“Alright,” I say, tapping the slate with the side of my stylus. “Step one: we find some students. Step two: we teach them how to recognize when someone’s airway is compromised. Start there and we can build everything else on top.”
Evonne nods, eyes gleaming. “Then let us begin.”
And as we bend over our work, the strange, smoky world of Nightfall spins on outside—while, in the belly of the earth, somewhere deep and hot and dangerous, the man I’m falling in love with is fighting for that world’s future.
I suppose the least I can do is fight for it up here.
Chapter 23
Thorne
The Ember Vein, The Broken Plains
The descent feels longer this time.
Maybe it’s because part of me is still back in the Healer’s Pavilion with Delia.
Maybe it’s because I know what waits at the bottom.
The tunnels tighten, then open again into the chamber that houses The Ember Vein.
It glows in the dark like a wound in the world.
Black earth splits in a jagged line across the cavern floor and walls, shot through with molten ember—veins of living fire pulsing in time with a heartbeat that is not quite mine, not quite Nightfall’s.
Somewhere between.
The lifeblood of the realm.
Dagan stands closest to the seam, one hand braced on the stone, eyes closed, his brow drawn with concentration.
He looks like the pillar he is—broad, immovable, carved out of mountain and stubbornness.
When he finally opens his eyes, they are rimmed with fatigue.
“I have remained here the whole of the night,” he rumbles, voice deep enough to vibrate the air. “The stone has whispered of many things—pressure changes, shifts in heat, tremors along the outer tunnels—but none of them bear the mark of the SoulTakers. I feel no progress. No tunneling. No advance through the ground toward the Vein.”
His shoulders sag a fraction and I frown.
Dagan exhausted is not a sight I enjoy.
“They may not be under us,” Kael says quietly, gaze fixed on the glowing ore. “But they will try again. The Ember Vein is too great a prize.”
“I will not leave it unprotected,” I growl.
“Of course not,” Alaric answers, stepping closer, illusions simmering low around him like banked lightning. “Then we do what should have been done from the start. We reinforce the old wards. Together.”
I taste the word.
Together.
I incline my head.
“So be it.”
At the far side of the chamber, near the mouth of the main access tunnel, Grier hovers—too close for my liking.
His posture is appropriately deferential, but his beady eyes keep flicking between us and the ore like a dog torn between awe and avarice.
