Page 28 of A Spell of Bones and Madness (Nostos #2)
Chapter Twenty-One
Katrin
“ F arah!” Katrin gasped, her hands shaking, light fading from around her skin. “Did you just…”
“Did I just kill my brother? I…I don’t know.” Farah’s eyes shifted between Kohl and Chloe both lying on the ground.
A creeping feeling settled in Katrin’s gut, causing her mind to spiral momentarily.
She would have done the same thing, targeted Kohl to protect Ander—to protect all of them.
But for a brief moment, Kohl had relaxed and his eyes looked how they had as a teenager.
Her Kohl. The one she spent endless hours exploring the isle with.
The one she almost begged to marry, to spend her life with.
Now, as he lay before her, Katrin wanted to reach out her hand and check if his pulse still thrummed in his veins, if he would be alright if they left him in the woods, air so chilled he may freeze if not already dead.
Then she remembered what Kohl had done to the innocent girl who now lay before them.
Clutching her shattered arm, Chloe shook with a violent tremor and her breath strained.
Trying to escape with two people injured would prove near impossible—especially when they had to travel by foot to the other side of the isle.
Ander still leaned against Leighton, his eyes drooping and legs wobbling.
They shouldn’t have sent the other soldiers ahead to help prepare The Nostos , they could have helped carry the young princess.
“We have to keep moving, before other guards are alerted of the mess we made in the dungeons. Or before a very pissed off Kohl wakes up and comes after us.” Leighton wrapped Ander’s arm around his shoulders. “I can carry the captain myself.”
“No need, Leighton, Katrin can help you. Can you stand?” Farah asked and Chloe nodded.
Farah knelt beside Chloe, waving her palm over the crushed bones in her right arm. Chloe shivered, hairs on end at the black smoke circling her arm, wrapping itself back around her shoulder and neck. “I can’t heal it, but this should help. Keep it steady until we reach the ship.”
“Thank you.” Chloe’s whisper was barely more than air leaving her lungs, eyes wide at the kindness Farah gave her.
Farah looked away, not meeting her gaze. “Anything to get us off this gods-forsaken isle.” But as the two young girls began to walk toward the trail that led back to the ship, Katrin couldn’t help but notice the tick in Farah’s hand.
It was a long walk back to the southern end of the isle, about a day's time, that is, if you did not know the shortcuts hidden about.
Katrin led them to the tunnels beneath the center Triad Mountain, its hidden underground trails easy to navigate if you knew the meaning of the markings along the walls.
Symbols and whirls sat at the top of each archway, marking safe passage, dead end, or corridors with a more permanent kind of end.
Only two people alive knew what these markings meant—and gods, she really hoped the second now lay dead somewhere far behind them.
A small piece of Katrin hated herself for the thought, even after everything.
She once loved him—thought she loved him at least.
They needed time. Just enough to get a head start through the trails and tunnels.
If they could do that, even if the soldiers found the bodies outside the dungeons, horses could not catch them, not when they would need to go around the base of the mountains.
During late autumn, the ground would begin to freeze, making it more difficult to travel over.
Even Arion, her father’s prized steed, could not move swiftly through the winding forest with the growing ice that coated floors, the risk of the horse or a member of the Spartanis shattering a bone if running too quickly was too high.
The crew of The Nostos had the advantage of surprise when they landed in Alentus—they no longer had that reprieve.
“We’ll be safe traveling through these tunnels, at least for now,” Katrin told the others, lighting a torch with a flint rock, rag, and oil that sat at the opening to the mountain.
The tunnels under the Triad were strange—magic did not work there the same as it did outside.
It was volatile, unpredictable, and Katrin could not risk that. Not now.
“You expect us to go through here?” Leighton’s voice shuttered, a whip of chilled wind curling around him. “It…it looks like…” his voice trailed off, a dead expression frozen on his face.
Ander looked up at the nauarch. Even through his weathered gaze and the pain he must feel, his features softened. “It is not like Cyther. Katrin knows the way, no evil lingers in these walls.”
That wasn’t necessarily true, but Katrin did not want to frighten any of them more than they already were.
When she was young, Kohl and her happened upon carvings in the caves.
At first they looked like the story known to all of Odessia—the birth of the Grechi—but when they looked closer, it was a much more violent scene.
Monsters ripped their way out of a woman they could only assume was Alenia, the Mother herself, and scattered into caverns within the mountain.
They never encountered one of these creatures face to face, but many times, as they wandered unmarked paths, vicious cries seemed to echo against the walls.
Three passageways lay before them each with a different symbol above. The left, four yellow concentric circles. The middle, three stacked blue waves. The right, a silver square with a line through the center.
“So we go down the center, right?” asked Leighton. “The three blue lines mean water, the other side of the mountain?”
Grimacing, Katrin pointed toward the left, the darkest and narrowest of the paths. “We are going there. The center leads to water, but no matter which path you take further down it you end up at underground bays. They lead nowhere.”
“And the right? That is not an option either?” he asked once more.
“I’m afraid that leads to a dead end or a thin parapet. The parapet is faster to travel if you can navigate the other side, but Ander and Chloe will not make it over injured. We go the sun route.”
“And why is it called the sun route?” Farah piped up from behind.
“Because when you think the walls have closed in too much, when you think you will never make it out, that the darkness has consumed you, the light will break through. It is long and it is taxing, but it is our best chance of survival, of getting off this isle.”
Katrin began to lead them in, but not before noticing Leighton halted for a mere moment outside, staring at the sun that began to break over the mountain.
The nauarch had been through so much—too much—a fate worse than even Katrin and Ander, and yet she had never thought to ask him how he was coping, how he managed his sanity over the years.
Each of them was so broken, for different reasons, but it made them the same.
It was why they were family. She walked over to Leighton, placing her hand on his shoulder.
“Just keep your eyes on me, I will get us out. I will get us all out, I promise.”
Leighton’s voice sank to a faint whisper. “You can’t promise that, Katrin, even if you want to.”
Today she could. But when war spread through the isles—what if she wasn’t strong enough to save them? Wasn't strong enough to save everyone?