He couldn’t count the number of men he killed. Any exhaustion he felt before had turned into fire. Rage. Fueled by the memory of every friend he’d lost to Thorne’s revenge. His misplaced cruelty.
Mettius watched from behind the barricade of wreckage. Safe underLittle Gus’s care. He’d gotten a blade somehow and held it steady, watching. Watchinghim.
For the first time in his life, Augustus felt it. That thing he’d wanted from the beginning.
Worth.
Augustus wrenched his sword free from a man’s stomach and whirled to cover Selene’s back.
She didn’t need it.
Maybe she never had.
Selene turned to him, her chest heaving and blade slick with blood. “Where’s Thorne?”
His smile faded.
He scanned the beach. Scanned again.
A breath left him in a gust. “Son of a bitch.”
The bastard fled.
Chapter
Forty-Seven
“We’ll find her.”
Those were the last words Atsadi said to Kai. It felt like a lifetime ago—before the narrow tunnels, before the weeping stone, before the world turned into this desperate, crumbling maze.
Somewhere behind them, a damaged aqueduct had ruptured. The water rose. Atsadi led Kai through what felt like a labyrinth, silent, his boots splashing with every step.
They passed others on the way. More healers. More injured. Almost everyone was coated in tears and blood.
Atsadi paused to watch them pass, the muscles in his jaw flaring like branches.
He met her eyes, and Kai read the fear there. It matched her own. In what state would they find their wife?
But Atsadi only nodded. They had to keep going.
“Stay close to me,” Atsadi warned, pointing at a gaping crack in the path. “It’s fresh. The ground could collapse further.”
Kai remained a half-step behind him the entire way, her thoughts a litany of her wife’s name. Fala. Fala. Fala. Every second they searched, the tunnels twisted tighter. If another collapse hit, Fala might not survive the buried silence.
They rounded a bend?—
Atsadi came to a sudden halt, and Kai bounced against his back.
The tunnel opened into a wide cavern, as high as the sky and as deep as the entire world.
Kai had never been this deep into the mines—a whole other world existed here, unlike anything she’d ever imagined. It was quiet, except for the sound of water escaping massive cracks in the walls. Narrow stone bridges stretched over the dark bowels in weblike patterns, some leading to wide ledges, others dipping even farther down.
Far to the right, Fala whimpered.
Kai lurched?—
Atsadi yanked her back into the shadow and put a finger to her lips. Without a word, he nodded for her to look.
