by Alex Lidell
The qoru disappears into a large stone building with a bubbling ale stein on its sign, what I presume to be a saloon.
Something scratches behind me. I jump, a scream forming in the back of my throat just as a large, calloused hand clamps over my face. I sink my teeth into it, bucking against the muscular body suddenly pressed against my back.
23
Lera
“Easy, lass.” Tye’s soft voice in my ear is too smooth for the reality of the street. His scent of pine and citrus slowly soothes my instincts even as my muscles still tremble. “All right now?”
No. No no no.
Tye releases my mouth, his arms wrapping protectively around me. “Didn’t Shade tell you to stay where you were dropped?”
“I . . .” I swallow. “It was a basement and there was no escape, so—”
“It’s all right.” Tye’s arms tighten, the warmth of his body anchoring me to sanity. “I’d take you into the Light, lass, but the place is crawling with the Night Guard. Can you manage the Gloom a bit longer?”
I nod shakily, pulling my mind together. Search and rescue, that’s why we are here. And the rescue is of Kora, not me. “There’s a qoru here,” I say, reaching for the cool voice that Tye used in the practice arena. “Down at the other end of the street. And I’m sure you’ve smelled the sclices too.”
“You recognized a qoru?” Tye says, his brow lifting in question. I’ve not exactly told him about seeing into Coal’s nightmares, and I doubt the warrior has volunteered the information. “From Coal.” Tye works out the answer to his question, his face grim. “Qoru being here shouldn’t be possible—we are too far from the Mors border.”
I know the words are coming—you must have made a mistake, lass—but my chest tightens in anticipation nonetheless. Tye doesn’t believe me. Though I understand why he’d doubt my assertion, it still hurts.
Tye shakes his head, his shaggy red hair flipping into his eyes. “Bloody academics and their bloody theories. Next time they want me to read some book, I’m reminding them of this. All right. Where?”
A spark of warmth loosens my chest and I point to a stone building at the end of the street. “The one with the rainbow-shaped signpost and the picture of an ale stein. Do you think the qoru captured Kora’s quint?” Captured. Killed, most likely. “We need to check.”
“We need to keep you alive.” Tye pulls me behind him. “Where the bloody hell is Shade?”
As if summoned by the name, a wolf trots around the corner, his muzzle drenched in rust-colored blood. Clearly, I was not wrong about the sclices. Seeing me, the wolf’s yellow eyes flash and he leaps forward, two hundred pounds of muscle pressing into me so hard that I fall backward, caught only by Tye’s strong arm. A warm, wet nose snuffles into my hand, followed by a low, nearly inaudible whine.
“I missed you too, Shade,” I say, rubbing the soft gray fur on his head.
“Can we all snuggle later?” Tye says. “Not that I blame you, lass, with the likes of us around.”
I roll my eyes, opening my mouth to offer a retort just as Tye clamps his hand over it again, this time pulling me down to the ground.
His lips press against my ear, his words a soft, warm brush of air. “Someone is coming.”
A few moments later, I hear the voices myself.
“. . . harvest what else they know,” a fae male says. “And make our honored guests aware that their meat will expire in half a day. Unless they feed now, there may not be another offering for a while.”
I grab Tye’s shoulder so hard that I know it must hurt.
“They don’t eat the meat,” another male answers, his voice younger and more nasal. “They suck the life energy through—ow! Sorry, sir.”
“Any other wisdom you wish to share, Jik?” the older male demands, his deep voice quite unamused.
“No, sir.”
“Then be about it. And be sure to return to the Light before too long.” The voice gets louder, as if the two are separating. “That you can roam the Gloom does not mean you should. It drains you, no matter how strong you are.”
I wait until the sounds die away and Tye’s hand between my shoulder blades eases. When I turn my head to suggest we follow Jik, I find Shade’s wolf sniffing a piece of fabric that Tye pulls from his pocket, the animal’s ears perked up to attention. Tye’s other hand pushes a few stones into a small pile.
