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11. Serak

SERAK

I ’d found a length of rope on the cart by the side of the dilapidated building when I heard the faint cracking of wood, and a muffled scream that sounded like my name. I reacted instinctively, running to the front, my arms pinwheeling as I realized I could make things worse by stepping into the darkness.

“Serak. Don’t move,” Ratter whispered. I’d never heard her voice sound like this. Full of fear and uncertainty.

“I’ll come to you,” I whispered back.

“No. Go get a light. Dash and Gertie are below. Hurt. I need you to go get help. If you fall, we might not be found— ah! ” Another crack of wood had my blood freezing. I was not going to let her be hurt, not when I had the tools to save her.

Even if those tools would damn me to use.

“I have a candle,” I lied. “And a rope. Close your eyes. I’ll come over once I can see where it’s safe to step.”

I waited for her soft, “All right,” before I whispered four words—the first prayer to the Lord of Fire the acolytes of the Alldyns Vug were taught. Even here, so far from the sacred maw, my god answered me, and a flame sparked to life. I waved it to float near the floor and stepped forward. They were only ten paces inside the room, Ratter’s dark hair shimmering with red as the flame danced toward her.

As if it knew her.

“Serak?” she rasped, and I knew she hadn’t closed her eyes at all. She had fallen halfway through a hole in the floor, gripping what looked like rotten planks on each side with her hands, one leg supported by a half-splintered beam.

Standing on the wooden crossbeam that must have been one side of the cellar at some point, I stepped carefully to her side. I tied the rope to the sturdy wood, then leaned close to the plank that she held with one bloody hand. I looped the rope under one of her arms, then around her other side, until she nodded slightly.

“Lower me down,” she said.

“No, I’ll go.” I waved the flame to the bottom of the pit, but it refused to move, staying by her face, red flickers playing over her fine features.She smiled and blinked, as if slightly mesmerized. I snapped my fingers, and she startled, then grabbed the rope in front of her and stared up at my face. “Lower me down, Serak.”

Her eyes reflected the flame, and for a moment, her voice seemed older. More mature. Her features changed, those gray eyes even a deeper silver, with tiny lines at the corners I knew she didn’t have. A scar appeared over one of her eyebrows, then vanished. Her hair grew longer, and seemed to be pulled back, with a dark diadem perched over her forehead.

“Lower me down, Serak,” she repeated. The flame came to rest on her shoulder, then descended into the darkness.Speechless, I nodded and did as she asked, slowly releasing the rope until she called up, “That’s enough.” I heard her speaking to the children, and when she called out again, I pulled one of them up.

I was shocked that she hadn’t rescued the young prince first, but it was the girl who came up with the rope tied under her arms, crying softly.

A soft, “Go up now. Go on,” reached my ears, and the flame I’d called ascended. I didn’t want to think what that meant. Why the magic I had pulled from the maw was listening to Ratter. Obeying her.

I had a terrible feeling that eyes and ears far away were focusing intently on everything that happened in this dark room.

I bundled the rope, and checked over the girl. She was injured, one arm possibly broken, and I took care not to jostle it as I pulled her out of the rope and carried her to the doorway. “You’ll be all right,” I said softly, then let out the best approximation of the whistling call I’d heard Ratter make when she mustered her street rats to search. Within a minute, I heard an answer. The flame danced back into the room, luring me. “Stay here,” I told the girl, and followed it.

The boy was next to come up. “Thank you, Lord Zellum,” he said somberly. I examined him, but he seemed perfectly well. I tossed the rope back into the hole, then helped him stand. “I owe you a debt.” His chin was trembling as I walked next to him, the flame flickering at my shoulder. I thought it was from shock, but his eyes widened as he took in the mysterious flame.

I put a hand on his arm, guiding his path to safety. “Thank you, Prince Dashiell. Let the repayment be your silence about this small magic.” The flame flared up at my words, singing my hair. I winced, knowing far more painful consequences lay ahead, but when I waved the flame back into the building, to her, it acquiesced.

The boy nodded, swallowing convulsively as he tracked the flame’s journey. “Of course. Who’d believe it anyway?” When we reached the little girl’s side, he kneeled down and handed her a scrap of fabric. “Ratter found this in the hole. She said it was yours.”

“Bunny’s blanket,” the girl whispered. “You saved me.”

“That’s what princes do,” Dashiell replied.

“Princes in disguise as street rats, maybe. Next time, let me go back into the destruction to find the toys, all right, Gert?” I spun around.Ratter stood there, her hair mussed, a streak of blood on one cheek, and a grin on her face.

“Are you hurt?” I asked, but before she could answer, what looked and sounded like a dozen children came running toward us, blades drawn. As soon as they spotted me, a few of them darted as fast as shadows in my direction, bent on murder, judging by their faces.

“Rats!” Ratter shouted. “Stand down.”

As fast as they’d turned to attack, they dropped back and faced her, their grimy forms at full attention. “Ratter, we heard a false call, but we knew—the prince! Ya found him.”

“And one other,” she replied, her eyes scanning the group. “I need to get her home.”

“A healer first, though.”

One of the kids muttered, “Shit, it’s the boss.” I whirled and found myself only a few paces from Rimholt’s Master Spy.

“Zellum, Ratter, Dash, and… Gertie, isn’t it?”Swathed in a cloak the same color as the night, Vilkurn had appeared out of nowhere, and more than one of the children took the opportunity to melt into the shadows and vanish.

“How’d you know Gert’s name?” Ratter demanded.

Vilkurn had kneeled beside Dashiell, who was soothing Gertie, but he narrowed his gaze at his apprentice. “Really? It may be your city, but it was mine before you were born.” Ratter huffed once, while Vilkurn calmly murmured to the little girl and his son. From somewhere, he produced a candy, which he handed to the little girl. “Explain, Dash,” he asked, his voice calm.

