Chapter 17

17

arwen

The map etched into the wooden desk leg that Kane had found was a mystery to me, but took Mari only a few minutes to figure out. She had smothered the peg in mud and turned it out onto parchment like a rolling pin, revealing a fairly basic map to Reaper’s Cavern and then how to find the treasure within.

We left an hour before sunrise, when it was cool enough to hike but light enough to see our way. The trek there took us through a near-impenetrable expanse of palm trees and over steep, grassy hills. After wading through a lukewarm river and climbing across fallen, algae-covered trunks, I was dirty, damp, and covered in all manner of bug bites and scratches. I had thistles and twigs lodged in my hair and leathers, and despite leaving with the moon at our backs, the sluggish heat was now back with a vengeance, and I was coated in sweat.

And all the while, my thoughts were elsewhere. I had woken up to a handful of jungle flowers—two pink orchids and a bird-of-paradise—tied to the inside of my tent, despite being sure I had drifted off beside the campfire. I had dropped them in the jungle when we left camp, unable to keep them, nor crush them like I had the others.

“We’re here.” Kane’s voice cut through my wandering thoughts and pulled my eyes to the mouth of the cave in front of us: a wide pitch-black expanse like the open jaws of a primordial beast, wreathed in wilting vines and ancient sage-green moss.

Griffin retrieved three torches from his pack and lit them, two of which he handed to Kane and Fedrik; the last he kept for himself.

“It doesn’t even look that ominous,” said Mari before stepping into the cave. Griffin didn’t hesitate to follow after her, and Fedrik after them.

Kane stepped closer to me, and I was reminded once again of his looming height. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ll be fine. Why?” I was anxious enough as it was. “Does something look wrong?”

“Did you get my flowers?”

“Which ones?”

“Either of them.”

“No. Now answer me.”

He shrugged. “I was just checking. If you faint, I’ll be the one who’ll have to carry you for miles through the tunnels.”

I made a face. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”

It was only a joke, but Kane cut a harsh line with his lips. “Sometimes your naivete baffles me.”

His words stung, as they so often did when they struck a nerve. “I used to prefer things that way,” I admitted. “Not knowing the truth.”

“I’m sure,” he mused, eyes on the jungle behind me. “Much easier to make me the villain in a story missing so many pages.”

My blood stilled. It was true. Hadn’t it been easier to see him as only my savior or my enemy? Hadn’t that made all these wretched feelings that much more bearable?

“You’re right,” I said on a breath. “Now I barely understand the world, and even less so, my place in it. It’s harder to be optimistic having seen how complex and ambiguous things really are.” I chewed my cheek. “Even you used to appreciate my blindly positive outlook.”

“I did—I still do.” Kane ran a hand across his damp brow in frustration. “Don’t you know why I call you bird?”

“Because you locked me in a cage?”

His silver gaze simmered like hot smoke. “Because when I met you, for the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt hope. And not just hope that I might beat my father, though of course, I can’t deny that.”

Acid roiled in my stomach, but those eyes held mine, and I found myself unable to look away.

“That’s what birds represent. Stranded sailors look to the sky to be led by them back to dry land. Birds soar through the dawn each morning, as sure as the sun rising in the east—the promise of something new, regardless of what came before.” He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Hope always has wings.”

I searched for a response and failed, but Kane tramped toward the cavern’s gaping mouth, soon swallowed whole by desolate darkness. I steeled myself and hurried after him.

The sound of my shoes slapping on the ground below echoed off the stone walls, cracked, jagged, and jutting, as my eyes adjusted to the hollow, dank space. My fingers were already tingling, adrenaline racing through my veins in the confinement of the tunnel.

I moved past Kane, Griffin, and Fedrik to catch up with Mari, still leading the procession, holding the parchment map out in front of her as she walked. Behind her a little bouncing ball of light dawdled along, painting a single glowing line on the dirty cavern floor. It didn’t look too dissimilar from my own lighte, though instead of resembling stark, blinding sunbeams, Mari’s magic was more like the fuzzy glow of a star.

“That looks promising.” I gestured to the iridescent orb dancing between her legs.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Mari smiled, her freckled nose lit by the quivering torchlight close behind us. “We’ll be able to see this from anywhere in the caves.”

“What spell is it?”

“It’s called luster. It can last for days.” She toyed with the shimmering, softened light as it flew up between her fingertips and coated them in a dripping glow before skittering along the ground beneath us. “Much better than breadcrumbs.”

