fight the smile tugging at his lips.
Isla inclined her head at him. “What?”
Kai shrugged. “I shouldn’t find you with weapons so attractive.”
With a lamp in hand, Kai led the way, taking them the first few yards beyond the cave’s mouth. The air hollowed in his ears with each step, and there was the faintest sound of rushing water, the rain still funneling down, down to wherever this led. His hand ran along the cool cave wall, keeping his eye out for any of those small wooden orbs etched in with the swirls and symbols of his ancestors.
“How far in had you gone?” Isla’s question was punctuated by the click of a dropped pebble, the glitter-painted rock laid to keep track of their path. She hadn’t dropped them often, though, given their path had been fairly mapped by his blood. Given how much, he had no idea how he was able to walk out of here and walk all the way home, alive.
“In another few yards, there's a split. You'll know which direction I took by my blood.”
“I can’t believe there’s so much. If you died out here, I would’ve killed you.”
All he could do was laugh, though he couldn’t shake a chilling reminder that he didn’t remember much from leaving the tunnel. The checkpoints, like the lake, yes, but stumbling his way,bleedingthis much.
He had to have been staring Eternity in the face.
