He coughed, and his voice came out in a raw croak. “Thank you.”
Before I could ask what for, he resumed his hum. Harper gave me an odd look as I rejoined the strange chorus. The longer I held the notes, the stronger my conviction became there was more than monotony in our song. Steady notes gripped my chest in a painful vise and squeezed until I understood its meaning. The song was an intricate crafting, alive in its hunger.
Below the sustained vibrations, I heard sibilant words. Sssong isss ssseeking.
I swallowed hard. The noise in my throat had just referred to itself as Song.
Perfect. More than a delicate crafting, it was a sentient spell. And I’d caught its attention. I glared at Aldrich, whose skin was concealed from head to toe, and cursed. Sentient spells were tattooed on and drew on the life force of their host to power their magic. By keeping his skin covered, Aldrich kept his spells a deadly secret he could animate with a sustained compulsion.
“Emma?” Harper touched my arm. Frown lines crinkled his brow the longer I hummed.
I shook my head and pointed to my mouth.
“What is it?” He grabbed my arm, pulling me to a stop. His fingers tightened, and Song took notice. Spinning down my arm, it crept toward him. I ripped my hand from his before they touched. Song’s high-pitched wail rattled my brain. Warmth tickled my neck. Without touching my throat, I knew blood leaked from my ears. Growling its displeasure, the crafting nestled back into my chest and coiled, ready to strike should an interesting target present itself a second time.
Fear dried my throat to a constant tickle. I coughed, and Song hissed in displeasure.
Blood of your blood runsss within thessse wallsss.
I took a minute to wrap my head around this insanity. When I started humming, I must have somehow invited Song into me. I wasn’t crazy. I had heard it speaking earlier. If I’d hummed then, it would have gotten its toehold in me sooner, and I wouldn’t have lasted this long. No wonder Aldrich had sounded grateful. This was torturous. His steps fell lighter, and his gate quickened as he became unburdened. I expected him to break into a jig at any moment.
There ssshe isss.
Song crushed my lungs, and I dropped to my knees. Rocks ripped at my palms, and the crafting slid down my arm, gleefully swirling through my blood. Song painted a red streak as it slithered up a mounded pile of stones and slipped between the cracks. I breathed a sigh of relief.
Then I charged Aldrich. Harper grabbed my waist. Rather than hurt him, I relented.
“I thought you understood.” Aldrich sounded so convincing, I almost believed him.
“I was trying to drown out your noise, not invite a crafting to take up root in my chest.”
Dangerous rumbles worked through Harper’s chest. “What are you two talking about?”
“That humming sound he makes? It animates a crafting called Song.” My hands shook with my anger, and another emotion I didn’t want to claim. I sliced through the reins with my claws, and our supplies hit the cave with a dull thud. Claustrophobia constricted my chest as easily as Song had wound around my rib cage. I gulped air and let Harper rub my sore shoulders.
“Song?” Harper’s hands clamped down on me. “It told you its name was Song?” When I nodded, he snarled at Aldrich. “That’s what I heard at the castle. You were chanting to it even then.” His tone dripped venom. “You allowed one of your sentient craftings to feed on Emma?”
“Song is harmless,” Aldrich spat, “unless you’re the one he’s sent for.”
I glared at him, counting the seconds until I was strong enough to charge again. Then his words registered. “Wait a minute. What do you mean ‘the one he’s sent for’? You unleashed Song on a person? Who could you possibly know in the colony that it could track for you?”
His wrinkled face sagged beneath indefinable emotion. I picked out grief. Or was it guilt?
I glanced left to right. Sweat popped over my lip and stung a cut at the corner of my mouth. The three of us were alone in the tunnel. Was this an elaborate trap? He was a master of illusion. Our earlier fight, the trek here—had any of it happened? Were we all still trapped in Rihos?
The desperation haunting his eyes made no sense. Then his lips tightened and his jaw set.
This was real, all right. He was desperate. Song had sounded pleased. Whatever it found for Aldrich on the other side of that wall must have been what he’d been tracking all along.
