Page 8 of Swords of Soul and Shadow (Gate Chronicles #3)

SOMETHING SPIRITUAL

Kase

KASE SHACKLEY DIDN’T THINK HIS father would execute him on the spot…emphasis on the word think. But he had been wrong before.

His stomach twisted, instinct screaming for him not to go to Kyvena, but he had no choice. Not really. If he wanted to make anything right, if he wanted Jayde to have a chance of winning this war, he needed to face his past. And that included his father.

Out of the two Walkers, he would have preferred Hallie’s company over her father’s.

She was much more amenable than the bald man with the fatherly girth guiding him through the dank, dark mountain passages.

He’d met other fathers—Jove would become one soon—but the only one he’d spent any notable time with had been his own.

How did one even make conversation with a father?

He’d only ever known his father’s disparaging corrections or his silence.

Kase had always assumed that lack of warmth came from his father’s time in the military—that any love had been beaten out of him by a particularly strict sergeant.

The same kind of command he’d instated over his household and his sons.

But if the military was to blame, Kase’s late brother Zeke would have been just like Harlan. Cold. Angry. And Zeke had been neither.

So maybe Harlan had simply been born that way. It didn’t really matter why he was the way he was—he just was .

Even in his own head, he couldn’t stop his thoughts from going in circles, which wasn’t helpful when he was trying his best not to make as terrible an impression on Hallie’s father as he had Hallie herself when they’d first met.

There was more at stake now, and Kase didn’t think an adventure to the lost continent of Tasava was in their future to give them time to clear up any miscommunications.

In the twisting tunnels underneath the mountains, Stowe Walker was even more intimidating—especially when he stood like he did now, sipping from a canteen and staring off into the darkness ahead, waiting in silence for Kase to be ready to move on.

Stowe stood nearly as tall as Kase, but had at least fifty pounds on him—not an ideal boxing foe if any disagreement came to blows. Hallie clearly got her height from him, as she had at least an inch or three above most women in Kyvena’s high society.

Shocks, Kase missed her. It’d only been three days.

“We should make good ground today if nothing’s caved in,” Stowe said, his soft voice as dead and dull as the stone around them.

“Then what?” They’d passed a few offshoots that had been blocked up by stone and broken beams as they’d traveled, but nothing promising. “Will we need to turn around?”

Kase didn’t fancy facing whatever awaited them in the Pass.

He didn’t know just how many people had survived Fort Achilles’ collapse.

He barely understood what had destroyed it in the first place, because flash bombs certainly couldn’t have done it.

According to Niels, those had taken sizable chunks out of the gates and caused a small ruckus, but that was it.

Kase had a feeling it had something to do with Hallie and General Correa, but he wasn’t sure what; and if he was honest with himself, he didn’t truly want to know.

Power on that scale was something out of storybooks.

Seeing Hallie’s face moments before the entire fort imploded…

those were memories he’d rather not dwell on.

Ever. Magic was only supposed to exist in storybooks, yet Kase had felt it when Correa had placed a finger on his cheek.

He’d seen it with the Yalvs. The Gate had been brimming with it. And he didn’t like it one bit.

Kase ran a hand through his hair as Stowe answered, “We’ll decide that when we get there, son.”

Not helpful.

Stowe started off. Kase stood, swung his pack on his back, and followed behind in silence.

The walls closed in like a coffin—hopefully not a harbinger of the fate awaiting him in the capital.

He didn’t understand how the miners could stand going into tunnels such as these every single day, hacking away at the stone in near-absolute dark just to find bits and pieces of a metal that they wouldn’t even use.

Instead, the Zuprium would be sent off to Kyvena for refining and use in the construction of whatever the Jaydian Councils thought important—whether that be a next-generation hover like the Eudora Jayde or reinforced electric gate doors to the upper city.

But society relied heavily on the mystical metal. Without it, Jayde would collapse—so someone had to mine it.

Kase would have hated it. He hated this , traveling through a maze of gloom without any indication of what was happening above, ahead, or behind them. They traveled deeper and deeper into abject darkness with only a gas lantern to light the way.

Twist after twist, step after step, beam after beam, they wound their way into oblivion. He didn’t care what awaited them once they got out; he just needed to be out of this hole only meant for the dead. He just needed sunlight.