“How deep does the map say we have to go?”

Mari’s nose scrunched up like it so often did when she was a little stumped but didn’t want to admit it. “It’s not very clear. The map was more helpful in finding the cave. Inside, there are so many turns, so many dead ends . . .”

I swallowed acid. “So you, the smartest person I know, aren’t sure how to get us out of here?”

“That’s what the luster is for,” she said, waving a glowing hand through the damp air. “Have a little faith.”

We forged ahead, heart in my throat, sharp stalactites like an inverted mountainscape hanging from the cave’s roof above us. I peered up at them—they were not made of mineral deposits and filament, but rather semiprecious gems like luminous aqua adamite and iridescent moonstone.

A holy, glowing cave.

My childhood teachers back in Amber would have wept at the sight.

We rounded a corner and made a left at a snake-tongued fork. Crystals lodged in the rocks behind us cast the passage in dim, violet shafts of light. We maneuvered around oddly shaped boulders and under dripping water that I didn’t wish to know the origin of until we passed a shimmering pool that lit the dark cavern an otherworldly blue. When I looked closer, it was a cluster of slow-moving, shining jellyfish that gave it that vivid glow. If I wasn’t so nervous about becoming trapped, or so cold—the temperature had dropped significantly upon trekking deeper into the cave—I might have been able to appreciate its beauty.

But I had sucked in one too many deep, awkward intakes of breath to calm my racing heart, and had made myself dizzy with too much air.

“Lore says you’ll go mad before you find your way out.”

At my sharp inhale, Fedrik appraised me. “Scared of cave monsters?”

“No.” Splendid response, Arwen.

“I’ve been to every kingdom in Evendell at least twice, scaled mountainsides and plunged off cliffs and crawled through mud. Trust me, these caves are child’s play.”

That was actually helpful. I needed the distraction. “Some kind of thrill seeker, are you?” I imagined Fedrik traipsing all over the continent, a beautiful sunbeam prince hunting for adventure.

“Just a bit. Does it interest you at all?”

My eyes spied a phosphorescent insect scuttling into a crooked, skinny crevice. My heart picked up speed. “What? Travel? Sport?”

Fedrik shrugged as if to say, Does anything?

“I actually haven’t seen too much of the world. I’d love to scale a mountainside. I’d settle for just seeing a mountain range.”

“Well, I’ll take you sometime, if you find yourself available.”

This was the benefit of Fedrik not knowing that I was the Fae from the prophecy. With him, I had ample time to go on mountainous adventures. I grinned at him in the darkness, his blond hair backlit by illuminated crystals. “Where would we go?”

“The Kingdom of Amber has some spectacular mountain ridges. Most around the city of Rookvale.”

Rookvale was only three hours north of Abbington by carriage. Right at my doorstep. So much of that insulated life, self-imposed. I shook my head.

“Wait,” Mari said, stopping us and her path of luster in our tracks. “I think we have to go back two turns. This is a dead end.”

The words sent my stomach into a state that made nausea preferable.

“Lead the way, witch.” But Griffin’s eyes remained focused on something that had skittered into a crevice in the walls.

I reached for Mari’s hand, my chest feeling too tight, until a voice rang through the abyss.

In one graceful stride Griffin stood in front of us, his hulking form shielding both Mari and me from whoever else was down here.

“Could be the Garnet soldiers Crawford spoke of,” Kane said, suddenly beside his commander. I hadn’t even heard him behind me.

“Or regular folks hunting treasure,” Fedrik offered. “Shall we go ask before we rip heads off? Just a thought.”

Kane rolled his eyes. “Be my guest.”

To my surprise, Fedrik did as Kane said, and sauntered down the tunnel, torch outstretched, until I heard him exchange warm pleasantries with a shadowed form.

We trailed behind. Standing there with Fedrik, hands folded around a map of his own, was a rugged man, likely in his late twenties, skin leathery from some sun-drenched occupation and covered in nautical tattoos.

Fedrik gestured toward us. “This is the rest of my party.” Then, to us, “This is Niclas.”

“What brings your group to Reaper’s Cavern?” Niclas’s voice was as rough as his weather-beaten skin.

“Just looking for a little adventure.” Kane’s casual voice could have fooled even me. “Who were you talking to?”

“The caves,” Niclas answered, eyes pinned on Kane as if testing him. Goading him to mock. “Sometimes they talk back.”

