20. Gwyneira

20

GWYNEIRA

W e reached the entrance to the mines just as a new contingent of soldiers was coming to check on the ones Casimir and I had already subdued.

They didn’t get the chance to raise an alarm either.

“Ozias, Casimir, take the lead with me,” Dex ordered, scanning the tunnel ahead of us. At our backs, the moonlit night was still beyond the fissure leading to the mines, all the guards tied up and gagged in the bushes out there. “Valeria, can your people strip these soldiers and take their uniforms? Cover the front and make it look like everything is fine, in case anyone comes this way?”

The woman nodded once firmly.

“Good. And princess?—”

“I’m coming with you.”

Dex scowled.

“She’ll just sneak after us anyway, man,” Clay said with a shrug.

Huffing out a breath, Dex nodded. “Fine. Stay behind us.” He cast a quick glance at the others. “Let’s go.”

I started after them, but Valeria caught my arm before I made it more than a few steps. “Be careful, princess,” she whispered. “Your men aren’t wrong. We need you to survive.”

I swallowed hard, hating the sudden twist of apprehension in my gut. While we were all together, I could protect her and the other humans too. If we split up…

“Take care,” I made myself say instead of voicing any of my fears.

She nodded once in return before turning resolutely to her people. “Nerak, gather the armor. Merias, get the weapons.”

The humans nodded, though the young one she’d called Nerak still watched us as he walked away. Seeming barely older than me, he had the sun-darkened skin of a farmer and the look of someone who’d seen more than any farmer ever should. He’d also seemed displeased with us since I woke, though the others wouldn’t say why, only that he’d lost someone in the battle that occurred before I woke.

“All right,” Dex’s voice pulled my attention back around. Determination in every line of his body, he addressed the giants and Casimir. “Guard the princess. Find Niko. Kill anyone who tries to stop you from doing either. Got it?”

My men nodded, but I resisted the urge to scowl. I was on board with the latter of those two things, but I wasn’t in favor of any plan that meant I was expected not to use my abilities to protect my men.

Casimir gave me a pointed look, the heated promise of retribution if I disobeyed Dex in his eyes. Nearby, Ozias echoed that with a dark, hot surge of insistence along our connection.

Gods save me from these men and their annoyingly sexy protective instincts. “Dammit, focus on Niko. Do not worry about me.”

“Then don’t give us reason to worry,” Ozias growled.

Oh for the love of?—

Ruhl shifted back to his wolf form at my side. The sardonic look in his glowing green eyes didn’t help anything.

“Shut up,” I muttered to him.

I could swear amusement joined the shadow wolf’s expression now.

Before I could protest this nonsense—I was a vampire, for pity’s sake; I could take care of myself—Dex nodded at the others and said, “Go.”

They raced deeper into the tunnels, and I followed immediately. The stone around us was roughhewn and jagged, liable to tear at us if we came too close, but the tunnel itself was so huge, there was little chance we’d come anywhere near it.

Giants, on the other hand…

My stomach twisted with a sickened feeling. Beyond the tight fissure of an entrance that would force a group of giants to pass single file—the easier to control them and cut them down if they tried to flee—the tunnel itself was wide enough for a line of giants to stand while human guards could come and go easily around them. The ceiling was tall, yes, but only to a human like me. For the Erenlians’ massive forms, it would still force them to hunch over for every step.

I knew it wasn’t thoughtlessness. No, even in the tiniest of ways, my people had found methods of being cruel—all while believing they were justified for doing so.

The floor sank downward at a steep angle, and up ahead, the tunnel split into a three-pronged fork that made my heart sink too. The leftmost was narrow, barely wide or tall enough for humans to get through, but the others were wider, like the tunnel in which we now stood. Yet there were no signs on the wall. No indications of which of those two larger tunnels led to the prisoners here.

Panic started a steady drumbeat in the back of my mind. I hadn’t expected this, but then, I’d never been in a mine before. All I knew was that it was a tunnel into the ground. But this place was more massive than I expected, and Niko could be anywhere. If the guards received any warning we were coming, there were countless ways they could hurt him before we even knew where he might be found.

