Page 34 of Artemysia

“Stab me in the heart if anything goes wrong.” - Riev

“H ow would a band of Syf come to possess our old, defunct weaponry?” Throg raises the question as he heats up our dinner of pheasant sausage and rye toast over the fire inside the cave. He even nabbed a jar of hot mustard from the outpost pantry.

I stare into the flames, mulling over our new revelation with unease. “Either someone supplied the Syf with our old weapons, or the swords were stored when they were supposed to have been destroyed, and later found by Syf.”

An already bare-chested Throg passes me a nicely charred sausage on a poker. “Neither makes sense,” he says. “Why would they want ineffective weapons when they have their own? Or do they?”

“So little is known about their society. What do they want? Our books, letters, and swords? How is information passed if they don’t speak? Telepathically? But as a group of fifty, they were completely uncoordinated. They could have overtaken us if they’d been more organized.”

“It was every Syf for themselves, as if they were simply programmed with only the necessary functions to survive in the woods and kill humans without any higher thought,” Throg observes.

“Who or what drives them then, and why did the attacks start only twenty years ago?” I ask.

“I haven’t seen anyone lead them, and Galke claims the attacks happened out of nowhere,” Riev says. “One day, a band of Syf came out of the woods…”

That last thought clings to me like a sticky cobweb; I can’t shake it off. Why would they attack out of the blue with no demands?

“Our best bet is to continue to evade them. We can’t sustain fighting our way through.”

Riev checks his hand-drawn maps. “I’ve never run into them in this area in the two dozen or so times I’ve tried to pass through Artemysia.”

His finger roughly taps the northwest section of the woods.

“Our next day will be along the West River. Unlike the East River, the Syf don’t seem to use it as a water source.

Our goal is to reach a hidden campsite in a swampy part of the woods.

There’s a dry island in the underbrush of the mangroves where we can camp and get some sleep. ”

Throg crumples his nose. “Swampy? That doesn’t sound like it will smell at all . Stagnant water all around us? Marvelous.”

Riev chuckles darkly. “Day after that, if we ride fast, we should reach the other side of the woods by nightfall. But that’s where I ran into the most trouble last time.”

Ivy’s drowsy lids are half-closed, and she tips her head against Throg’s oversized bicep. He snakes an arm around her and lifts her in one sweeping motion. “Off to bed. I’ve set up our tent, Morrigan.”

I expect a snappy comment, but for once Ivy doesn’t fight him.

She snuggles her face into the crook of his neck.

“How do you always smell so good, Orion?” she mutters, heavy-lidded, using the name he only lets higher-ups call him.

“Like you’ve rolled around in a meadow of daffodils. And something manly.”

He lets loose his usual hearty laugh as she strokes his bare chest. His pecs twitch under her petite fingers .

“Goodnight, Captain. Goodnight, Riev,” Ivy mumbles faintly as they disappear into a second cavern.

Riev’s eyes flick toward me. “Tired? Throg was decent enough to set up our tent too. While we were…occupied.” He grins wickedly.

“I wish I could take a bath to get the Syf blood off me,” I say, unable to suppress a yawn. “The stream outside looks too cold. I wouldn’t go in even if there weren’t Syf stalking the area.”

Riev frowns, flipping through his booklet of notes.

“Last time I was here, I couldn’t sleep, and I followed this path down the cave.

” He taps one of his maps. “There’s running water underground here.

It’s fresh and drinkable, and I think it pools up somewhere, maybe an underground lake, but I didn’t go farther. Want to check it out?”

“Um, yes!”

His eyes light up, and the flames of the fire reflected in them give him a devilish look. He rummages around his pack and pulls out a thinly rolled towel. “In case you find a bath. I’ll bring my map so we can record where we go, to count our steps. We do not want to get lost in here.”

My makeshift torch lights the way as we descend into the tunnels.

The passages split off, again and again.

Silver specks embedded in the rocks grow larger the deeper we go and glint as we pass.

It’s been about fifteen minutes, maybe a third of a league into the tunnels.

Two thousand steps, according to Riev. He marks our way with chalk and records our steps in his notebook as a precaution.

A slash for every hundred steps. Though, he claims his memory is spectacular like the rest of him, and he could get us back either way.

Soon, we follow the sound of water dripping and after a tight squeeze through a large, wet crack in the wall, we find ourselves standing in an enormous foggy cavern with a large body of water surrounded by smaller pools amongst stalagmites and stalactites.