“You weren’t helping us find a way into the colony. You were luring us down here to help you. That’s why Song said ‘There she is’ instead of ‘Here we are’ or ‘Oh, I found that colony you were looking for.’” I stared where Song had gone and strained my ears. I heard muted thuds…then someone screamed as if her life depended on it. “Who’s in there, Aldrich?”
Aldrich lifted his stubby chin. “Your sister.”
My heart stopped.
My claws unsheathed.
And I roared, “Madelyn.”
Rubble crumbled beneath my frantic claws as I attacked the wall. Strong hands gripped my shoulders and pulled. I ignored them. If my vinda koosh was in there, I was breaking her out.
“Emma,” Harper said, frustrated. “Emma.” I shook him off. Maddie was night blind. She’d be terrified in a room with no light. Growling, he hit the bend of my legs. My knees buckled, and I snagged him to break my fall. He landed on top of me, pinning my cheek to stone. “It’s not Maddie. Think about it. She wouldn’t have come without telling us. It’s not her.”
I melted into a boneless heap. Not Maddie. The world righted itself. I could breathe.
Harper stroked my cheek. I turned my face into his hand. “She’s afraid of the dark.”
I don’t know why I said it. He knew it as well as I did.
“I know.” He rolled aside, tugging me until I sprawled over his lap. He tilted my chin up. “And if I had thought for one second Maddie was in there, I wouldn’t have stopped you.”
“I know.” My pulse calmed. I closed my eyes. “I know.”
Thump. Thump. Thump.
All eyes returned to the wall. I scrambled from Harper’s lap and pressed my palm against the stones, and I swore I heard sobbing. Searching for Aldrich, I found him in an identical pose.
“Nesvia.” The answer was obvious now that my panic had abated.
Spittle flew from Aldrich’s lips. “Who else would it be? Are you a halfling or a halfwit?” His voice broke. “Your fallen princess is inconsequential.” He fisted rock. “My queen is in there.”
Grinding my back teeth, I forgave him the slur. We’d both responded to a lifetime of conditioning. In this, his devotion and mine were evenly matched. Another time, I might have laughed at how we obeyed opposite ends of the royal spectrum. Maddie was my absolute. Nesvia was his.
For all his talk of his Sereian queen and his obvious distaste for Eliya, Aldrich’s rabid devotion to Askara’s new queen shone through his cool demeanor. His acrid fury tainted the air.
Nesvia was new to me, an undefined variable where affection grew but true and abiding love had yet to blossom. I heard the word sister and my thoughts lurched toward Maddie. They always would. The parts of my heart not belonging to Harper were imprinted with her name.
The fact I saw and thought clearly now didn’t mean I didn’t care. Shock caused the crazed panic that would have left us all hip-deep in debris. This calm, rational Emma was the one who could help. Ever the bull in a china shop, I would have brought this tunnel down around us if Harper hadn’t stopped me. I thanked my lucky stars he wasn’t above manhandling me. Many feared becoming the target of a halfling’s fury, but I couldn’t respect males afraid of retaliation.
Focus, Emma. I considered our absent guide. “Why did Song lead us to a dead end?” I compared this wall to the others. “Can you call him back?” I shivered as I voiced the suggestion. “There must be another way to access the room where she is. She had to get in there somehow.”
“She’s been sealed into the room.” Aldrich h
ung his head and scrubbed his cheeks with his bony palms. “Song failed to find an alternate route even through you—her blood relative.”
He answered a question I hadn’t got around to asking. Song possessed me so fast I hadn’t wondered why it homed in on me. Now I understood its attraction. Blood of my blood, indeed.
“Wouldn’t her captors need a way to get food and water to her?” I asked.
“Not necessarily. They could have left her tins of water and enough dried food to last her for the duration.” He opened his mouth, then shut it. I got the message, though.
Another alternative left Nesvia in a room with no food or water. Dehydration, starvation, both smacked of torture. Ending her life, then entombing her, would have been kinder. I said neither of those to Aldrich, whose grief-stricken magic could collapse walls as easily as I almost had.
I rubbed my temples. “Can you tell how close we are to the colony’s active tunnels?”
