Page 61 of Dragon Gods

“Okay, duck.” Her voice was farther away now, but he listened, moving down until suddenly the air around him opened up and he could see again.

No longer worried about being buried by the earth, his knees gave out and he slumped against the nearby wall. Sofia was standing above him and he could just make out her features in the soft blue glow that seemed to emanate from the earth itself. There was a knowing look in her gaze that he didn’t want to examine too closely.

“Slow your breathing,” she said, crouching down and looking into his face as if he weren’t trying to avoid her eyes. She reach forward and he flinched away.

“Don’t touch me!”

Her face tightened, but she didn’t snap back. “Breathe. Tell me what you can hear.”

He tried to focus his eyes on her, confused at her command, but after a moment he complied. “The water. Your voice. There’s a wind from somewhere. My voice.”

“Good.” Her voice was gentler than he’d ever heard it. “And what can you feel? Beneath your hands?”

“The ground is wet—cold. It’s almost as hard as our beds last night.”

She cracked a smile and he felt pride at being the cause.

His breathing began to slow. The tingling in his fingers stopped and he was able to refocus his gaze, looking around the cave they were in. It took another minute to realize it wasn’t the earth itself glowing blue, but the pinpricks of thousands of creatures, crawling along the walls.

“They’re starworms,” Sofia said, noticing his gaze. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said, voice harsher than he intended.

Her lips pursed at his tone, but she only nodded and held out her hand. Not making eye contact, he accepted her help and stood on shaky legs.

“Where are we?” He was as stiff as his words, brushing the dirt from his clothes as if it might matter. He was so covered in mud and filth, he was starting to forget what color his tunic had been originally.

“I’m assuming you don’t want to talk about it?” Sofia said, still not looking away from him, as if she cared. As if she weren’t asking to use it against him. The last thing he needed was for the resistance to learn all they had to do was lock him in a small space and he’d cry like a baby.

Instead of answering, he looked around, taking in the flowing river that rushed against the farthest wall and the small dry spot of land they were standing on. There was nothing else here. They weren’t even in a real cenote, simply a crack in the earth above one of the underground rivers that snaked through the peninsula.

“We can’t sleep here.”

Sofia looked around, lips pressed tight. “No, I don’t think we can.”

Fox’s gut twisted. “We need to climb back up.”

She walked the two steps to the river and looked at where it flowed through the glowing tunnel.

“There’ll be more openings down the river,” she said. “Wider ones.”

“And we have no idea how far away those might be.”

“No, but at least down here there is fresh water and shelter from the night faeries and predators. If the starworms are living down here safely, then we’ll be okay.”

He looked back at the small gap in the wall behind him that led back to the surface—through the narrow crack that had already tried to kill him once. The river, on the other hand, flowed through a high arched tunnel with starworms lighting the stone above like a night sky. There was no dry path of land, but the water looked shallow enough along the edges.

“Fine.”

Shoulders straightening, he marched forward, passing her and stepping directly in the river’s edge. The water was icy against his boots. He gave a sharp intake of breath, but kept moving, refusing to show weakness again. She was wearing sandals. He wouldn’t be the pathetic one here, if she could handle the water.

He heard her own sharp intake behind him and the splash of water as she followed. When he glanced back over his shoulder he saw her picking at her fingers, biting her lips hard, but she didn’t complain.

As they walked, Fox’s eyes traced the starworms that lined the walls and ceiling. While many of them were scattered across the stone, creating the illusion of the night sky, others were hanging on invisible threads stretched down from the ceiling, as if the night sky were crying stars. All of it reflected back by the river. He had never seen anything so beautiful. He’d seen the waterfalls of Falais across the north sea where his father’s father had been from, but the blue glow patterned across these caves outshone even those.

They kept their steady pace, even as the water deepened and the tunnel narrowed slightly. The water was now up to his calves and every time he looked back, he saw the way Sofia trembled even as her face remained impassive.

He hated how much he seemed to care, but he rationalized that any human would be pained to see another suffering. And she had been kind enough to not comment on his panic attack earlier.

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