A guest?
A responsibility?
Something more?
The idea makes my stomach knot. I don’t belong in their world. I know that. I’m human. I break. I bleed. I don’t last. I can’t be their partner or their lover. I don’t even know what I could be.
I close my eyes, leaning my head back against the stone, the weight of it all pressing down on me at once. Everything about this is wrong. And I have no idea what I’m supposed to do next.
4
Oberon
I dragmyself through the narrow tunnel, careful not to brush the stone too hard. Every move I make feels too loud. The scrape of my sleeve against the rock sounds like a shout in the silence.
Pain follows every inch.
My back burns where the blades carved into me, the wounds pulling tight and wet with each shift of muscle. My legs aren’t much better. Every movement sends a sharp, tearing protest up through me, the kind that tries to slow me down, tries to make me stop.
I don’t.
I pause halfway through, holding still. Listening.
My breath is too loud. My pulse worse, pounding hard enough I’m sure it’ll give me away.
There’s nothing. No footsteps. No voices. No distant roar.
That doesn’t mean they’re gone.
I keep moving.
The tunnel opens slowly into the main cave, and I stop just before the edge, pressing myself flat against the stone. My hand tightens against the ground, steadying myself as I force myself upright, pain flaring down my spine as the torn skin stretches.
Ignoring it, I lean out just enough to see. It looks dark and empty except for the guttering torches. But shadows often lie. There could be a cyclops in any dark corner, just waiting to set the alarm and bring death down upon all of us.
I refuse to be reckless with Alette ever again, so I creep forward carefully. Silently. Hoping against hope that having two eyes means I’ll see the cyclops before they see me.
A drop of water echoes somewhere deeper inside, sharp and hollow, and my entire body tenses. My heart beats harder. I force myself to breathe slower, even as every instinct tells me to retreat.
If they’re here, if even one of them stayed behind… I don’t finish the thought. I can’t.
Shifting again, just enough to scan the far side, my gaze sweeps to the center of the room. The carved stone. The basin. The place where they had us laid out like animals.
My jaw tightens. For a second, I can see that moment again. The blades rising. The blood. The sound of the mechanism.
I shut it down.The fae kings are alive. All of us. That should be enough.But somehow it isn’t, because it’d been close. Too close.
I inch forward, then crouch in the dark, listening again. The silence stretches, heavy but real. No shifting shadows. No breath that isn’t mine.
By now, I’d have seen evidence of someone if they were here.I think they’re gone. All of them.
But I have to be sure.
Creeping around the entire room, I check every dark corner, but still, find nothing. I don’t walk through the center ofthe room though. Through our blood. Through the flaring torchlight. Not because I’m incapable, but because I choose not to.
Honestly? I want to destroy every drop of our blood, so they can’t use it in their sick rituals. But destroying it would take time, effort, and create noise, and we can’t afford to do any of those things right now. Plus, I’d want to burn the blood away, but I can’t do that this near to all the iron. I just have to see that the cyclops are gone and then lead the others the hell out of here.
When I’m done making sure the room is empty, I let out a slow breath and push myself back into the tunnel, moving faster this time, but still careful, still controlled. The dark closes in immediately, thick and suffocating, the walls too tight, the air too still. It drags something old to the surface. Something buried but never gone. The memory of stone pressing in, of time stretching in the dark with no end, claws up my spine. I force it down hard and keep moving.