“Kora’s scent and a marker for the others,” Tye whispers, unabashedly drawing the rusty sword from my sash and keeping it for himself. “We’ve done this before a time or two, Lilac Girl. Get ready to move.”
Pushing past me, Shade’s wolf scouts ahead, his lithe form slinking through the eerily empty streets. Tye and I follow, our progress made of short hops from the back of one building to another, stepping lightly on the dull gray paving stones. The air smells like dirt, coal—a mining town—with something disturbing just under the surface. A faint whiff of rot carrying on the breeze. Tye’s sharp face is tense, his clear green eyes surveying every shadow, every seemingly abandoned building. Every time we stop, while Shade trots on to get a scent, Tye builds that small marker of his. Twice, his strong arms flatten me to the ground, his preternatural senses aware of the prowling sclices—or whatever else is here.
The third time he pulls me down—this time behind a tall wooden fence at the back of a building, closer to the qoru’s saloon than I’d like—I discover River and Coal waiting there already. The moment I see them, something releases in my chest, some tightness I’ve been carrying ever since we were all separated. I touch them compulsively, River’s hard shoulder, Coal’s warm chest. They’re here. We’re all here, together, where we should always be.
“Any problems?” River asks, his eyes—like Coal’s—drilling into me, checking every bit of flesh. “Besides the fact that we are now officially violating Blaze’s neutrality and should be executed?”
“The Light is crawling with the Night Guard and the Gloom has at least one qoru,” Tye says softly. “Our package is likely alive, being held for feeding.”
My stomach turns but I force my spine to straighten. This is good news, I remind myself. It’s the reason we came. I point to a building two doors down from us, its back alley a jumble of ale barrels, wooden pallets, and empty sacks. “I saw the qoru entering the saloon, there,” I say, trying to sound as steady as the males. “Do you think it was heading to dinner?”
River nods. “Let us ruin its appetite. Leralynn, you—” River pauses, his gray eyes piercing mine before he finishes his sentence.
Don’t leave me behind. Don’t leave me alone. Don’t leave me behind. Don’t leave me alone.
“You stay between Coal and Tye as we move, understand?” River says.
I nod, ridiculous relief mixing with the fear.
Coal reaches for me, his metallic musk filled with calm strength as he brushes his hands along my clothes, tucking in loose pieces of fabric and muffling a belt buckle that I hadn’t realized made noise. That done, he performs a similar inspection of Tye and River, though no adjustments are required in their case. I know him well enough by now to see the tension riding under his gaze. He’s not as calm as he lets on—he never is.
“I checked out that building on my way here,” Coal says as he works. “There is a back window suitable for entry. If there is a qoru here, he’ll want to be beneath ground. Even in the Gloom, that is their preferred habitat, especially for feeding.”
Right. Of course. Glorious.
Following Coal, we move stealthily toward the saloon and line up outside a back window similar to the one I climbed through earlier, though this one is fortunately without bars. With Shade at the front of the stack and Tye bringing up the rear, the males push close enough to feel each other. A team. A unit. Despite my unease, a trickle of excitement runs through me, twining with a bewildering sense of belonging. We aren’t in the practice arena any longer, but the residue of training must be clinging to me somehow. Maybe even enough to do some good.
; A hard hand squeezes my shoulder and it takes me a moment to realize that Tye intends for me to pass the squeeze forward. I obediently press Coal’s bicep in my palm. He passes it on to River. With one more heartbeat, we move in.
24
Lera
Shade enters first, his body a streak of gray as he flies through the air with muscled, lupine grace. A moment later, a short yip sounds and River drops through the window, followed by Coal. Tye hands me down to Coal without a word, then climbs inside with a controlled grace that I remember well from the practice arena.
Looking around, I see further evidence that we’ve entered a saloon. The cellar around us is filled with barrels and grain sacks, tap handles and chairs too broken to be of use in the main room upstairs, and stacks of firewood and cleaning supplies. A staircase leads up to an opening in the ceiling, currently covered with a hinged door.
