“We take the middle tunnel,” Ycken decided without taking a second to consider the other two.
For Khayrivven, the middle was as good as any. The cave was pressing in on him from all directions, but he wouldn’t leave here before he’d figured out what happened to Lory.
As they filed into the tunnel, the scent of fried meat and fresh bread hit his sensitive nose, and he wondered if Ycken had followed that scent on instinct after not having eaten a proper meal in almost three days, but the general’s purely human senses weren’t as refined as his own.
The cold, black stone seemed to morph in their presence, growing and vanishing in places as if to make their path through the narrow opening easier. Again, these were details that Ycken’s eyes couldn’t pick up, but Khayrivven’s eyes did. If this cave was sentient, and if it decided they were its enemy, they’d be in deep trouble.
By the bend in front of them, a shadow moved, tall and fragmented in the minuscule light now left to brighten their path. Well,brightenwas an overstatement.
On soundless boots, they were moving for a minute, two, before they hit what seemed to be a dead end.
“Damn it,” Ycken cursed, the general less composed than Khayrivven was used to. “I was certain I’d seen a light flicker somewhere ahead.”
Cocking his eyebrow, Khayrivven squeezed past the general, sliding his fingertips over the rock: smoother than the roughly hewn walls of the entrance area, almost …velvetto the touch. Whatever this was, it wasn’t stone. Holding his breath, he pushed—gently—and with a scraping sound, the wall shifted.
“How did you do that?” Ycken was beside him, blinking into the bright morning light greeting them on the other side.
Khayrivven shook his head. “Someone must have built in a mechanism. Almost like the moving walls in the training chambers in Ashthorn’s dungeons.” Khayrivven couldn’t shuck the image of Lory burning in her own fire when her powers had reared their head after his bold use of Almelyte powder. Aiden had been with her, ready to put out the fire, the ice wielder of perfect use for the cause he’d picked him for. And now, he was dead—or he’dsucceeded. Before he could drift into the details of Aiden Bellmont’s death, human silhouettes appeared in the stripe of sunlight, and they weren’t amused by the two men stepping over their hidden threshold.
“Shit,” Ycken grumbled, readying his sword, and Khayrivven had his saber and the dagger sheathed at his hip in his hands, ready to slit throats if need be.
“Intruders!” perhaps ten men and women in rags shouted, charging at them with simple weapons.
He would have lifted his blades to kill had he not spotted a glimmer of fire at the fingertips of the woman to the very right.
Flames.These were Flames. At least one of them.
He barely managed to pull the first blow he’d have delivered to the man at the front, dancing out of his path instead, and swinging his saber above his head in a blur, forcing it out of the man’s way. The Flame-born ran right through the spot Khayrivven had been standing in a heartbeat ago, blinking as he turned around, taking Khayrivven in while behind them, Ycken had already started cutting down Flames.
Fuck—
He couldn’t abandon this battle and leave the general to himself, not because he was worried the man would be killed by the five Flame-born in this room, but because he was worried he wouldn’t, and then Khayrivven would pay for his disloyalty—and his sister would pay, too, the moment Ulder got word of what happened.
As the man in rags faced Khayrivven once more, he felt it, the fire running through his body, a force ready to spring free if he lifted his control the slightest bit. He’d never been around this many Flame-born or the sum of magic sizzling in the air at their presence. Ycken might not have felt it, but for Khayrivven—he couldn’t feel anything else as he stared into the Flame-born man’s black eyes.
“Two down,” Ycken announced, the sounds of clashing steel deafening in the background, and when Khayrivven nodded at the Flame-born he’d spared, hatred shone on that face, and from the man’s free hand, a pillar of flames erupted, tilting toward Khayrivven, until it was a hair’s breadth from engulfing him.
“Traitor,” the man shouted. “TRAITOR!”
With a roar, he lunged for Khayrivven, triggering those instincts honed since childhood. Khayrivven’s sword arm moved of its own volition, ripping through the rope of fire trying to wind around his neck, a shockwave of his own magic breaking free, harnessing the flames the other man had set loose.
Guardians, he didn’twantto kill him, but there was truly not much choice here.
With a flick of his fingers, the fire changed course, folding in on itself and collapsing into a single flame, which Khayrivven summoned into his palm, a comfortable heat burning at his fingertips, while cold blood ran through the rest of his body as he spilled the Flame-born’s. One precise stab in the neck, just above the collarbone, and the artery was gushing rivers of crimson.
The light left the man’s eyes the same moment the guilt settled deep in Khayrivven’s stomach. Slowly, he lowered his saber, snuffing out the flame in his palm in a wisp of smoke, readying himself to join what was left of the attackers.
Ycken had already taken down four, leaving five more lining up to die.
“Are you just going to stand there?” the general barked between spearing a woman in the chest with his sword and hitting another attacker in the face with his elbow.
So far, none of the others had used their fire magic, but Khayrivven could still sense it in their veins: strong and crisp, the crackling flames almost audible in the sounds of battle.
“Of course not.” He uttered the words to himself, darkness dripping heavily from each syllable as he lifted his saber once more and cut the legs out from under one of the attackers.
It was easier when he didn’t look them in the eye because, if he did, he needed to acknowledge the lives he was taking. Not just any lives, but those of his kin. And too much was the fear of finding a familiar face among the many.
Strike, strike, strike. There was no time to think. Within a minute, the rest of them were down, none of them moving, and Ycken pulled his sword out of the man he’d broughtdown last, a grim expression on his face. “Lenya was right. Theyarehiding a weapon up here.”
