I finished the words in a rush, needing to get them out.
She took my hand, squeezing gently. “Jacob and the others returned north, didn’t they? They followed the mountain range. We could find them.”
It was dark, deep under the Dead Mountain. We’d gotten used to the stench, to the blackness. But the quiet was almost unbearable. The calm before the chaos.
I blew out a long sigh, disentangling my hand from Tess’ before wrapping my arms around my body.
“I don’t think we-we would ever find them, Tess,” I whispered. “And ho-how far could we run before the f-fog found us?”
Tess leaned back. For a moment, she was angry. I saw it. But then her shoulders sagged. “That wouldn’t matter for you.”
“And food?” I asked.
She turned her head away, staring at the dark stone of the room we were in. It was damp, humid, which only made the stench all the worse. We’d found decaying Ghertun in this very place. I wasn’t certain we’d cleared out all the remains either.
As if on cue, her belly growled. I heard her swallow.
“He would kill you if you left,” I told her. I didn’t speak his name. I hardly ever could, regardless. His name held my tongue and closed my throat until I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
But Tess knew of whom I spoke. Of course she did.
“Benn wouldn’t care,” she said but we both knew it was a lie.
Looking at her now, I would think Tess was broken. Her eyes were sunken in, her shoulders sagged. There was a quietness about her that had never been present before. Back in our village, before the Ghertun had destroyed it two years prior, she’d been boisterous and headstrong.Alive.
Given the world we lived in, I had often wished I possessed her confidence. Her optimism.
Tess was also smart, both then and now. She didn’t show this side to anyone but me. This frightened, exhausted, hungry, vulnerable person she’d become. She hid it well.
Around the others, she drew herself up. She hardened her shell. She smiled coyly at Benn to keep him reined in. She didn’t like weakness. And so she did everything she could to rid herself of it when we were not together.
When we passed one another, she pretended not to see me. When Benn struck me, she looked the other way.
Yet it was she who tended to my injuries and in those moments, I felt her shame. Her helplessness. Because in some ways, she was more helpless than me.
“What will you do?” she asked me, peering at me with solemn brown eyes.
I didn’t want to speak because I knew the words would not come out. Shaking my head, I swallowed hard. I gazed around the dark room, my stomach roiling with the thought that not a week ago, there were dead Ghertun here.
We guessed that the Ghertun had fled to the deepest parts of their mountain kingdom. The fog had not reached them here, though it had reached the upper levels. There, Ghertun had been paralyzed where they stood, unable to move, slowly dying from the red mist that suffocated them, that had wound around them like rope, eating from their bodies until there was nothing but a shell left of them.
Down here, however, the Ghertun had starved, unwilling to venture to the surface where the red fog swarmed in their halls and made its home there.
I could only imagine the horror they’d experienced. A part of me felt a tremor of pity, though I then remembered the screams of my village during its last night.
The anger felt good. I would choose anything over fear.
Grasping that anger, I let it lead the words from my lips, clear and even, and said, “I will do whatever is necessary to keep us safe. And once the fog is gone…we will leave this place. Together. And we will find the others.”
If they aren’t already dead, I added to myself silently.
Tess stared at me. Sometimes she looked frightened of me and in those moments, I always wondered what she saw.
She shook herself and looked around the room we were preparing. Forhim. There was a stone slab in the center of the room, the reason why we’d chosen this one over all the others. There was a loop carved into the slab at the far end, where we’d be able to attach the chains. The room seemed to have been used for medicines, for Ghertun-made potions and tonics, judging by the vials and vases that lined the walls. Only a few remained, however. Most had been smashed and I had painstakingly picked up every single shard yesterday, so no one would cut their feet.
The Ghertun bodies had been removed. We were giving the room a final sweep to ensure that nothing could be used as a weapon, though Benn would inspect it soon. Black cuffs and chains sat on the stone slab, a constant reminder of who they were intended for. The Dakkari witch had given them to Benn. They were supposedly made of the strongest metal on Dakkar, the only metal a Dakkari male could not break free from.
Even a horde king.