I frown, realizing that the room we stand in is much too small to be the full basement of the large building above—and yet, bar the pull-down exit by the ceiling, I see no doors or corridors leading from the space.
Shade’s nose points toward the far wall, hackles up, tail swaying like a pendulum. Right, left. Right, left. The wolf’s upper lip curls back to show glistening canines, which manage to reflect what passes for sunlight here.
“Trapdoor,” Tye whispers into my ear. “And our package likely behind it.”
Before we can move forward to confirm Shade’s prediction, the click, click, click of steps echoes from above us, the hinges of the ceiling door screeching their discontent. My heart stops. The door begins to open. My body wants to freeze but instinct has me ducking and sliding silently behind the piled grain sacks instead.
The others are there already, as calm as if sitting in our suite’s common room. Coal gives me a nod then finds River’s face, his hands flashing in quick motions, one of which draws a line across his throat.
River shakes his head.
“It’s past time,” a hissing voice says, the scent of rotten flesh throwing me back into Coal’s memories. A small shake comes over my body as the click, click, click starts up again, skittering down the steps. The qoru. Here. Even having seen one of them on the street, the knowledge that I’m sharing this building with one makes bile rise into my throat. Through a small crack between the grain sacks, I catch mottled gray legs heading for the wall that Shade just alerted us to. A second pair of legs. A third.
A long-fingered gray hand reaches for what must be a latch, because a moment later a whole slab of stone wall slides away on soundless hinges. One, two, three sets of legs disappear into the new opening.
A brief moment passes.
“Now.” River’s quiet order has the males moving right before Kora’s screams confirm our suspicions. Shade, Coal, and River vault over the grain sacks and rush silently for the door, Tye staying back to cover me.
When Tye’s hand grips my shoulder, I realize his magic is awake and engaged. Ready. A phantom thread of magic wakes inside me as well, crawling through my veins like a stretching tiger, the sensation leaving me both more secure and more vulnerable. Don’t touch it, I repeat to myself firmly. No bonfires in a cellar. Leave the tiger alone.
By the time Tye and I reach the hidden room, bodies face off in the dim light with grunts and clashes of swords, and the floor vibrates with River’s magic. I gasp as that too stirs in my blood, the coupling clearly having enhanced my ability to feel River’s power. Fortunately, he stops before the new sensation overwhelms me completely, and I can once more pay mind to my surroundings.
We are in a large room, its walls stone, its floor made of packed dirt soaked with blood and piss. Tiny slits along the ceiling provide slivers of light, showing Kora’s four quint mates chained to the wall. I stare at a fifth, empty set of shackles, my guts twisting as I turn to find Kora held in one of the qoru’s arms, the thing’s sharp teeth buried in a spot at the back of her neck, seemingly oblivious to the mayhem around it.
Coal is already moving toward it, a sword he obtained somewhere taking the feeding qoru’s head cleanly off its shoulders. Even as the detached body falls away, the qoru’s teeth cling to the back of Kora’s neck.
The female falls to her knees and pulls the qoru’s head off her with a panicked gasp, the skin around the wound a bloodless white-gray blotch.
River and Shade, the latter still in wolf form, square off against the two remaining qoru, while Tye turns to cover the door in case we’ve more visitors. I rush to Kora, sliding an arm around her quivering shoulders, brushing her ice-cold skin. Her green uniform is tattered, stained, barely recognizable. Her normally bright-blue eyes are dazed and bloodshot. “It’s all right. Look at me, Kora. You’re safe now.”
The clashing bodies and swords, the cries of pain and fury, are a blur around me. I focus only on helping Kora, fueled by Autumn’s wide gray eyes and panicked voice. We must not fail.
“You wouldn’t happen to have keys, would you?” Tye calls, darting a glance at Kora over his shoulder. “We need to free the others.”
Kora grabs my hand, her grip soul-wrenchingly weak. “You need to leave,” she says, her words coming raspily from a throat that’s clearly been screaming. “You need to leave. You can’t be here.”
