If only he knew how quickly I’d turn savage and rip his throat out if I had half the chance.
Pax gives me a sympathetic shrug, but I ignore it. He is trouble, and trouble is the last thing I need.
I’ve barely taken two steps when a horrible scream tears through the mine.
The sound echoes against the stone, shrill and ragged. Every miner freezes mid-strike, picks hovering in the air before dropping to the floor in a clatter. All eyes swing to the shaft beside the forbidden Vein Four. Vein Three.
The sigils there are not red, so in theory it should be safe. But the man clawing at the cage as the platform rises tells a very different story, terror etched across his face.
When the platform finally grinds to a halt, he tears the cage door open and stumbles forward, nearly falling. Pax lunges to catch him, gripping his shoulders before he can collapse.
“Rollin,” Pax says urgently. “What is it?”
“I’m not going back down there!” Rollin sobs, shaking so hard his teeth clatter. He grabs Pax by the coat collar. “I can hear it in the dark. Scratching at the walls.”
His voice drops to a trembling whisper.
“It called my name.”
Pax gulps, his eyes flashing to Luceran just as the Fae lord turns and stalks back toward us. The moment he sees Rollin crumpled on the ground, his mismatched eyes ignite, blazing bright enough to cut through the dark. Cobalt mist spills from his clenched fists.
“Get up and get back to work,” Pax hisses through his teeth, trying and failing to haul Rollin upright. He flicks a nervous glance at Luceran, then back to Rollin. “Get up. He will kill you if you don’t.”
But Rollin only shakes his head, refusing to rise, and the terror in his eyes hollows something inside my chest.
“Let him,” Rollin whispers, voice breaking. “If I go back into that tunnel… I’m dead anyway.”
8
Rollin’s words echo through the tunnel, as terrifying and blood-curdling as the scream he let out when he fled whatever lurks in that dark shaft. For a heartbeat, no one moves.
Then everything happens at once.
Rollin shivers on the stone floor, and Luceran looks at him as if that single sentence were a personal insult. A challenge. A declaration of defiance aimed squarely at a creature who has never tolerated defiance from anyone.
I feel the shift before I see it. A tightening of the air. A cold so sharp it burns.
Then Luceran surges forward.
I throw out a hand on foolish instinct, but he doesn’t even slow. Frost skitters off his cloak as he storms past me, the force of his passing snapping the air against my cheek. Rollin barely manages to lift his head before Luceran’s hand clamps around his throat and yanks him upright.
Boots scrape stone. Rollin kicks helplessly, choking. Pax swears under his breath.
“You think death excuses you,” Luceran growls, lifting him higher, “from the debt you owe?”
Rollin’s face purples, his fingers clawing at Luceran’s grip.
“Please…” he gasps.
Luceran’s lips peel back, canines glinting.
“Your debt is far from repaid. Would you pass it on to your wife? Haveherthrowing an axe at these walls from dawn until dusk, amongst all these men? They are no better than animals.” Rollin’s breath breaks on a sob. “And your daughters… barely old enough to braid their own hair. They will remember you only as the pathetic gambler who left them to freeze. You will disgrace them in death, just as you have in life, you fucking coward.”
I gasp. Even Pax flinches. But Rollin… he shakes his head. Even while choking, even while Luceran’s words slice him open, even as his legs begin to go still.
“No,” he rasps. “Please, my lord. Don’t make me… don’t send me back in there.”
The fact that he fears something inside that tunnel more than he fears Luceran freezes my blood solid.
