I stooped down and called him into my arms, wrapping myself around his trembling body. “It’s alright. Everything’s fine.”
Looking up at me, I could swear he glared. He ducked away from me and paced some more, his fur brushing against me with each pass.
“Ready?” Lore asked after he’d secured a final blade to his thigh.
At my nod, he held his hand out to me. Our fingers linked, he tugged me into his arms and flitted us to the empty throne room.
When we landed, Farris glared up at me from where he’d pressed himself into my side.
A sweep of Lore’s hand, and I felt the room ward, its power surging over me, keeping anyone else from entering. As I retrieved my daggers, grateful to secure them in their sheaths, he crouched down beside Farris, stroking the nyxin’s ruff. “I’ll return him to our room. It won’t take me long.”
Farris backed away, his spine bristling and a growl snapping up his throat.
“I think he wants to stay with us,” I said.
My nyxin backed into me and his fur softened.
“I want you safe, little guy,” Lore said.
Farris blinked up at me before trotting over to the rubble left by the explosion of Lore’s earlier magic. He sniffed the area and whined before he started to dig with his front paws.
Lore and I shrugged at each other.
“We’ll keep him safe,” Lore said. “It starts here. Now. I have to dosomething. I mourn.” His face cracked. “So much. For what I didn't see. For what I've lost. But in here,” his hand smacked against his chest, “I know I have to act.” His icy composure snapped back into place, and the cold fire in his eyes masked something deeper. Fury. Grief. Determination. “We’ll find whatever it is. Her death—” He pinched his eyes shut, his jaw locking tight before he opened his eyes again. “She will not die for nothing.”
I nodded, my heart thumping in an uneven rhythm. As we joined Farris, the acrid tang of Prager's magic still hung in the air, mingling with the tinge of coppery blood and ancient dirt.
He dropped to his knees beside the fractured remains of the throne room floor and nudged Farris gently to the side.
“Should we get tools?” I asked.
“We should, but we won't.” He looked up at me. “I sense where we need to go can't be reached unless we show solid effort. But magic? I have plenty of that roaring around inside me, and I need to blast it somewhere.”
He pressed his palm to the warped marble.
The first tiles ground together with a deafening scrape, shuddering as they rose under the force of his power. Splinters of stone mixed with dirt burst upward as the floor gave way, cracking around him, baring dry earth beneath. Only the section he knelt on remained intact.
Lorick flung the tiles aside, and his focus tunneled deeper. Hiscontrol over the destruction was terrifying and amazing at the same time.
His knuckles bled as he clawed at the dirt with his bare hands.
“Why not use magic now?” I asked softly.
“Tried.” He didn’t look up, but the desolation in his voice… “It’s not working below the floor.”
“Do you think blades are alright?” I asked. “Or can we magic a shovel?”
He finally glanced up at me, and his hands stilled, coated in dirt and streaks of blood from his gouged knuckles. That look he gave me… By the fates, I could feel the rawness of it hitting my chest. It wasn’t anger, not entirely. I also saw guilt. Utter sadness. Too much pain there, as well. “I don’t know how to magic a shovel.”
“I could find one.”
“I don't sense wecan'tuse blades.”
He took one from me with only a slight upward twinge of his lips that smoothed out too fast. “I knew you'd get use out of these, Wildfire, but I never thought it would be in a situation like this.”
“They’ll need work after.” Some people would be horrified at the thought of using gorgeous weapons like this to dig.
“I’ll repair them or make you new ones.”
