Page 30 of Storm of Desire
"You're coming with me? Why are you doingthis?"
Árdís flinched. Perhaps she'd played her part too well over the years. "Because I can no longer stand to watch my mother torment her people." Their eyes met. "You're not the only one who remembers what it was like when my father ruled this court. I'm not brave. I'm not strong enough to defy her—not openly. But perhaps there is another whocan."
"The prince," he whispered, and hope flared to life in hiseyes.
"Prince Rurik," she agreed, "but we need to hurry if we're going to have a chance to flee to hisside."
They took a step and Marek's weight sagged againsther.
"I'm sorry. Someone hit me in the shin with an iron bar." He was trying not to limp as they staggered out into the hallway, but it was clear he wouldn't be movingfast.
Árdís bit her lip. "I doubt anyone will seeus."
Shehoped.
Claus slammed against his cell door as they passed it, and Árdís stifled a small scream. Dust shivered around the doorframe. She hadn't counted on that.Drekimales were difficult to contain at the best of times, what with their inhuman strength andmagic.
So she locked the main door to the dungeons behind them, just in case he did get free. Marek stared. "The cell won't hold him forlong."
"I know. This way," Árdís said, and backtracked to the servant's passages, where it was dark anddrekiwould be few and far between. She found the bag and sword she'd left down here, and then paused by the healer's storeroom to steal a makeshift crutch for Marek and some healing balm for hisburn.
"Thank you," he breathed, looking at her as if he'd never seen herbefore.
They could risk a little light here. Whispering in old Norse under her breath, she released the small spell Malin had taught her, and the emerald the girl had given her began to glow as she reached the darkest bowels of the catacombs. Purebreddrekilike she had no need of spell craft when they could channel pure Fire, but those like Malin made do with spells. She'd never before had to consider what it would be like to live like thedrekling.
Shunned by the purebreds. Consideredless.
Made to serve thedrekiand the court, or be ostracizedforever.
Or worse, killed to keep the bloodlinespure.
Marek's fear ate away at her as they scuttled down the dark stairs. If they were captured, he'd be granted a particularly gruesome death, while she might escape such asentence.
Almost there. The passage delivered her into the first of several wide cellars. Hurrying past barrels of wine and hanging slabs of dried meat, she ducked through another small passage, and found herself in the dark. Marek hopped along behind her, painstakingly slow. Her pulse hammered. The walls were rough-hewn here, as if carved by a pickaxe and not magic. The portal hummed somewhere ahead of her, but it felt like miles with Marek's hobbling gait. She couldn't resist slipping ahead, trying to scout fordanger.
A shift of leather on stone alerted her to the fact she wasn't alone as she entered the next cellar. Árdís muted the light with awhisper.
"Don't move,"she told Marek on a thought-thread."I can hearsomeone."
Instantly she was plunged intodarkness.
She wasn't alone, however. She could sense someone moving through the oppressive dark with whisper-silent feet. Her heart leapt into her throat, and she pressed her back to the wall, barely daring tobreathe.
Fingersclicked.
Light suddenly burst into being as one by one the torches on the wall burst intoflame.
"Who's there?" Árdís whispered, putting her hand to the hilt of her sword andblinking.
A mocking drawl lit through the cellar. "Well, if it isn't my sweet betrothed. Wherever can you be going, Árdís? Especially with a sword that doesn't belong to you, and a pack full ofclothes."
Sirius dissolved from theshadows.
6
Árdís's handwent instantly to the hilt of the sword. "Creeping around in the dark again, Sirius? It suitsyou."
He ignored her, and made a small gesture with his hand. The fire in the muted lantern in his hand flared higher, highlighting the stark planes of his face. A villain like him should have showed some outward sign of his black heart, but the face the lamplight lovingly caressed was blessed by thegods.
