Page 87 of The Shadow Orc's Bride

The world above was falling apart—she could hear the distant cracks, the screams, the breaking stone—but here, in this ruined chamber, time held its breath.

"We have to go," she said, though she didn't move.

His hand slid to the back of her neck, the heat of his palm searing through the cold. "Then we go together."

He turned, and the shadows obeyed, gathering behind him like a cloak. They flowed over Yharen's corpse, swallowing the blood that had started it all.

Eliza took one last look at the ruined chamber—the shattered wards, the still-burning runes, the blackness that breathed—and followed him into the dark.

Chapter

Forty-Four

The corridor beyond the vault was narrow and slick, its stone sweating a cold that went straight to bone. He walked with his head bent to keep her hood from brushing the ceiling. The shadows followed them, alert to every distant stone fall like watchful wolves.

Eliza muttered directions against his collarbone: "Left, then down. There's a slanting stair—watch for the missing tread—after that, a door with iron pegs—don't touch the center—good."

He did not need the warning; the sigils set there were clumsy things, human fear hammered into metal. He shouldered the door instead and felt the hinges surrender with a tired groan.

"Brenna?" he asked, before the castle's noise could swallow the thought.

"Gone," Eliza said. "I made her run. If she reached the kitchens, she can vanish."

He nodded. He had no room for the griefs of strangers. He had none left, if he was honest, for his own.

The stairs tilted. Water hissed somewhere close, a hidden stream slipping through the stone's teeth. The air smelled clean here, a little like rain in an old well. It steadied him better than any speech.

"Back there," Eliza said softly. "When you looked at me... I thought you might break."

"I did," he said. "But not the way you feared."

He didn't look down to see what she made of that. He could guess. He could feel in the way her fingers flexed where they met behind his neck, the way her breath hitched when the corridor narrowed and his body crowded hers without meaning to.

"You were not afraid," he added after a beat. "You should have been."

"I've marched at the head of spears and watched men vanish into the mouths of your people's wolves," she said. "I know how fear earns its bread. I was... not hungry for it."

He could have told her fear and desire were cousins; the shadows had taught him that long before he had a word for it. He didn't.

They reached the slanting stair. He took it three at a time. The shadows slid around his ankles and tested his pace. The old forest came back to him in a cold bloom: black air under trees that drank light, Azfar's hand on his head, forcing it up.Name yourself, boy. You are not what calls to you.

"Your mentor," Eliza said, as if she had heard the ghost of that voice too. "Azfar?"

He grunted. "He built my walls for me until I could build them myself."

"And now?"

"Now I try not to live in them." It came out harsher than he intended. He risked a glance down and found her watching his mouth with a concentration that did not help the looseness in his limbs.

They came to the cistern wall—a damp, green-slick curve of stone with a low arch at its base. He set her down slowly. Her hands trailed down his shoulders, then left him, and the shadows hissed like a thing denied.

She pulled a catch he would never have seen and a panel shifted, revealing the narrowest of ways. Cold air came through it, clean and sharp, with the ghost of night on it.

"Past this," she whispered, "there's a crawlspace. Then the old water stairs. From there we can reach the postern."

"We," he repeated.

Her cheeks flushed, visible even in the darkness. "Unless you mean to carry me the whole way."