Page 7 of Dragon Gods

“You’ll be coming with us. We need to talk.”

Fox almost smiled at the clear slight against the woman, but before he could truly appreciate it, a sack was slipped over his head. It was thin enough to see the light through it, but not much of anything else. He heart rate spiked, his predicament just beginning to set in. Ian and the others were likely a mile or more away and they had no idea what was happening.

And Fox was about to find the resistance base—his goal since joining the king’s men—trussed up as their prisoner.

* * *

As he was half-draggedthrough the forest, Fox was all too glad for the sack covering his face. It caused the sweat to drip down his face and sting his eyes, and his toes were starting to bruise from the number of times he’d tripped over the unseen ground. But at least his captors couldn’t see the expression on his face, shifting rapidly between anger and fear with every beat of his heart.

He still hadn’t come up with a plan beyondescape, which wasn’t so much a plan as a need at the moment. As much as he wanted to find the resistance base, he knew his chances of escape would get harder once he was there.

The sack smelled of his own sweat and stale corn flour, particles tickling his nose with every breath in and out, and he focused his mind on the sensation. He needed to think. He could tell they were walking in a relatively straight path—the small snippets of the sunlight never shifting in direction as they wove through trees. He could almost assume they were walking west, based on the flashes of sun through the coarse fabric, but it was possible he was simply disoriented. Either way, he needed to keep his head on straight for if—when—he escaped.

Three hundred and forty-two steps later, and Fox was at a loss. He tried running once, a stupid move, but a chance to see their reaction time and organization. His arm had been caught in an iron grip before he’d taken two steps. He’d also attempted screaming, but whoever was holding him had only cracked the dull end of a weapon against his skull and tied something across his mouth, tightening the sack there and making it nearly impossible to do more than grunt.

And then the group’s energy shifted. He knew, even before he was pulled to a stop, they’d reached their destination. He listened carefully, the sounds of the forest hadn’t changed. The birds were still cawing and chirping at random intervals, the leaves rustling, and insects buzzing incessantly. His captors didn’t talk, seemingly using some type of hand signal language to communicate. But then Fox noticed a new sound. An echoing hollowness in the air and he felt a cool wind through the bag on his face. It brought the smell of salt and moss.

He was so focused on trying to understand the shift in the smells around him, he nearly jumped when he heard the woman beside him, her voice almost familiar now.

“I’m just going to make a decision,” she said. He didn’t think she was talking to him. “We’re sending him down the easy way.”

With that, her hand shoved him hard between the shoulder blades and he stumbled forward, muscles straining as he tried to throw his hands out to catch himself. But he didn’t hit the ground. His foot shot forward and caught on tonothing. There was no ground beneath him.

In the same instant that he realized he was falling through the air, his body hit the icy waves below and he sank. The slap of the water wasn’t as hard as the ground might have been, but even as he gasped at the pressure in his chest, he was sucking in water as it rushed up around him, soaking through his clothes and the sack over his head.

He thrashed and choked, the rope around his wrists only tightening as he struggled. He was blind and helpless and drowning. He would die out here and Chief Commander Harlow would never even know what happened to him. His mother?—

A large hand wrapped around his upper arm, pulling him until his head broke the surface. He choked, coughing out the water he had swallowed before he managed a breath. His lungs burned at the intrusion, but he could only cough and breathe again. He was happy the strip tightening the sack to his head was at least gone.

“Get him to shore before he drowns himself,” an unfamiliar voice said. It was difficult to judge distance with the echoes that bounded around, nearly drowned out by his ongoing struggle to swim with his hands tied.

“Stop squirming,” the feminine voice said beside him. A moment later, the hood was pulled away and he blinked up at the woman who was holding him. Her hair flashed a brilliant red in the light coming down from above, her face in shadows. He might have almost smiled, but before his lips could do more than twitch, the woman dropped him and he sank back into the water.

“Stop being dramatic and stand up,” she said at the same moment he felt the sandy bottom beneath his boots. It took him a few seconds to regain his balance, arms still tied and useless, but eventually he was standing.

The fiery angel that had pulled him from the water was walking away, not even looking back at him and he saw another three people standing along the shore, watching him with wary eyes. He collapsed onto the ground the moment he hit dry land, knees shaking from his fall and too tired to stand and breathe at the same time.

No longer in fear of drowning, he was able to take in his surroundings. It wasn’t the sea he’d been tossed into, but an underground lake.

The walls of the cavern arched overhead; a small hole in the ground above showed the sky and the canopy of trees where he had just been. The bright light contrasted with the shadowy cavern and made it difficult to make out details. But it was easy enough to hear the dripping of water as it cascaded down the walls and the vines that hung over the lip of the opening.

Fox was lying at the bottom of a cenote. This might have been helpful information if this land wasn’t scattered with thousands of the natural sinkholes, which were constantly changing shape and some impossible to find. But it did explain why their people had had so much trouble locating the hub of the resistance movement.

As he watched, a rope ladder unfurled from above, two of his captors making their slow descent. He didn’t see the woman and a moment later, a zip of motion out of the corner of his eye caught his attention and he looked in time to see her plunge into the water where he’d just nearly drowned. She made the jump look graceful as she easily pulled herself through the water and toward him. Of course, she actually had her hands free and hadn’t been pushed into the lake without warning.

He didn’t think. His hands were still tied behind his back, but he stumbled to his feet as best he could and ran at the woman as she pulled herself from the lake. Using his shoulder, he threw his weight against her, sending her slipping backward against the stony bottom of the lake’s edge.

“What in the gods?” she said, using her hands to push him back away from her. He stumbled, unable to balance himself with his hands tied.

“If you wanted me dead, you could have just slit my throat earlier!” He could feel the heat of his face turning red, his pale complexion always ready to show the barest trace of a flush. But he didn’t care, he wanted to strangle the woman. Screaming was the best he could do. “I almost drowned.”

“Calm down,” she said, walking past him, carefully wringing the water from her hair with barely a glance his way. “You’re clearly fine.”

“And if I couldn’t swim?”

“You’re a rich kid from the military quarter, of course you can swim.”

“How did you know—” he snapped his mouth shut. She didn’t just know him, she knewwhohe was.

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