As we slip through the darkness to an extremely narrow passageway leading behind the warehouse, I end up last, only Joran behind me.
“I said something wrong, didn’t I, witch?” His voice has a different edge to it. A different depth. It makes something inside me writhe, something squirming and wriggling and demanding to be felt.
I say nothing in reply as the ancient intuition of my ancestors, flowing hot and alive in my blood, sends me a warning.
Wrongness, it screams. Wrongness.
My heart pounds. I try to listen.
47
RAINA
Orlena Madar’s warehouse is a clean, cavernous space filled with neatly stacked crates of cargo, produce, and wares.
I stare at the rounded rafters that seem so very far above. The upper floors are dark, save for one area to the left on the sea side of the building. Warm candlelight shines through its single door. Perhaps it’s Orlena’s living quarters. Dedrick said she lived here.
The rest of the floors are only visible in shadow, revealed by whatever dim illumination reaches from that one nook and the lanterns hanging from the stone walls on the first level. I can make out the lines of a few large windows, and a single mezzanine, though there are wood-planked catwalks around every floor.
“Let’s get you all downstairs so you can clean up, dry out, and get some rest,” Orlena says.
“We can always leave tonight,” Joran suggests. “I don’t think any of us are exceptionally exhausted, and we need to be moving. Quickly.”
“The gates don’t open until sunrise,” Orlena replies. “The wall is imbued with our queen’s magick.”
“After all this time,” Joran says, eyes narrowed as he shakes his head in annoyed disbelief, “no one has found an alternate route through that damn wall?”
Orlena eyes the Icelander, and in a soft, steady voice says, “Who are you?”
No reply.
I look over at him. With a smirk on his face, he leans against a stone column, his gray skin and wet, silver hair a strange shade beneath the golden lantern light. He stares at Orlena as though he can see right through her, though it somehow feels like the opposite is true.
“I’m a Northlander. To my core. That’s all you really need to know.”
Alexus and Nephele share an off glance as Orlena studies the water witch with a thorough once-over. Whatever is hanging between them gets left behind, however, for more important matters.
Orlena struts her tall frame toward a large crate that’s taller than she is, and motions, without a word, for Rhonin to follow.
A little shocked, he startles and says, “Me?” But then he quickly steps to task.
He looks like a timid little boy as he joins her, likely because Orlena is so beautiful. She wears black leggings and tall boots, topped off with an umber-red silken tunic embroidered with gold thread. Her hair is a mass of shiny caramel corkscrew curls, her eyes a deep, rich black, her skin an earthy, warm brown and utterly luminescent.
Thankfully, save for a reddened face, Rhonin doesn’t embarrass himself. He simply helps Orlena push the empty crate aside, revealing a secret passage cut into the floor. Duty served, he steps back to his place next to Hel.
I didn’t think he could blush any harder, and yet, when Hel spears him with a look, his face blazes like a summer sun.
Orlena squats and slides her finger into a metal ring on the wooden planks and lifts the door. As though she’s done this dozens of times, and I’m sure she has, she snatches a lantern and nods at us, a bright smile on her face.
“Come on. I think you’ll like it down here.”
It doesn’t dawn on me until I’m descending the steep steps to an underground hideout that Orlena helps Dedrick smuggle Northlanders into her homeland regularly. Who’s to say she won’t help Eastlanders? Why would she do it at all? Is this not why we labeled Rooke a traitor?
I must not be the only one with that thought, because as we follow the rickety stairs into the lower rooms, and Orlena Madar begins lighting lanterns hanging around the space, Callan says, “Why would you help us enter your lands?”
They walk around studying tables and shelves loaded with clothes and shoes, weapons, foodstuffs, and even baskets of documents, most likely already forged, complete with a new name.
Orlena closes the glass on a lantern and meets Callan’s heavy stare. “You’re here because he—” she points at the Collector “—is old friends with my queen. And because the Prince of the East is causing trouble.” Though she’s speaking to Callan, she glances at Joran, and with a pointed edge to her words, says, “That’s really all I need to know.”