“We’re near.” Aldrich glanced at the ceiling. “The crafting here is strong.”
I wondered if he meant he sensed the colony overhead. If so, we were closer than I’d dared hope. “Either way, we have to get through this wall in order to reach the main tunnel.”
“Step back, Aldrich.” Harper circled around me and inspected the wall. “It’s solid rock here.” He checked another spot farther down the wall. “This is loose stone. What have you got?”
“It’s packed tight here.” Even the section I’d attacked appeared solid. My claw marks had gouged finger holes, but the wall seemed steady behind them. I did as he had and took several steps, testing for weak spots. Three feet over, I hit a patch of crumbling rock. “I think this is it.”
He spoke to empty air. “I don’t suppose you have any more tricks up your sleeves?”
Aldrich answered. “Illusion won’t help. Nothing else I can call would leave us alive.”
I choked on my tongue. “All right then.” I didn’t want to know what else shared this stretch of darkened tunnel or why calling it would result in our bones being used for toothpicks. Song was bad enough. If there were other things, living things, in here, the less I knew the better. “I don’t mind heavy lifting.” I sank my fingers into rock and pried a careful slab free. “I like it.”
Harper arched an eyebrow in my direction but threw his back into the work.
While we shifted and stacked, the quiet distress on the opposite side of the wall ceased. For some reason, the quiet fueled my urgency to reach Nesvia. Already I imagined her condition and found it appalling. She was a fragile female, used to muted light and pleasing sounds. This place had neither. Her demands, so quickly met at First Court, would have gone unheeded here.
Harper tossed aside a stone. “I think we’re in.” Foul air seeped from the hole he’d made. He choked, averting his face and covering his nose with his shirt. He staggered back, coughing.
I sniffed the air. It smelled of several days’ worth of confinement, nothing more.
“No.” Aldrich’s anguished tone brought my head around. He inhaled in sharp gulps, and his eyes dilated, blue and full. Red slashed his cheeks. “It can’t be. Her season…it’s begun.”
Fresh shock jolted me. Roland had done it. My stomach roiled at the thought of how I responded to him while under his influence. Had Rideal used the same tricks on Nesvia? Had he needed to? Part of me had resisted the idea even as I embraced the possibility. I couldn’t fathom this level of betrayal. I’d clung to an ideal of humanity, forgetting those involved weren’t human.
“Harper?” I waited, expecting his eyes to expand, go blind with desire. Askaran females in heat emitted a pheromone designed to entice males. Nausea rocked me back on my heels. Even aware Nesvia’s season might have begun, I’d brought a virile male, my male, right to her.
When he finally met my gaze, his eyes were full black. Silver rimmed his irises, but I had no doubt, even for a second, his sudden desire was triggered by her but directed at me. He was on me a heartbeat later, pressing kisses down the column of my throat and biting the space where my neck met shoulder. His hips pinned me to the wall. He was hard, and I was ready. If Aldrich hadn’t yanked my elbow, I might have let Harper take me where we stood.
I might be immune to Nesvia’s appeal, but I was far from inured against his. I shoved against Harper’s shoulder. “Now’s not the time.”
He growled and rocked his hips in the cradle where they belonged.
Bliss rolled my eyes back before Aldrich pinched my arm.
“Now is not the time,” he said gruffly, which made me certain that Nesvia’s pheromones affected the Sereian male’s libido as well. “That wall doesn’t come down until his eyes clear.”
Staring up into Harper’s face, I caught my breath. He was beautiful like this, uninhibited and raw, but without him in complete control, I couldn’t appreciate how his sterling eyes rolled closed on a husky groan. I stroked where his lashes brushed his cheek. “Can you open these?”
His feral smile melted my core. He gripped my thighs and asked, “Can you open these?”
I cleared my throat. “You first.”
He ignored me, seeking my mouth with his.
For once, I was grateful I’d weathered Maddie’s first heat cycle. Those five miserable days had given me a crash course in Askaran pheromones, and I applied those lessons ruthlessly.
Shuddering, I knew what I had to do. I gave in to his kiss, luring his tongue past my teeth. Then I bit down hard enough I got his full attention. His growl of annoyance vibrated my jaw, but his eyes popped open and gaze met mine, clearer than they had been.