His boots slid in a streak of slime, and he caught himself on the wall, clinging to it as they rounded the next corner—and finally, light appeared.

It was faint, like a waning candle on a moonless night, peeking shyly around the tunnel’s next curve—but once he realized it wasn’t a cluster of the pale, spider-like cave crickets he’d have nightmares about for the rest of his life, hope poured energy back into his body.

Light meant escape; light meant the end of their journey through moist, leering darkness.

Kase had wished for sunshine, and it waited around the bend.

But it wasn’t alone. Cold, heavy dread swept away his excitement. If they neared the end of the caverns, that only meant his end crept ever closer. The caves might be kinder than whatever awaited him in Kyvena.

“Is that sunlight?” Kase asked, the words brittle, breathy.

“No,” Stowe whispered.

He couldn’t decide if he was relieved or not. “Then what is it?”

Stowe’s voice was thinner than the edge of a knife as he turned his lantern down to its lowest setting, the light now barely brighter than the one that awaited them. “You got that pistol of yours?”

Kase pulled the weapon from his pack. Hair stood straight up on the back of his neck as his fingers found the grip of the cool metal. The memories of the blood he’d cleaned from it made him want to chuck it clear down one of the offshoot mining tunnels they’d passed.

If I hadn’t attacked that soldier, I’d be dead. Hallie would be imprisoned.

Zeke’s coping mechanism for Battle Fright was something Kase relied on too much as of late. He tightened his grip on the pistol, the old grief resurfacing.

Zeke made his own choice.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. In and out. In. Out.

Stowe shifted from one foot to the other.

“Could it be Hallie’s mother?” Kase whispered, leaning toward the older man.

Stowe held up his freckled hand lined with valleys and crept forward.

The light hadn’t grown; its flickering stayed weak, withdrawn.

If someone was in the caves, they must have decided to use a candle instead of a lantern, though that was a ridiculous idea.

Clearly whoever stood around the bend wasn’t used to being deep in the heart of the Nardens…

though Kase wasn’t either, and even he would’ve told them that wouldn’t work for long.

Maybe it was someone trapped without any way out because they didn’t know the tunnels like Stowe. Maybe they’d gotten lost and had run out of everything but a solitary candle. They might’ve been stuck for days, afraid to move on and lose what little strength they had left.

Kase resisted the urge to run a hand through his hair. A Cerl soldier might very well be awaiting them as soon as they turned the corner, and here he was, daydreaming about the fictional survival stories he’d read in the library at Shackley Manor.

He turned to his right to tell Hallie, knowing she’d appreciate his gallows humor—but all he found waiting for him was darkness.

Kase shook his head and followed Hallie’s father forward.

As they approached the bend, Stowe retrieved the machete attached to his pack. He held it loosely in his right hand. Kase cocked his electropistol, sparks flickering to life at the end of the barrel.

Anxiety clawed further up his throat. I’m using this weapon to defend myself. If I don’t, I could be hurt.

The tightness eased slightly.

“I’ll go first, but make sure you fire true if it’s one of them blasted Trips.” Stowe’s voice was as cold as ice.

Trips. A nickname coined by the mountain folk for those marked with the triple interwoven diamond tattoos on the necks of Cerl soldiers. Kase had seen the symbol too frequently as of late.

Not only had he fought Cerls on Tasava, the Yalven continent, and in the battle of Myrrai where they’d killed Zeke with their fiery, near-magical blue bullets; but only days earlier, he and Hallie had been betrayed by Yarrow, the trapper who’d been hiding his identity at the behest of General Marcus Correa.

He’d been a Cerl soldier working against them the entire time, all to save a brother who was already dead.

A Cerl himself…yet Yarrow met his end at the hands of the Cerl king and Essence-wielder, King Filip.

Kase gripped his pistol tighter.

Stowe slipped around the corner, his machete held out, ready to swing at any attacker. Kase flew behind him, finger poised on the trigger.

Kase halted. The light wasn’t a Cerl.

It wasn’t even a wayward traveler or a pack of crickets or the sunlight.

A large rock formation sprouted from the stone below and fanned out in a glittering, glowing cluster.

Each crystal jutted out from the center base and narrowed to a point that could pierce the thickest hover hull.

The cluster pulsed with soft golden light, but swirls of darkness fluttered through each crystal, making it flicker.

The entire thing was nearly as tall as Kase.