“If he thinks Oliver’s lovely to look at, wait until he sees you.”
“Fuck off,” Reggie snarled, and shoved him.
Connor’s brows flew up as he staggered backward, like he was surprised by the force of Reggie’s shove. It stirred a petty, furious part of Reggie that left him wanting to shove him again.Call me pretty all you like, he thought,but I’m still a soldier.A better one that you.
A splash and a gasp redirected them back toward the pond. Leif had breached the surface, a drowned lion propelling himself to shore with wide sweeps of his arms.
“Well?” Connor asked.
Leif didn’t answer right away. He reached the decorative flagstones that lined the edge of the pond and hauled himself up. The sky was lightening, that first rosy blush of approaching dawn, and Reggie’s panic was momentarily stymied by the sight of water sluicing down Leif’s sculpted shoulders, arms, chest, stomach.
Gods.
Not the time.
“Did you see anything?” Reggie demanded, as Leif wiped wet hair off his face and cleared his eyes.
“Couldyou see anything?” Connor added. “Wolves aren’t exactly aquatic.”
Leif shook his head, a vigorous, dog-like (wolf-like) shake that sprayed them with cold droplets and splatted his hair in waterlogged ribbons against his biceps. “I could see. Nothing but fish, and reeds, and garden relics that fell in over the years.” He sucked in deep, open-mouthed breaths, chest heaving. Reggie had never known anyone to stay under for so long.
Connor sighed. “She’s on the ground somewhere, then.” He tilted his head back to scan the façade. “Or caught in a parapet, maybe.” To Reggie: “You’re sure she was on this side of the chateau when you saw her fall?”
“She’s neither of those places,” Leif said. “Those Sels we fought came through portals, like the troops on the road the day you found us.” A first, pale shaft of sunlight pierced the tree line, offering a glimpse of the hard brightness of his eyes, the tension in his jaw. “I think the emperor sent soldiers through…and then took Amelia.”
11
Percy trilled his distress, and butted his nose against Oliver’s shoulder. Oliver had grown used to the gesture, and usually had his feet braced to accept it; today, he stumbled. Swayed. His head went swimmy. He wasso hot.
When he wiped his brow, his palm came away shiny with sweat. He swallowed, and his throat clicked, dry and sticky.
He hadn’t had a bout of marsh fever since he pried a sapphire off the wall of a cave, and bonded with Percy. But that was what this felt like.
Percy huffed cold breath through his nostrils across his face, and that helped. For a moment.
“Lords! Sound off on my call!” Magnus shouted through cupped hands, voice echoing off the sheer stone face of the cliff that towered above them, blotting out the sky.
They had arrived, at last, before the entrance of the royal under-mountain tunnel system. Not thegrandentrance—that was ten miles east of here, graced with golden gates worked with the royal seal—but the entrance to one of the smaller tunnel offshoots, this one cleverly camouflaged and as-of-yet undiscovered by the Sels. The drakes had been able to detect the gaps, where old lintels still stood, blocked up by stones, screened by ivy. The men had spent a half-hour hacking at briars and shrubs with axes before the drakes shouldered their way in and clawed away the vegetation.
Then the men started work on the stones: firmly lodged, cracks packed with sand, and mud, and bits of pebble and twig that had settled like mortar. Chisels and picks and manly grunts and curses rained against the wall, until the first stone came loose, and then the rest toppled. Dust exploded from the ground,from between the stones themselves, and the scent was old, and damp, and foul. The drakes shook their heads, flared their frills, and snorted their disgust.
Oliver swayed on his feet and attempted not to fall, sweat trailing faster and faster down his temples and the back of his neck. His breaths came short and painful, and he didn’t know if that was the mounting fever, or his panic over it.
Percy nudged him again, and he realized two things. One, that he’d closed his eyes; he blinked them open, alarmed by the filmy, gummed-up quality of his vision. Two, Erik was speaking, and had perhaps been speaking for some time.
Oliver attempted to listen.
“…only what we can carry behind our saddles, on our backs, or in litters. We’ll leave the wagons behind.”
“I thought these tunnels were broad enough for wagons,” Askr protested. He was well enough to sit astride a horse these days, but usually chose to ride on the seat of a wagon instead.
“They are,” Erik countered. “But should we need to perform a hasty retreat, we don’t need wagons getting in the way.”
That was the rub: there was no way for the Great Northern Phalanx to exert its military prowess within these tunnels. Unmolested, the trek should take no more than two days. But should they encounter the enemy, the close quarters could prove deadly.
Oliver knew this, and had been present during each strategy meeting in which the possibility of such a calamity had been discussed. But found himself now incapable of worry. There was only the mounting fever, cinching tighter and tighter around him like a funeral shroud, until all his focus was directed inward.
Percy nudged him again with a light growl, and he found that his hand had ventured into his pocket, and that he clutchedthe amethyst pendant the emperor had attacked their entire camp in order to deliver to him. When he realized what he was doing, he let go of the pendant—but not without difficulty. His fingers didn’t want to open, and his palm pulsed hot and bereft when he withdrew it from his pocket.
