“Oh,” Kane said in a tone that was almost approving.
With that, the remaining fear she harbored for him had finally melted away. Replaced by growing irritation.
“Anything you want to say?” she asked, the words sounding more like a threat. Daring him to challenge the little patience she had left, and find out what would happen if he pushed too far.
“I’m impressed. You make a fine smuggler.”
Erinna’s jaw tightened. “I’m not a smuggler.”
“No?” Kane leaned back on his heels, an infuriating smirk playing on his lips. “Then I guess I’m not a pirate.”
A sharp retort rose to Erinna’s lips, but she bit it down. She knew his type, and they thrived on attention and adversary. It would serve her well to stop giving him what he wanted.
With renewed focus, she turned her attention to the much more important task of getting them below ground, into Broman’s old witchstone mines.
A small arcanum-infused lock was carved into stone. The safeguard against entry, known only to Broman’s inner circle and the Yarrows.
Even if someone managed to disarm the lock, they would have to navigate the tunnels below. Someone would have to be desperate or stupid enough to chance the perilous maze of an abandoned witchstone vein.
Attempting to navigate the twists and turns of the mines without any sort of wherewithal was a sure way to send you straight to the Realm Beyond.
Starvation was the best-case scenario if you took a wrong turn too many. Erinna herself would prefer a cave-in. It was faster.
She bent down, fingers poised above a few small stones, ready to shift them into place and release the locking mechanism, but paused. She’d be taking down the infamous Kane Atwater of theHellish Rebuke.
She gazed over her shoulder at him. There he stood, hovering above her, blocking out the sun and casting her in shadow while he waited for her to complete the task. Inez’s hands remained clasped around his broad shoulders, arms swimming in the large coat.
Erinna swallowed. “How do I know I’m safe once we’re down there?”
“Don’t be naive, Yarrow. With that mark on your arm, and the aberrant in your custody, your days of safety are numbered if not gone already.”
“I meant from you.”
The corner of his lips twitched in amusement. “You’re not. But I’m not going to kill you. I made a deal with your father. Besides, I don’t kill without a good enough reason.”
Erinna raised a brow and couldn’t help but ask, “What are good enough reasons then?”
“If they cross me or stand in my way.”
Erinna opened her mouth with a retort, but it was clear Kane had run out of patience. “Open the hatch now, or the next question will be the last thing you speak.”
Another hawk sounded in the distance.
Another chance a mage’s summon would spot them.
Chills ran up Erinna’s spine, and she turned her attention back to the coded lock. He wouldn’t kill her, so he said, but she wouldn’t let her mind wander to the types of suffering one could experience before death.
Erinna clicked the last stone to the correct combination, a pattern that had been burned into her memory, and lifted the well-hidden hatch.
Shadow and darkness welcomed them down below.
“There are witchlights further down the path, just stick close to me and—” Erinna didn’t get the chance to finish.
Kane held Inez tight against his back as she struggled against his hold, her eyes wide in terror as she stared down into the darkness. Kane seemed perfectly unfazed by her struggles. He stepped to the edge with a grin and jumped.
The shadows swallowed them whole.
Erinna’s mouth parted in disbelief as she found purchase on the metal ladder and started her descent. The door moved back into place, shrouding them in subterranean night.