Dashiell took a deep breath. “I was spying on Ratter a few days back, and heard her say where she was going to sell her dagger, to pay for something special. I thought I could buy it back as a Solstice gift to p-prove my love.” He glanced at Ratter, who was biting her lip. “But the jeweler asked for more money than I had. So I went into the castle treasury and took some gems, and then he was quite satisfied, and sold it to me.”

“You stole from the treasury?”

He wrinkled his nose. “It’s not stealing if it’s already yours. Papa Rigol told me I’ll be the king someday, and those treasures will be mine to woo my… my lady.”

Gertie hiccupped, then mumbled sleepily, “So romantic.”

“Indeed. I wonder if polishing every gem that remains in that treasury that may belong to you someday, but belongs to your parents now, will be quite as romantic.”

“Papa!” Dashiell protested. “There’s thousands!”

“Then you should be finished with your task about the same time young Ratter returns to Turino. Let’s hope you will have found a less larcenous way to prove your affections. Or better yet, transferred them to someone closer to your age.” Vilkurn gently lifted the now-sleeping Gertie up as he stood. “I’ll take them both to the castle healer, and then return Gertie to the new safe house myself.”

“No,” Ratter said firmly. “No Alphas.”

“Ah. I see,” Vilkurn murmured, and I could tell he did. “Treasures everywhere, hm? I will find someone more suitable, then. Right, it’s only a few hours until dawn.” He gazed at Ratter with pride. “I trust you can find your way back home?”

“Yeah, Boss,” she said, lunging toward him, going up on tiptoe and pressing a peck to his cheek. “Take care of my city while I’m away.”

“Brat,” he replied, and shot me an odd look, before carrying Gertie off, Dashiell’s hand in one of his. They’d only gone a few paces, when Dashiell gasped.

“The dagger!” He twisted around. “Ratter, I dropped it in the hole!”

“Of course you did. I’ll get Serak here to help me fetch it. Thank you for the Solstice gift, Dash. Take care of the royal tots, all right?”

“I will,” he called back, before the three vanished into the gloom.

I swallowed as Ratter stepped up to me, her eyes moving over my face like I was a puzzle she wanted to solve. “Seems I need to retrieve a Solstice gift. Care to lend a light?” She raised one hand to my cheek, her fingers spreading trails of painful lava everywhere she touched, lighting fires in every nerve and sending heat to every one of my extremities.

It was a pain I wished would never end, but it did, and far too soon. I followed her back to the door, finding the light I had called up earlier dancing at the lip of the hole. She checked the rope, but I squeezed her shoulder gently. “I’ll go.”

Her eyes narrowed, but she nodded, and I let myself down hand over hand, into the darkness. I waved at the flame, beckoning it closer.

It didn’t move. I heard a short giggle from above. “It likes me.”

“That’s great,” I lied. “Can you come closer?” The boards she stood on creaked, and I yelled, “Bad idea, step back!”Cursing, I lowered myself to my hands and knees and felt around in the darkness. The ground was a foul mixture of clay, mud, and something stickier that I hoped was mud and not sewage. After a few minutes, I complained, “I can’t see.”

“I guess I’ll hold the light,” Ratter said as she lowered herself down, the flame dancing around her hair. Her feet touched the ground, and she let go of the rope, stepping toward me. “There it is!” She pointed over my shoulder and went to move past me, but her shoe slid in a small pile of mud.“Shit!”

“It may well be,” I agreed as she fell on her backside in front of me. “I’m not sure there is a tub big enough for the bath we’ll need after this.”

“Queen Vali has a tub that fits two, maybe more,” Ratter replied absently, then bit her lip. “Rigol had to make it long enough for an Alpha and…”

I shifted, my cock liking the idea of filling that tub with Ratter, and being the one to clean her very, very thoroughly. First with soap and water, then soft cloths, then with my tongue. Unconsciously, I leaned toward her, and she reclined on her elbows, her eyes wide as I stared down into her beautiful face.

The cellar filled with my scent, fire and copper, but when I took a breath, all I could smell was mint and rain. “That’s big. I’ve never seen a tub that large,” I heard myself saying, like an idiot. “It really fits two? An Alpha… and an Omega?”

“I would think so,” she whispered. The flame had risen to the top of the hole, and the light played over our faces as we breathed in the increasingly strong scents—not from the cellar, but from ourselves. Our natures.

“We should… We should go,” she said, breathlessly. “Solstice is almost over. I have to leave.”

“I want to kiss you,” I replied quietly, my need to touch her almost overwhelming. “I want it more than anything. But I never should have tried to coerce you to give me one.”

“It would be my first,” she mumbled. “First kisses oughta be gifts, right?”

Her first? I felt a rumbling growl start up deep inside, as the need to be her first—not just kiss, but her first everything —washed over me. But I knew I didn’t deserve any of her firsts. When the sun rose, I was going to leave Rimholt. I would travel back to Pict, and face my masters. They would most likely torture me, as the flame I’d called would have shared everything it witnessed with the order who served at the Alldyns Vug. They would cast me into the maw, if I was lucky, feed me to my god before I could betray every secret about this fierce, dangerous young Omega.

I would do everything I could to protect her. I inhaled another deep breath of her scent. It made me feel alive in a way I had never been before. It smelled like spring and hope… and I had no business sullying her with the dark ash that coated my soul.

I had to let her go. I was about to move away when her tongue darted out, swiping over her lips, and she rose up, closing the distance between us.

“Happy Solstice,” she murmured as her lips met mine.

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