Page 27 of Swords of Soul and Shadow (Gate Chronicles #3)

LEFT BEHIND

Jove

THE TUNNELS BENEATH THE CITY were one of the many secrets Jove had kept once he’d been appointed High Guardsman. He’d never imagined he would have to use them. How naive he’d been, looking through the lens of someone too young to have that much power.

The main reason the High Council kept such things need-to-know was because policing the tunnels would have taken up too much funding. They were the perfect hideout for seedier characters with less-than-savory intentions.

They were also a health hazard. The nearby sewers gave the damp air a sour odor.

If people were hiding down here, they’d have to figure out the Cerl problem quickly if they were to avoid a plague.

He knew the last completed project in the Catacombs had been digging wells, but that wasn’t a guarantee against disease when the tunnels would be overrun with refugees.

The Catacombs didn’t house the dead, but one of the architects had nicknamed them that when they’d been designed at the end of the Great War.

Ironic. Jaydians burned their dead, sending the departed spirits to journey among the stars; yet if Cerulene had their way, all the Kyvena survivors would die beneath the ground.

Regardless, the Catacombs resembled the city streets above with their square grid; the architects had even included a small bay for hoverships, though its entrance was hidden out in the hills a mile or two away.

It would be useless if they didn’t figure out how to reinstate the electricity, and Jove didn’t know if that was possible.

He didn’t understand what Loffler had done.

How anyone could neutralize the electricity of an entire city, he didn’t understand. It was terrifying. No wonder Jove’s Jaydian ancestors had forced a treaty to keep the Yalven Essence powers under control.

And Anderson. Who knew what was happening to him now. Jove couldn’t waste time guessing; he could do nothing but wander aimlessly under a ruined city, searching for his wife and child, agonizingly aware that he’d run off to drown himself in alcohol while they fought for their lives.

Jove trailed behind his father and Saldr as the tunnel widened, the voices of those now trapped below the surface of Yalvara echoing off the stone.

The fingers of Jove’s right hand twitched.

Out of habit, he felt around in his pocket, but it was empty.

He’d lost his cigarettes somewhere along the way.

Blast.

As they entered the throng of people setting up camp and trying to find family and friends, Jove searched each face for Clara’s.

Every minute that passed without finding her and Samuel, his hand twitched for cigarettes, even when he knew there were none.

He didn’t think he’d easily find a pint of ale, either.

His racing thoughts grew louder and more insistent the further they walked. His eyes darted from person to person without really seeing anything. His feet kept trudging along without questioning his path.

“It’s Harlan Shackley!” a voice shouted from up ahead, interrupting Jove’s spiral.

Jove looked up. Others had blocked the corridor.

Saldr’s hand went to his pouch, though Jove knew it to be empty.

The individual people in the crowd varied—mostly Jaydians in various states of dishevelment, though he did spot a few Yalven men towering over the rest. Several had minor injuries. Some looked on the brink of death.

Dark braids caught the corner of his eye. He whipped his head toward a corridor branching off the one he was in. A woman strode in the other direction—the same stature, the same smooth gait as his missing wife.

“Clara!” Jove shouted, stumbling and pushing past a few refugees who stood in his path. She didn’t look back.

He couldn’t blame her. But he had to see her. He just had to know she and Samuel were all right.

“Clara!” Jove couldn’t go much faster with each step shooting knives into his injured shoulder.

She still didn’t stop—but Jove did. The parchment crinkled in his jacket pocket, mocking him.

Clara wasn’t cruel. She would answer if she heard him calling. It couldn’t be her.

Had his wife and son perished in the attack after all? Had they died not realizing how sorry he was?

People moved around him like fish in a stream. Some muttered curses at him for standing still amidst the flow. Shouting echoed off the tunnel walls from behind him. He brought a hand to his eyes.

He couldn’t live without Clara, just like he wasn’t living without Zeke.

“Jove!”

That voice.

He dropped his hand and turned wildly about. Behind him. It came from behind him. His eyes searched the refugees, the faces all blurring together with his tears and panic.

He knew that voice.

A woman in her late fifties sprinted for him, her dark hair threaded with silver; outside of her usual bun, the curls were as unruly as Kase’s. Dirt streaked one of her cheeks. Rips decorated the demure yet elegant gown she’d worn hours earlier to her husband’s sentencing.

