Page 1 of The Delver (The Vrix #2)

The song of Urkot’s hearts, of his soul, had always been found understone.

It was the clacking of tools against rock, the light scraping of legs over a cave floor, the airy whispers of the ground breathing, and the voices of his companions talking, boasting, and jesting, all layered and bolstered by faint echoes to enwrap him in a familiar cocoon.

He’d known this song from his earliest memories, and it ran through this cave just as surely as it ran through Takarahl, where he’d hatched and had spent most of his life. Long had it meant duty, purpose, family. Long had it provided comfort in its steadiness and dependability.

Urkot paused his tools and glanced around. This chamber was what delvers back in Takarahl called a crystal garden. Countless crystals in formations of varying sizes covered the walls, shedding a gentle blue light that made him recall old tunnels, old faces.

Five thornskulls stood spread out within the chamber, their burly forms stained new colors by the crystals’ glow.

Like Urkot, they all had picks and chisels made of yatin horn, stone-headed hammers of different sizes, and bags filled with the silk-wrapped crystals they’d gathered attached to loops on their broad leather belts. All five were working.

Zotahl and Tahlken, both a bit older than Urkot, were experienced delvers who’d been harvesting and expanding this cave for years. Both possessed calm, quiet confidence that Urkot appreciated.

The other three, Enikor, Jezahal, and Dostrahn, were relatively younger—younger than Urkot and his friends had been when they’d gone to claim glory in Zurvashi’s war all those years ago.

The trio had no shortage of confidence, but their skills were as rough as unpolished stone.

Their voices were loudest, most often accompanied by chitters.

Urkot turned his attention forward and resumed his work, carefully freeing a crystal from the surrounding rock. After wrapping it in a scrap of cloth, he placed it in the bag hanging from his belt, adding it to the others he’d harvested.

Normally, the thornskulls did not gather crystals in such large amounts, but these were for the upcoming festivities.

Singer’s Promise was coming, the day when the vrix of Kaldarak would celebrate the end of the floods and thank the Rootsinger for the bountiful harvests to come in the season of warmth and sunshine.

The delvers were enthusiastic about their part to play this year. Urkot was excited right alongside them.

He enjoyed their companionship, enjoyed talking and working with these thornskulls. The understone song they produced was the same as the one he’d always known. It didn’t matter that they were thornskulls instead of shadowstalkers, or that this place was several days’ travel from Takarahl.

But that song didn’t call to Urkot as it once had. It was the same, yes, but everything else had changed.

He had changed.

Urkot was sure of that, even if he couldn’t tell exactly how he was different.

“You give few words this day, Three-Arm,” said Zotahl from beside Urkot.

With a quiet chitter, Urkot glanced at the yellow thornskull, drawing his upper forearms together in an apologetic gesture. “Forgive me. I am…tangled in my thoughts.”

Zotahl clicked his mandible fangs. “Your thoughts give you trouble?”

Using delicate taps with his hammer, Urkot wedged the tip of his chisel behind another crystal, grasping the formation with his lower hand, before pausing. The answer was yes , but was this the time, the place, to explore his hazy, confusing feelings?

“They are heavy,” Urkot finally said, tapping the chisel deeper behind the crystal. “But it is a weight I can bear.”

“Even the lightest burdens grow heavier with time,” said Tahlken from his place on the wall behind Urkot. “Carry it no longer than you must.”

“This is true beneath sun and sky,” Zotahl intoned.

Urkot’s gaze flicked upward. The cave’s ceiling was run through with fissures no wider than silk threads, with downward-pointed stone formations clustered around those cracks. “True beneath dirt and stone as well, I hope.”

The two thornskulls chittered and returned to their tasks.

Not very long ago, Urkot wouldn’t have believed friendship could be shaped between shadowstalkers and thornskulls, especially not after the bloody war they’d waged against each other.

The scars inflicted upon the survivors’ spirits were so deep that nothing could have healed them.

Thornskulls were enemies, forever enemies—that was what the vrix of Takarahl had long been taught.

That was what Queen Zurvashi had told them.

She had lied.

And now Kaldarak, home of the enemies he’d once fought so fervently, was Urkot’s home too.

Truly, everything had changed.

The crystal in his grasp came loose. He folded silk around it and added it to his bag.