“You sound in desperate need of traveling companions,” Mari said cheerily. “You’re welcome to stick with us. However, our map is from a desk leg I had to smother in mud, which we only got from this seedy nobleman who died, which is a whole other story, but he traded all these stolen goods in Citrine, which is underwater, so who knows how much access he even had to the outside world, meaning I’m not sure if we can really trust this thing,” Mari said, wagging the map at Niclas before taking off down the corridor, luster following after her like the dust of a shooting star.

Niclas’s eyes flicked to us in confusion and a bit of concern, but Griffin only walked after Mari with a resigned sigh. “She just means our map is a little faulty. Don’t . . . don’t worry about the rest.”

“Where did you say you’re all from?” Niclas asked with suspicion. “Some place . . . underwater?”

“I grew up outside of Willowridge, in the Onyx Kingdom,” Mari called back to him as we walked. “And you?”

“Pitney.”

“That’s in the Quartz of Rose, right? In the south?”

It was no surprise that Mari knew where Pitney was, nor that she could make friends with a stranger such as Niclas with ease.

“Yeah. I’ve never met anyone from Onyx. You’re . . . more upbeat than I expected.”

“It’s not as bad as people think,” Mari said, distracted by the map she was turning around and around.

I rubbed at my neck until she settled on an orientation and continued forward.

“Doubt that,” Niclas huffed. “Your king is a sadist.”

I held a hand across my mouth to hide a snort. My eyes caught sight of Fedrik’s shaking shoulders.

“It’s horrible, isn’t it?” Kane asked, forcing Niclas to turn around and face him. “Someone should remove him from the throne.”

“Oh, they will,” vowed Niclas.

“Where’d you hear that?” I asked.

“From all over.”

So my assessment of a sailor or a smuggler had likely been right. We were lucky that our new companion wasn’t from Onyx and couldn’t recognize the terrible King Ravenwood on appearance alone.

“What kind of treasure brought you here?” Mari asked.

Niclas loosed a gruff laugh. “You don’t want to hear my story.”

“Correct,” Griffin mumbled.

“Sure we do,” Fedrik said at the same time, stepping around a boulder.

“After the south of Rose fell to the north, the Scarlet Queen punished everyone who fought against her. My family still lives in poverty due to her sanctions. But our most famed historians were said to have kept two ledgers, one of which contained the names of those who won the war for the north, and one which identified every southern dissenter by name. As you can imagine, the latter became quite valuable—a physical document of those responsible for the revolt.” Niclas’s grin was a flash of white in the torchlit darkness. “But my grandfather was a peaceful man. He never took a single northern life. He was a wind chime maker, for Stones’ sake. That second ledger will exonerate my family, and it’s here, in these caves.”

Niclas’s plight was more honorable than anything I had been expecting. “Why would the ledger be in here?”

“You know the name Drake Alcott?”

I shook my head.

“He was the most brilliant thief to ever live. And from Pitney, too. More than a burglar, this man was an artist. He stole from lord and criminal alike and evaded capture for over forty years. He’s one of the only men to make it through Reaper’s Cavern, and he told the men of our city that when he saw the Peridot pirate’s treasure, it contained the ledger.”

“Why didn’t he take it?” Fedrik asked.

“He didn’t take anything from the cavern. Wasn’t in it for the gold. Just the glory.”

“What happened to him?”

“He eventually made a misstep. I heard he was sent to Hemlock Isle five years ago, so he’s probably long dead. Careful,” Niclas cautioned, and I looked down just in time to see my foot nearly crush a human rib cage.

“Bleeding Stones.”I walked around the fragile skeleton and picked up the pace, adrenaline making my palms itch each time I remembered how deep underground we were.

“At least we’ve made it farther than that sorry—”

A guttural rumble erupted below our feet, shocking the breath from my lungs.

Kane was beside me in a heartbeat, and I gripped his arm without thinking as the walls shook and roared, my heart spasming in my chest.

“What’s going on?” Mari shrieked.

Small rocks unearthed from the larger stones around us and fell to the cave floor like hail.

“The cavern is moving,” Niclas said, unnervingly calm.

The roaring grew louder behind us.

I spun just in time to hear the groaning of shifting stones and watch with stunned dread as a slab of pure gray crashed down on the tunnel behind us, slicing off Mari’s luster path—and our only way out—like a knife through marbled meat.