“Mother,” Jove choked. His mother was alive. Alive. And if she’d made it—

He took three steps toward her before the ground rumbled. Most people clung to the edges of the tunnel. Jove did not. He reached for his mother.

He pitched forward as the ground beneath him was ripped inexplicably skyward.

He flew through the air and landed hard on his bad shoulder.

He screamed. Hands encircled his other, but his vision blurred in and out.

The pain—it was like when his father had shoved him into the desk when Kase and Ana had tried to run away, and Jove’s arm had snapped.

And then he was falling.

Clara

CLARA SHACKLEY WAS NOT IMMUNE to anguish and sorrow.

She’d dealt with both in spades. She painted in part to relieve those feelings, to process, to analyze, and finally lay them to rest. However, with a heavy pack on her back, a newborn in her arms, and the metallic smell of blood in the thick underground air, she didn’t think she’d be able to paint away her grief over the sight before her.

Some might have called the brick walls and torch-lined tunnels claustrophobic and eerie, but with her artist’s eye, she appreciated the beauty of the weathered and beaten dirt floor contrasting with the shape of the brick archways leading to other parts of what the soldiers called the Catacombs.

Yet nothing could have prepared anyone for the wails echoing off the walls.

Samuel’s mouth yawned wide, his own cries joining those mourning loved ones lost in the fires and fighting.

Clara couldn’t fall apart like those around her. But each of Samuel’s mewing cries was another arrow in her chest.

That night, she had just reached the outer gates when the city went dark.

While arguing with the soldiers stationed there, screams had erupted behind her.

She’d turned to find a beast out of legend flying overhead, an inferno they had not seen since the fire of Kyvena gushing from its jagged maw.

At the sight of it, the soldiers had ushered her down into the Catacombs, and she hadn’t fought them.

Even if she’d wanted to, shock had ravaged her body with such deep, dark cold she could hardly move without being led.

A female officer had stayed with her, organizing the streams of refugees who followed them. Clara could only sit and pray someone would arrive and announce they’d all been hallucinating.

A dragon.

A real, live dragon.

It still didn’t feel real. She’d painted several of the mythical creatures over the years, in swaths of beautiful, bright colors with striking poses suggesting elegance and intelligence that went beyond human atrocity to something wiser than they were, but they’d only been studies in preparation for Les’ figurines.

This monster soaring on wings of golden fire was nothing but a nightmare.

Here, safe in the Catacombs, she cooed at Samuel, her sleepy hushes and soft bounces doing so little against his cries, it was a wonder he started to quiet at all.

He laid in her arms, tiny and fragile—perhaps as fragile as herself.

Her body ached, still recovering from the birth.

She felt every pull and uncomfortable stretch on her skin, the discomfort of sitting on a hard brick seat, the tears stinging her eyes, the ache of wishing for Jove to be there.

Not the Jove she’d known recently. She wanted her husband from before, her betrothed who stole her heart and made her believe their union, while motivated by their parents and ultimately political, would be something beautiful. Colorful. The stuff of dreams.

She wanted to escape into her paintings again.

The morbid urge to paint the beast crept through her, but the better part of herself kept her frozen on the stone floor, her back pressed against the brick wall behind her, cradling her infant son in her arms. The grit dug into her back.

At least it felt real. It felt familiar.

She was stone, not glass, not the fickle wind. Stone.

Repeating that kept her sane until Samuel finally fell asleep in her arms.

Hours had passed, and her husband had yet to come through the doorway.

The Catacombs, while expansive, brimmed with terrified city residents in varying states of injury, shock, or dress.

Some had come in nightgowns, others in sequined yet bedraggled evening gowns, swept from the middle of a play or an elegant evening with friends and family in their stuffy, comfortable homes and thrust into the middle of a war.

Now they were flecked with blood, sitting on a bare brick floor like her.

A few soldiers shouted about setting up an infirmary in one of the eastern caverns. Another group attempted to organize the influx, taking down the names of missing family members.

Jove. Jove Shackley. Yes, that Jove Shackley. Light-skinned. Blue eyes. Short, dark hair. Tall. Husband. Father. Missing.

Left behind.