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thirty-nine

We stayed there for another few minutes, just enjoying the light of the plants and the crystal, trying to see better to wherever that tunnel led, but it went too far up just a few feet in, so all we saw was moss.

The light of those plants remained in the center of my mind when we continued ahead, and I was trying to imagine what mermaids actually looked like, so I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings at all.

So, when Rune stopped abruptly, I slammed into his side, completely disoriented.

“What is it?” I asked, but he didn’t answer me. His eyes were ahead in the darkness that the light of the birds couldn’t reach. His body was suddenly locked tightly, muscles tense, eyes unblinking, and he wasn’t even breathing.

My stomach fell all the way to my heels. My instincts were on fire all at the same time.

“Rune?” I whispered.

He finally moved back, his hand around mine, pulling me with him. But it was already too late.

Everything changed so fast. One minute we were all alone and it was pure bliss underground, and in the next, everything went to hell.

Bright yellow light went on in the darkness ahead. “ There she is ,” said the man who’d made it.

I held on tightly to Rune’s arm when I saw the mask he wore, white and golden and scary as all hell.

And the man was not alone.

Another bright yellow light went off right next to him to reveal another mask, almost identical to the first. By then I knew enough about fae to understand what they were—Seelie. Both these men were Seelie fae.

“I honestly thought the grogs got you. We found your blood and your things—I thought that was that,” said the first guy again, and it was so hard to breathe, like the entire tunnel suddenly ran all out of air.

“But he wouldn’t have it without seeing your body or…you know, pieces of it.” The man directed his thumb to his friend.

“Should have made a bet on it,” the friend said, his voice dark and cheerful at the same time. “I knew you were in on it, too, bastard.”

“Regardless—all’s well now. You’re here, and I’m afraid we can’t let you get to the prince.”

The sound of metal rubbing against metal filled the air. I stepped back involuntarily, and Rune immediately moved in front of me. He wasn’t afraid despite the fact that these men here had swords. Big swords that shone golden under the lights, and they were slowly coming toward us.

My God, what the hell were we going to do now? There was nowhere to go, unless we ran all the way back to Blackwater.

My heart squeezed and my lungs emptied. Were these men going to kill us now when we made it this far?!

“Hand over the mortal, bastard, and we’ll let you live,” the man said, and Rune stood tall, arms to his sides. Hands open and ready.

“Afraid I can’t do that, Sunny. But I can give you a chance to walk away, just this once.” Rune sounded completely normal, like he was talking about something as insignificant as the fucking weather.

The masked men looked at one another.

A moment later, they raised their swords.

Rune raised his hands. “Suit yourselves.”

His skin glowed white and shadows spread from his right palm. They didn’t slam onto the men like I expected—they just gathered into a ball of darkness half the size of Rune’s body. He then reached both hands inside it, and pulled out two swords, shorter than those of the men, the blades thinner, and they shone silver under the lights of the birds that flew over his head.

Meanwhile I could hardly believe my eyes.

“The bastard wants to play,” one of the masked men said. “No magic or the ceiling will fall on all of us.”

“No magic,” Rune said, again, like he was talking about the mud on his boots.

In my mind, I screamed out his name.

In reality, all I could do was watch as the three men ran for one another, and their swords met in the middle.

Too fast. Too absurd. Too much.

My hands were on my head. My instincts were all over the place. I didn’t know whether to run back or forward or stay right where I was, but those men were fighting Rune, and I wasn’t going to just sit there and do nothing. I was going to join the fight, too, pick a rock and throw it at them if that was all I could do.

Except before I could bring my body to move, force my eyes to blink, I saw how Rune was moving, fighting with two swords at the same time, throwing both men back. The sound of metal clashing against metal filled my head, but I was no longer trying to close my ears. I just watched with my hands on my chest how Rune moved, so fast he turned to a blur as he jumped and ducked and leaned forward and back.

My God, it was like he didn’t have a bone in his body, like those swords weighed nothing at all.

It was working.

A couple of minutes must have passed. Rune got hit, too, by the men, but he was still standing, while one of them was already on the ground, trying to get back up, holding onto the wall of the tunnel.

We were going to make it, after all, I thought, until…

“ No! ”

The man who was trying to get up screamed the word at his friend, who had raised a hand toward Rune, the mask on his face covered in splatters of blood.

But before any of us could blink, a bright light came out of the man’s hand, as golden as the sun, and shot forward furiously.

Rune threw himself to the side and hit the opposite wall.