I put my hands on either side of Kora’s face, forcing her blue eyes to meet mine. “You are safe now,” I repeat, the words tightening my chest. Despite everything, I’m glad to be here. To be doing something worthwhile. My voice strengthens. “We are going to get you and your quint out of here, Kora. We’re going home.”
Kora jerks away from me, reaching a pale arm toward River—who, having disposed of his opponent, now examines the prisoners’ shackles. “You need to leave, River—now. You are too valuable. If they capture you . . .” Now that she says it, I see the echo of her words reflected in all the females’ flesh. They weren’t kept here only as an afternoon snack; they were questioned.
“Not now, Kora,” River says soothingly, still examining the others’ shackles. “We’re going to get you out of here, and then you can tell us everything.”
Kora groans, panic in the whites of her eyes. “You’re not listening to me. There are several dozen qoru here,” she says, speaking quickly. “I don’t know how they got into Lunos, but something has been breached. They spoke of a gate. Something opened from Lunos’s side, not Mors’s. The Citadel needs to know. Between the qoru and the Night Guard, they’ve killed what’s left of the village in the Light. They—”
“They control the Light and the Gloom, both,” an unfamiliar voice says. My stomach turns. Around us, fifteen fae warriors—three quints of the Night Guard—step out of thin air. All of them, males dressed in black with blood-red accents, are grinning and armed.
Swords and crossbows pointing at us, the fifteen warriors herd us into the center of the room, just as a small pack of qoru stride in behind them.
The middle of the qoru looks larger than the others, his lidless eyes a deep shade of red with specks of rust. Unlike his scantily dressed entourage, this qoru wears a sash across his shoulder, the supple leather decorated with jewels so fine they manage to sparkle even in the Gloom. He turns to Coal. “Well, what a reunion.” His voice is like the low creak of a rusty gate opening in the dead of night. “Have you nothing to say to your emperor, buck?”
Emperor? My blood freezes. Emperor Jawrar.
The qoru’s attention shifts to River, his round mouth widening slowly into what must pass for a smile. “Jik.” Emperor Jawrar snaps his fingers at one of the Night Guard males. “Fetch Griorgi. Tell him his son has come for dinner.”
25
Lera
Son? King Griorgi—River’s father—is here. Working with . . . with Emperor Jawrar? Is that how the qoru are here, beyond the wards meant to keep them in Mors?
Lies. Qoru lies. They have to be. I look at River, my throat closing as I see Jawrar’s words drain all the blood from the commander’s beautiful face. Not a lie. Truth. Stars. I long to reach out to the warrior.
But there is no reaching out. There is nothing.
I am too dry-mouthed to scream as two sets of Night Guard hands grab me, dropping me hard to my knees. My bones yell at the abuse and my body fights to react, Tye’s power still bubbling in my veins. Fire. I could—
I catch Tye’s head-shake as he too is forced to the ground. An order to stay put.
He’s right. I would only set the cellar aflame and cook us all like so much steamed meat. Plus, he’d have already done something if he thought it would work. Instead, Tye kneels on the ground just as River and Coal do. Shade’s wolf is held at bay with a crossbow, a guard’s belt wrapped around his black muzzle. I draw a ragged breath, the sight of my males not fighting sending the coldest chill yet down my spine.
The emperor turns to the pair of guards holding Coal. “Chain that one up. I’ve a few who would be pleased to reunite with the buck . . . personally.”
The deafening sound of shackles closing around Coal’s wrists echoes through the room. Coal’s face is stone, his blue eyes an unbreakable mask that gives away nothing of the nightmare he’s living through.
Jawrar surveys our quint, hesitating on me and stepping closer. Bile rises up my throat as he approaches, filling my mouth. A hand so gray it reeks of rot reaches for my face, and I pull uselessly against the night guardsmen holding me in place. No. No.
“No!” Coal roars. Not at Jawrar, I realize, but at River.
Too late. A shock of power booms through the room, shaking the ground so hard that it’s a wonder the walls still stand.
Jawrar pulls back from my face, a shield as black as darkest night flashing around him. Whatever burst of power River launched is swallowed silently into darkness.
