Around them the cavern erupts.
“Oh fuck,” Amelia whispers. “There’s shadowmaws in the tunnels behind them.”
The first one I see comes through the passage near the weapons cache at ground level, a black armored shape so low and fast it looks like spilled oil moving uphill. It hits one of Kol’s warriors from behind. He goes down hard, and the sound of it is lost in everything else.
The second one comes out of the narrow offshoot by the bathing chamber. It doesn’t pick a side. It hits the nearest warm body, which happens to be one of Lucek’s men.
He doesn’t go down the way Kol’s warrior did. He turns andfightsit, bare-handed, his forearm jammed sideways into the serrated jaw. Blood. A lot of blood. He doesn’t stop moving.
He doesn’t care if he loses the arm.
This isn’t a fight. It’s bodies in the dark and the smell of copper, and the only light is coming from Kol’s flickering glow illuminating the slaughter.
A bone blade punches upward in the dim light. Grappling bodies slam into the stone floor. Rok drops his elbow onto the back of a skull with a sickening crack that carries all the way up to where I am standing. A shadowmaw drags a thrashing warrior away from the edge of the fighting, sinking its teeth in and vanishing into the black.
“Sarven says their two won’t go down,” Mikaela says, her voice tight. “One just took a blade in the leg. He’s still up. Still moving.”
Because Lucek’s men fight like they don’t care if they walk out. They fight like they have nothing to lose.
While Kol’s men...
I watch Kol crack a collarbone. I feel it more than I hear it. A wet vibration that climbs right through the rock. And then, mid-parry, with a rival’s claw raking a deep, brutal path across his forearm, he turns his head.
He abandons his guard, and looks straight at me in the dark.
... Kol’s men fight like they have everything to lose.
Across the cavern, through the dark and the blood smell, he finds me on the ledge. His chest is heaving. His golden skin shifts from a yellow glow toward something almost white-hot.
The feral snarl that comes out of him is barely sound. More physical pressure than noise. I feel it vibrating in my molars. His eyes are purely possessive, making sure I am exactly where he left me.
He turns back to the fight and the next warrior in his radius goes down so hard the stone floor cracks.
Meanwhile, Lucek has gone still at the far edge of the chaos.
He’s not fighting.
He’s watching.
His amber eyes are tracking the cavern, his nostrils flaring as he inhales the cold air. I follow his gaze and realize what he’s doing. He’s counting. Counting spaces. He’s looking for the gap between where the warriors are and where they aren’t. Looking for the tunnel mouths.
He’s looking for where we went.
“The cavern of the spring mouth.” Mikaela’s voice drops to a sharp, panicked whisper beside me. “Sarven says they’re at the water access. Up where I saw the face looking down.” Her breath hitches.
The sounds shift before she finishes.
From the narrow tunnel leading down to the Hall of Knowing there’s a new noise. A body hitting stone, then another. They’re everywhere.
A single pair of feet breaks clear.
One of them got through.
He doesn’t slow down when he hits the open cavern floor. He doesn’t look at the fighting, doesn’t look at Kol, doesn’t look at anything except the passage that leads deeper into the rock.
The one that leads down.
Straight toward Alex. Toward Pam. Toward Lucy. Toward everyone else.