Pheromones were suggestive. One whiff convinced males that sex was imperative, whether they wanted it, and the female in question, or not. The key to breaking the thrall was awareness. Now that Harper was in control again, I knew he’d be all right. The male was nothing if not stubborn.
When his cheek crushed mine, my head thumped against the rock wall, and I grunted as my skull rang from the impact. His harsh curse expelled hot breath across my ear.
“Sorry,” he muttered, and pulled me close to kiss where the bump would rise. He met my gaze, and his eyes retained their silvery glint. I entertained the odd thought that if I saw his wings, right now, they would be crimson-flushed, and I would be pushed beyond my ability to say no.
“No problem,” I said, sounding breathless.
“Look.” Aldrich leaned against the wall, sagging with obvious relief.
In the gap Harper had created, a small hand appeared. I stumbled free of him, shoved past Aldrich, and took it. Ice-cold skin chilled mine. Nesvia’s fingernails were bloodied or missing, her knuckles and palms scabbed and crusted, but her grip was strong. She squeezed my fingers.
Aldrich ripped her hand from me and took my place.
“Hurry.” He encased her hands with his and pressed his dried lips to her skin. “Please.”
“You’ll have to let go of her first.” Harper waited for Aldrich to move or him to relinquish his hold on Nesvia. “The wall’s unstable. If it falls now, her arm will be crushed.”
It was all the warning he required.
Chapter Twenty-One
Nesvia swallowed a sob when Aldrich commanded her to withdraw her arm. She drifted away without another sound, leaving a pall hung over our now-silent rescue mission.
Minutes or hours later, my back muscles sighed in relief when I pried the last stone free.
I stuck my head inside the room. Nesvia had opted to return to her cot and wait until we deemed the room safe to enter. Whatever I’d expected her cell to look like, it hadn’t been this. The space was fully furnished. Barrels lined the walls. I bet they were filled with food and other supplies. In the far corner, several tins of water were interlocked and stacked higher than my head.
She had no guard. She hadn’t needed one. They’d sealed her in here, as Song had said.
Her legs dangled from the end of the bed. Heavy metal bands encircled her ankles, joined by a heavier chain that looped aro
und one leg of her bed. Beneath that, I saw brackets bolted to the floor. Her captors hadn’t taken any chances, but I still failed to understand the logic. I’d assumed Roland and his cohorts had induced Nesvia’s heat so Rideal could sire his heir. Yet they had sealed her alone in a location where conjugal visits would have been impossible.
It made no sense. I must be missing something.
I stepped through the opening. “Are you…all right?”
Nesvia turned her head my way. Drained by her earlier efforts, she lay in a limp sprawl.
I exchanged a look with Harper.
“Nesvia, it’s me—Emma. We’ve come for you.”
Her vacant expression made my chest ache. When she blinked, tears spilled over her cheeks and cut trails through thick, gray dust. Aldrich hustled to her side and wiped her face with his shirttail. He touched her with such reverence, I glanced away, disturbed by their intimacy.
I walked over and knelt by her bed. Afraid of hurting her, I snapped the chain running from her ankles to the floor, but left the others in place. Harper no doubt had a locksmith capable of much more delicate removal than I could manage here and now. “Would you like me to…?”
She stared right through me.
When I reached for her, she made no move to stop me.
“Aldrich?” I asked him, which set my teeth on edge. I should know her better than he did.
He nodded his agreement I should be the one to carry her out of here.
“Wait.” Harper stopped me. “We’ll need to clear a path first.”
I spun then, searching for an exit, dreading what I already knew, that we’d have to make our own. “Look at this.” Rocks were mounded in the farthest corner, covering supplies and spilling across the floor. Maybe they hadn’t meant to lock her in after all. “Do you think Nesvia—?”
He shook his head. “Her chain wasn’t long enough.” He tripped over something, then lowered his torch to illuminate the area. He grimaced. “Well that answers a few questions.”
Evermine: Daughters of Askara, Book 2 Page 18
