A breath I didn’t realize I was holding finally escapes.
Relief ripples through us, and we move again, slipping through the maze behind the castle. When the path before us forks, Nevaeh and Khatri take the left, while Jackson and I follow the right. Whoever finds what we’re looking for will alert the others.
I peek around the next corner and duck when I find two guards.
There’s only one reason anyone comes here, and I know I’m right when I see the silhouette of a woman on the ground behind them. They stand over her broken body like she’s invisible, chatting away.
This is where the guards take the slaves to use them as they please, without Tiberius finding out. It’s not like he would miss one woman among dozens of slaves.
They toss her into a shallow pit and go back to laughing like nothing happened. I don’t expect them to give her a proper burial, but they could’ve at least laid her to rest somewhere other than the place they killed her.
Every time I wonder if my hatred for this place is biased because of my personal experience, every stone in this place reminds me what these people are really made of.
Products of a predator who loves to see his own shadow in his subjects.
I glance at Jackson and cut my hand around my neck in a slicing motion. He nods without hesitation, knowing what needs to be done.
Closing his eyes, he chants a spell, and guards drop with a thud. We quickly drag them into the shadows, shoving them under thorned bushes.
We’re about to move when Nevaeh’s voice snaps through the link.“Another dead end. I told you not to put me in charge of the directions!”
I hear Anxo smother his laugh on his end of the link.
We all know Nevaeh can’t keep track of the most basic directions. That woman wasn’t built to take orders.
Nevaeh hisses when she hears Anxo laugh.“You’re a dead man when this is over.”
“You can’t kill me without hurting yourself, sweetheart.”Anxo sounds far too smug for someone who was just threatened. Two hours with Dean and he’s already picked his reckless bravery.
“I could break his arm for you,”Dean offers.
“Hey!”Anxo cuts the link before my mate can encourage more shenanigans.
We move deeper into the maze when footsteps echo behind us.
When Khatri confirms it’s not them, Jackson and I quickly slip into the shadows as Jackson murmurs a cloaking spell.
It won’t hold for long, so if they linger, we’ll have to deal with them the same way we did the other two.
When I check the path we were going to take and realize it curves back to the castle. Wrong direction.
Once we deal with the newcomers, we’ll double back and find another route.
I’m mapping every turn in my head when a voice I haven’t heard in years stops me cold. Before I can think, I step out just enough to see the man I could never forget.
The one person makes me feel guilty for hating this place completely, because that would mean hating him, and I could never do that.
My breath stutters when I see his face after so long.
Zale.
He was the kindest among all of Tiberius’s processions. Like me, he was brought to serve Tiberius, but for some reason, he was treated better than the rest of us by the guards.
Sometimes I used to wonder whether his kindness was real or just a mask, but he never gave me a reason to doubt the hand that fed me when I could barely breathe.
Zale was older than me, so once Timor recruited him as a warrior, he never came back to the slave quarters. I never saw him again after that day, and I think it was for the best.
I know my growing affection for him would’ve ruined me, but something about him felt familiar…peaceful. In the cage, attachment was a liability. Caring for someone meant watching helplessly as the darkness around us slowly consumed their light.