The golden light slammed onto the other, and the ground groaned.

Time seemed to move in fast-forward mode again. The ground shook like something was pulling and pushing it to the sides. I tried to hold on, but it was impossible to keep my balance. Dust rose in the air when I hit the ground on my side, and I struggled to breathe, to blink, to see where Rune was.

Fuck, the tunnel was really going to collapse on all our heads. We would be buried within seconds—and I believed it with my whole heart. The fear froze me, locked my muscles in place tightly, locked my jaws so that I couldn’t even call out his name.

But only specks of dirt and small rocks fell on me by the time the ground stopped shaking.

Taking control of my body again, I sat up, searching for Rune. The first thing I saw was the man on the ground on his back, with one of Rune’s swords coming out of his chest.

His mask was still on his face, his body perfectly motionless. His chest didn’t rise or fall.

He was already dead.

“Rune,” I whispered, but he didn’t hear me because he was busy holding the other guy on his knees in front of him, silver sword on the side of his neck.

“Send word to your masters, coward. Anyone who comes for this mortal will die screaming, and I will carve her name into what’s left of their bones.”

Rune’s voice was crystal clear, and his every word rang true.

He moved his sword just slightly. It cut into the man’s shoulder, and he hissed in pain. Blood exploded, and I saw the splatters from the white lights that were only circles now, not birds. Rune pushed the man back and watched him as he dragged himself backward, holding his left arm to his chest.

He disappeared into the darkness, and a moment later, the sound of his footsteps faded away.

My eyes closed. It’s over, I told myself. The fae were gone.

But it still felt like nothing had even begun yet.

I focused on the air going down my lungs, and I heard it when Rune took his sword from the dead man’s chest. I heard it when he turned to me, too, and came closer.

“Nilah,” he whispered, his voice dry, his breathing heavy.

Then the ground began to growl again, as if it were angry.

Suddenly Rune was right beside me, back turned to me, swords raised as he waited—and I thought someone else was coming, too. I thought more fae would pop up in the darkness with their glowing golden lights, but instead it was the tunnel.

It opened a massive hole on the wall next to the dead fae’s body, but it didn’t stop there.

The rest of the ceiling was collapsing for real.

I saw with my own eyes how a large piece of the ceiling simply fell on top of the dead fae, squashing his body underneath, and that wasn’t the end of it. Once more, the ground shook like it was being pulled to the sides, and pieces of the ceiling deeper down the tunnel were falling faster by the second.

“It’s not going to stop,” Rune said, and he sounded surprised. He sounded terrified.

When our eyes met, he was just as shocked as I felt.

“Wildcat, we need to run.” He grabbed my hand, pulled me back hard. “ Run! ”

I didn’t think, didn’t hesitate at all. I just turned around and I ran right back to where we came from as more small rocks fell on my head.

The awful sound of the ground splitting apart held my heart hostage. It was impossible to run without slipping, and Rune was trying to hold me by the hand, but he was falling to his knees every few seconds, too.

I had never prayed harder in my life. The idea of this entire tunnel collapsing on top of me and burying me alive was equally as terrifying as being at the hands of those incubi at the Enclave. I barely breathed, and when Rune pulled me forward for the last time, he looked behind.

I did, too.

The ground was indeed splitting into two, and the ceiling continued to crash against it, pieces of dirt and rock falling in the space that was opening below it.

I’m going to be swallowed by a fucking tunnel.

The terror gave me a new burst of energy. It enabled me to move my legs faster, and suddenly there was light, bright light in front of us. No time to think or even try to go in a different direction because the tunnel was collapsing everywhere we could see, but not in that small round room where the glowing plants were.

That’s where we went, Rune and I, hoping to survive. Hand in hand, we ran into the tunnel covered in moss and glowy plants, barely breathing, and we crawled on all fours higher up, trying to find a way out over our heads or to the sides. The moss was more slippery than any I’d seen before. Even so, we kept going for a couple minutes, and then the tunnel turned sharply to the right.

I thought we were saved. I thought we’d no longer have to crawl, that we could simply walk out of here alive.

Rune must have thought the same thing, and that’s why we didn’t look down for a second when we stood up. That’s why we didn’t see the hole in the rocks wrapped up in moss—as if it grew there on purpose, to hide it from our view—barely two feet into this new tunnel.

By the time we realized that there was no more ground underneath us, it was too late. We tried to hold on, and Rune even tried to throw me back up with all his strength.

He couldn’t.

We fell.