A glint on the cave floor drew his attention down. Tilting his head, he lowered himself and plucked up the tiny object, holding it closer to his eyes to examine it.

With flat planes that formed a rough, not-quite-even cube and no natural luminescence, this crystal was unique within this chamber.

While the glowing crystals usually ended in jagged points, making them resemble fangs jutting from the jaws of a fearsome beast, this one was reminiscent of the humans’ odd, flat teeth.

Callie would appreciate it.

Urkot’s mandibles rose in a smile, and a trill vibrated his throat. He opened his bag wider and retrieved a pouch from within to tuck the little cube-shaped stone inside.

His hearts thumped with eagerness; suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to be through with his work so he could hurry back to Kaldarak and give Callie the crystal.

He’d given her many stones and crystals over the last several moon cycles, and he never tired of the joy that shone in her smile and her eyes with each such gift.

Would she have a human name for this crystal, as she did for so many of the others he’d given her?

Sometimes, she’d talked about the rocks excitedly, using many words he didn’t understand—and saying the ones he did understand almost too fast for him to follow.

Yet her passion was always clear even when her language was not.

And her smile was so warm, so bright, that it never failed to quicken his hearts, to make his heartsthread thrum, to make him wonder…

To make him yearn.

He hadn’t allowed himself to do that in a long, long time.

Hadn’t dared want, hadn’t dared hope, because he’d known that he was undesirable.

With a shorter, broader, more powerful frame, he was unlike most other shadowstalker males.

Even before he’d lost his lower left arm, females had not looked upon him with favor.

Especially not while Ketahn and Rekosh were nearby.

He’d never held any resentment over it; it was simply the truth of his existence. He had his friends. What more could he have needed?

Or so he’d told himself.

And then he’d met Callie…

Urkot’s life had ever been one of hard, unyielding stone, of deep, devouring darkness, of burdens carried in silence.

Callie was so soft, so fragile, so radiant.

She belonged in a much different world. She belonged above, where her radiance would rival that of the cresting sun, brightening the world with color.

Yet he’d seen how Ketahn and Ivy matched one another despite their differences, and over the last two moon cycles, he’d seen how happy Rekosh and Ahmya were as a mated pair.

He resumed his work, but he could not put an end to those thoughts.

Was it foolish for Urkot to want the same?

He’d found new family within his tribe and had made unexpected friends amongst the thornskulls. Here in Kaldarak, he’d found peace.

Was it not selfish to long for more? Would not the gods punish such greed?

Urkot and his friends had overcome many hardships, had endured great suffering, to claim the lives they had now.

Better to enjoy these blessings than seek more.

Better to protect what happiness they’d claimed than risk everything by pursuing needless hunger.

His focus, his purpose, was his tribe. Their joy, their safety, their comfort.

And still, just the thought of Callie’s smile, of the way she wiggled her backside when she danced, of the curious, mysterious light that sometimes sparked in her eyes when she looked upon him…

Heat skittered beneath his hide, and something pulled taut low, low in his belly, making his stem twitch behind his slit. The sensation was potent enough that it caused his hands to falter. His hammer missed the chisel, clacking against the stone wall.

“Watch as I claim glory,” Jezahal called, his voice ringing through the chamber.

Urkot nearly offered thanks to the gods for providing a distraction from his thoughts. That inner heat did not dissipate, that tightness did not ease, but at least there was something else for him to focus upon.

He looked toward the three younger vrix, who had gathered at the far end of the chamber. Jezahal stood closest to the wall, in front of a crystal formation almost as large as his torso.

“Our daiya asked for glowstones to make Kaldarak mirror the stars in the night sky. I will give glowstones worthy of being the moons for those stars!” With that declaration, Jezahal put his tools into motion.

His hammer and pick set a frantic pace, their falls echoing to make it sound as though eight more vrix were working alongside him.

But the others had halted to watch the Jezahal. A different sort of tightness coiled in Urkot’s gut, cold and twisting, as he followed Zotahl and Tahlken closer to the younger trio. He slipped his tools into the loops on his belt, but their familiar weight there offered him no comfort.

“Take care, little broodling. This cavern does not yet have its ribs,” warned Zotahl, glancing at the ceiling.