Before the fork in the tunnel, Casimir pulled up sharply, casting a quick glance at Dex. Jerking his head to the left, he held up seven fingers.

Oh gods…

Dex nodded. Glancing back at us, he motioned for us to stay put and keep quiet.

With Clay and Casimir, he darted into the smaller, leftmost fork in the tunnel. Crashing sounds followed, and shouts too, but all fell silent in rapid succession, leaving only the faint sound of someone gasping in fear.

“Clear,” Clay called.

I rushed after the others around the turn.

A splintered door of metal and wood lay in pieces ahead, before an open doorway with a remarkably ordinary room inside. The walls were plastered and painted white, though blood now dripped from a few. Wooden tables lined the walls on either side, and chairs had been set before them, at least until the latter were shattered moments ago. One table had an icebox for food beneath it and a stack of plates off to one side—remarkably unbroken—while another had an array that stopped me in my tracks.

Mirrors. Magic mirrors, if the images playing across their reflective surfaces were any indication.

I swallowed hard, stepping around the fallen bodies of soldiers as I came into the room. Most had been cut down in the midst of trying to attack, while one sat in the chair ahead of the magic mirrors.

He was still breathing. The rest were clearly dead.

My stomach churned, but I ordered myself to stay steady. The soldier in the chair was younger, with wide dark eyes and an ashen cast of terror to his light-brown skin. I could see him shaking from the doorway, his whole body frozen while Dex held a blade to his throat.

“Where are the prisoners?” Casimir asked the young man.

A resolute expression coming onto his frightened face, the soldier clamped his lips shut.

I looked at the magic mirrors, scanning them fast. Most showed empty tunnels. Some showed human guards leaning against the walls, chatting and oblivious to what we were doing here.

One showed a wall of bars, behind which was a cavern full of giants.

A shallow breath left me. In the firelight and shadows of the cavern, I couldn’t see all the way to the back to find Niko in there. He wasn’t up front, though, and the ones I could see just looked tired, terrified, or like they were hanging onto their resolve to survive by their fingernails.

Gods…

My eyes caught on another mirror. More giants, this time in a tunnel. They were on the ground, writhing in pain with human guards around them.

And at the corner of the image in the mirror was Niko, a guard standing over where he lay on the ground. Pain etched my giant’s face. Pure agony, while the guard just grinned.

Inside me, the vampire snarled.

“Where is that?” Dex demanded of the soldier, pointing at the magic mirror showing Niko.

When the young man didn’t answer, Dex’s blade bit his neck, sending a trickle of blood running down his throat. “Tell us now .”

Casimir growled, and at the sight of that blood, the urge to do the same rumbled through me. I was hungry. So damn hungry and that…

I shuddered hard, my fangs aching.

“Answer or we give you to my friend here,” Clay said to the soldier, nodding toward Casimir. “Trust me, it won’t go well for you.”

Worry filtered past my hunger at the threat. Human blood would be like poison for us. Unlike giant blood, it would strip away our ability to still be us, turning us into ravenous beasts like every other vampire. Clay knew that, so chances were that his threat was only to make the guard give us answers.

But I still glanced at Casimir, worried.

His eyes flicked over to meet mine when the guard turned toward the mirror. The feral look in his gaze took on a different edge, less insane and much more teasing. He winked at me.

My shudders took on a decidedly heated quality, but I wasn’t completely reassured, mostly because I couldn’t see him breathing.

Not all of this was an act. Like me, he needed to feed and this was testing his self-control.

The guard cast another glance at him, and quickly, the vicious look in Casimir’s eyes returned. He bared his fangs at the young man.

“Clock’s ticking, my guy,” Clay pressed.

“The cell’s in the mid-northern quadrant. That’s the western tunnels, subsection D.” A shuddering hint of stubbornness came into the guard’s eyes. “But you won’t reach them in time. The shackles are designed to kill them if we see any sign of resistance. Even if I turn them off, those stoneskins are already dead.”

The vampire in me didn’t pause to question, and my human side couldn’t stop it from reacting, no matter what my men had said.

I shifted and took off.