“I’m sorry, Aelia,” Shiva said quietly. “They’re monsters.”
“And they’re working for the King.” Aelia slowed down to let him catch up, having regained control of her expression. “How did that even happen?”
Shiva shrugged. “The King’s scared of the ideolan. Aren’t we all?”
“But what do they want with them?”
“I honestly don’t know.” Shiva sighed, looking as exhausted as she felt. “I don’t even know how we could stop it.”
“There must be people working against the Astraea? There must be some kind of push back?” Aelia sounded almost pleading, even to her own ears.
“Beserkir has the Astraeaandthe King’s Guard at his disposal. I don’t know how anyone could fight against that.”
“No, me neither,” Aelia admitted.
“Look, this Keeran guy, do you know he worked with Beserkir?”
Aelia shot him a look of surprise; she’d considered that Shiva might know about that.
“I know a little,” she said hesitantly, wanting to hear what Shiva had heard.
“Do you know he was arrested by Beserkir for murder?” Shiva raised his eyebrows at her. “Multiple murders.”
“Yes,” Aelia said reluctantly. What Keeran had told her about the last night of the War of Two Kings had haunted her. He’d been involved, had been there to see his friends and comrades hewn down like beasts, and she could no longer bring herself to blame him for wanting revenge. Especially as the desire for vengeance was something she was coming to understand all too well.
“And do you know he told Beserkir when to attack Callodosis?”
Anger sparked in Aelia’s eyes. “He didn’t tell them when to attack, because he didn’t know who Beserkir really was. He gave them information he thought was harmless.”
Shiva looked at her closely, and Aelia averted her eyes to hide what she wasn’t willing to show him. What she’d barely admitted to herself yet.
She’d forgiven him. The seething anger she’d been clinging to had dissipated, leaving nothing but dejection in its place. She’dpushed and pushed and pushed him away, and yet he’d never left, he’d never stopped looking after her. And it had got him locked up.
“I think this is it,” Shiva said, breaking the silence.
Aelia narrowed her eyes at the rusty ladder hugging the wall, curving up to meet a hatch in the ceiling.
“How could you possibly know that? Everything down here looks the same.” He’d only been here a few days more than her at most, how had he had time to learn its sewers, and why?
“Well, to be entirely honest,” Shiva yanked uncertainly on the ladder, testing to see if it would hold. “I’m not one hundred per cent certain we're in the right place.”
Aelia folded her arms and scowled at him.
“You led us through the sewers, through literal shit, without knowing where you were going?”
“I didn’t see you coming up with a better plan,” Shiva bit back. “And I had a rough idea where I was going. This was how I was going to get Fenrir when I found out he’d been taken to the Inner City to become Beserkir’s latest plaything.”
Aelia sighed and dropped her arms. “You’re right, I’m being a dick, sorry. Let me go first. That ladder looks like it’s going to crumble the second one of us touches it.”
Shiva looked down at her but didn’t move away from the ladder, a strange light in his eyes.
“What?” she asked, panicking that something awful might have splashed onto her face without her noticing.
“Just…” Shiva shook his head, an incredulous smile lifting his lips. “Well, if someone had tried to tell us a few weeks ago that we’d be here, in a sewer in Llmera, working together, either one of us would have beaten the fucker up.”
“Yep, isn’t life just fan-fucking-tastic,” Aelia said, looking up at the rusty bolts securing the ladder to the wall. “Give me a leg up, would you?”
Shiva snorted and grabbed her shin, boosting her up onto the ladder. He pressed his hand into her back as they both waited to see if it would hold her weight. He gingerly let her go as she began to climb.