The water glows a deep violet. There’s bioluminescent algae along the edges of the steaming pools. Steaming pools? When I kneel and dip a hand into a small pool, the water is scalding.

I yank my hand out in pain .

“Hot springs!” My surprise ricochets off the stalactites spiking the high ceiling.

“Careful, Elphie.” Riev’s firm grasp on my upper arm drags me back, but I wrestle away to check out another crater, larger and shallower based on the glowing algae.

The temperature is perfect bath water.

I’m already peeling off my boots, socks, and pants. Riev’s seen me naked, so I don’t care.

He cares, though, and stops me to make sure the bandages on my shoulder are secure before turning away. “Don’t get your stitches wet, Elphie.” His voice comes out strained.

Soon I’m in the rocky pool, which feels smoother on my feet than expected.

Riev strikes together two rocks forcefully, and the next thing I know, he’s started a blaze nearby for more light.

“How’d you start a fire so quickly?”

“I’m competent. I could ignite a fire in a hurricane,” he says smugly.

“What are you burning?” I ask. “There’s no wood here.”

“Certain rocks in this cave burn like coal. The ones with shiny silver bits.”

Strange. “I’ve never heard of anything like that. How did you figure that out?”

“Got angry once and threw a rock against the cave wall, and it sparked.”

“That doesn’t sound like you at all,” I snicker. “Does it burn for a long time?”

“Longer than wood. Burns cleaner, less smoke.”

“I’ll need to report this to South Kingdom. They’ll want to study it.” I accept that there are too many things I don’t know about in this world. There’s nothing I can do about that right now, so I focus on the luxurious hot water surrounding me.

I dunk my face in the pool, bending at the neck to keep my wound out of the water. When my eyes crack open with a squint, the glowing violet rocks glimmer and flash like starlight. Magical. Otherworldly.

A pair of bare feet dips into the pool.

I lift my head, blinking away water. “This one’s mine,” I tease.

“There are twelve other pools you can claim.” The glowing water illuminates my body and my breasts bob out of the water.

Though he tries to look anywhere but directly at me, he must be unsuccessful, because the front of his pants begins to bulge.

He steps back out, frowning. “I don’t need to bathe,” he mutters.

“Oh, just get in. What are you—made of sugar?” I splash him playfully. I’m not going to overthink this. This. Whatever this is, between us.

An undeniable, irrefutable attraction.

He doesn’t need a second invitation, and shucks off his shirt. Carved abdominals. Strong, broad chest. Long, lean lines. He’s still scowling, but I’m not sure what he has to be conflicted about right now.

When his pants are half-unbuckled, I look away before he steps out of them. It feels greedy to stare for this long. He takes his time folding his clothes into a small square pile on top of a flat rock.

“Ivy thinks you keep things neat because you were raised by an old cleaning woman—Marije, you said?” I ask, watching him iron out the crease of his pants with the heel of his palm before he’s finally satisfied with his stack.

“Marije, yes.” He slides in, water flowing over the luminous edges of the rocky crater of a pool.

“What do you remember of her?”

“She named me. Riev means raven in the old language. My hair was black as night when I was a baby, though it’s more brown now. Ravens were her favorite birds, and she called me her little raven . I took her last name, Wolfgang.”

“Ah.” I remember King Galke using it. I listen intently without looking too thrilled, because he never volunteers anything from his past. “Little raven. That’s cute.”

“No, it’s not cute. It’s manly.” He chuckles when I snort.

“I don’t remember much else, except she was nice to me.

She’d always say, ‘Your head is in the right place, if you have a tidy space.’” He picks at the silver-speckled rock embedded at the edge of the pool next to him. His expression is unreadable.

I wonder if he does remember more, and it’s difficult to talk about.

Maybe he honors Marije’s memory by keeping things neat.

After all, this woman must have been a mother figure to him until he was six.

That has to leave more than a vague impression, and it must have hurt when she died.

Either way, he doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.

“Speaking of minds…will you please let me check your head injury?” I beckon him with a wave of my hand.

“Finding reasons to come closer?” he says, as prickly as ever. “It’s only a cut.”

“You wish I were closer.”

He lets loose a slow exhale. “I do,” he says, leveling a lust-ridden look at me from under those dark lashes. His eyes glitter, scattering the purples of the glowing pool.

My stomach flips like a fish out of water.