Page 7

7

LIORA

T he tunnels move.

Not in the way stone should—settling with age, shifting under pressure. No, this is different. The walls breathe, twisting when I’m not looking, narrowing just when I think I have room to stretch. My skin crawls.

I can feel them. Watching. Waiting. Hunting.

The silence is worse than the noise. The way it stretches, pulls, teeters on the edge of something breaking.

Dain keeps his pace brutal, dragging me through the darkness with single-minded intensity. I barely keep up, my legs screaming, my vision blurred from exhaustion. He doesn’t slow. Doesn’t even glance back.

He expects me to keep moving. Or maybe he just doesn’t care if I drop.

I grit my teeth and hold on.

“Why are the tunnels—” My voice sticks in my throat, dry and raw. “Why does it feel like they’re alive?”

Dain exhales, the sound sharp, irritated. “Because they are.”

I stiffen.

He continues as if that answer should be enough.

“The dark elves breed monsters, but they also breed curses.” His voice is lower now, deliberate. “These tunnels were carved as a prison. You don’t think they planned for things trying to escape?”

I glance at the walls. Living. Shifting.

My stomach turns.

“Magic binds this place,” he continues. “But it’s old. Weak. It recognizes something in you—in me. It wants to pull us back in.”

It recognizes us? My pulse stumbles.

I don’t get to think about it for long because the clicking returns.

I feel it before I hear it.

That thick, sick presence curling over my skin, sinking into my gut.

Dain feels it, too. His body stiffens, shoulders rolling like a predator ready to strike. His wings twitch, claws flexing. He doesn’t stop walking, but his steps shift, more careful, more deliberate.

The shadow moves. Not the tunnel’s shadow.

Something else.

The creature steps from the dark, too tall, too twisted. Its body is wrong. The segmented limbs shudder as it leans forward, tasting the air, feeling us.

Dain exhales through his nose, as if this is just another inconvenience.

“Run.”

It takes me a second to process the command. And then the creature lunges.

Dain slams into it before I can scream.

The fight is brutal.

They clash in the tight tunnel, claws tearing, teeth snapping, the beast screeching as Dain shoves it back. But the tunnel is too narrow, the walls too close. He can’t move properly.

Neither can the monster.

But I can. I move.

Instinct—not thought—drives me. My feet catch the loose ground, muscles pushing forward. My hands burn, that strange flickering energy curling at my fingertips again, the same thing that nearly killed me before.

But this time, I welcome it. It pulses, raw and angry, begging to be used, to be unleashed.

I reach for it.

Pain explodes in my gut.

I crumple. Dain sees it, the way my body locks, convulses.

His snarl deepens.

He doesn’t hesitate. He grabs me.

The monster strikes at the same time the ground gives way.

The ground collapses again. Stone vanishes beneath me. I don’t scream, don’t have time to.

Dain’s arm clamps around me, wings snapping open but it’s too tight, too compact, the cavern closing in too fast. We’re falling.

He shifts, turns, throws his body beneath mine. We slam into the rocks below.

The impact cracks through my bones, knocks the breath from my chest. His body takes the brunt of it.

I land on him and silence follows.

My breath stumbles out, shallow and shaking.

He doesn’t move beneath me.

My fingers twitch, pressing against the solid, too-hot flesh of his chest. He’s warm, too warm, his skin like heated stone, like something forged instead of born.

He could have let me take the fall. He could have let me break instead of him.

I don’t understand why he didn’t.

He exhales, low and sharp. “Get off.”

I shove myself back, limbs weak, legs unsteady. He moves slower than he should.

Not weak. Not broken. Just… watching me.

Like I did something he wasn’t expecting.

It’s as if wasn’t expecting to protect me, either.

The space between us is too small, too charged.

A sound interrupts.

Water. A trickle.

Faint. Distant. But real.

I inhale. “Do you hear that?”

Dain doesn’t look at me. But his wings twitch, head tilting slightly.

“Yes.”

Relief rushes through me.

We found it.

Suddenly, his body stiffens.

My relief turns cold.

He says nothing, but his gaze narrows into the darkness ahead. Not at the stream.

At something else. I follow his line of sight.

I go still.

A glow flickers in the distance, torchlight reflecting off metal, movement, figures.

Not creatures. Not beasts.

Dark elves.

An entire encampment.

They aren’t alone. There are humans, too.

Their backs are bent, chained, shackled, dragging something from the depths of the stone.

Slaves. Like I once was. Like I still am.

I cannot breathe. Dain isn’t looking at them. He’s looking at me. And I do not like the way he watches me.

It’s as if he knows what’s running in my head and he already disapproves.