He was, however, reluctant to abandon the effort—after poisoning the guard, he wasn’t going to get another chance. But a client arriving to make a buy would put it all in jeopardy, considering his target was the chamber where the underlord stored his crystal.
Lucas had a decision to make—should he try to sneak in before the buy, or wait until after?
Lying low wouldn’t work for a couple of reasons—the poisoned guard could wake up, and Lucas might not be able to maintain his form. The further his morph was from his natural state, the more effort it took to do so.
He stepped into an alcove and concentrated, changing from the guise of the poisoned guard, to the one who currently lay in a bed in the infirmary. The real thing sported four deep gashes that had penetrated the Trog’s rib cage and the lung tissue beneath. But as they weren’t present in the DNA, Lucas couldn’t replicate them. So he made sure the neck of his tunic was pulled high enough to hide his intact skin.
It was, overall, a minor change from the alley guard, mostly features and a bit less height. But according to the banter between the two guards, this Trog was often assigned to protect the stash. Which made Lucas pretty confident that the keys he’d snatched from their personal effects would get him where he wanted to go.
If not, he was adept at picking locks.
Lucas had bought a set of blueprints for the building and memorized them, but he could only guess as to the crystals’ location. Most underlords went below ground to secure their hoard. So he hesitated at the next intersection, tracing the map in his head. The stairs to the basement were to the left.
He’d taken three strides in that direction when a doorway down the hall opened, and a huge Trog stepped directly into his path...
7
The moon and stars shone down upon Nikolai with a splendor undimmed from artificial lights.
From somewhere a long way off, a lion roared. He wondered if it was his lion, and whether the creature had made a full recovery.
Movement drew his eye—emboldened by the darkness, Mai had emerged from her crevice in the rock. She’d bolted into it the moment he’d set her down. Tiny pulses of her terrified energy poked at him from within it.
She’d refused to sleep beneath his hair the previous night as well, preferring to run away and cower in a crevice the moment he stopped moving. But when he’d risen to go in the morning she’d followed him, blinking her bright-blue eyes until he picked her up. The little shrew didn’t settle against his neck, though, clinging instead to his shoulder.
Ready to leap off if the monster inside him surfaced once again.
Nikolai’s heart ached for Ngubi, but also for the shattering of Mai’s trust. He’d almost killed her. Nikolai didn’t expect her to forgive him anytime soon. He couldn’t forgive himself, either.
The old scar on the back of his neck itched and then started to burn. As he reached to rub it, words dropped into his mind.
There is nothing to forgive.
Nikolai froze. For just a moment, an energy presence he didn’t recognize flickered through him. Before he could grab onto it, it faded away.
Great. Another bloody sign he was losing his mind.
“C’mon, Mai,” he encouraged. “Look, I’ve got something for you.” He lifted the melon shell he’d placed on the rock, and the two crickets he’d trapped within scuttled free.
Mai hesitated, tilting her head to regard him, but the scurrying insect was too difficult to resist. She pounced to dispatch it with a quick bite to behead it and then captured the second bug before it could escape. It tried squirting her with its regurgitated stomach contents but she ducked the loathsome fluid and crunched happily.
At least she would still take food from him.
It didn’t surprise Nikolai when the bush crickets suddenly fell silent. He’d sensed his visitor coming.
“Hello Mosode,” he offered to the night.
The Khomani stepped from the bushes at the rock ridge’s base. “Nikolai,” he said cautiously.
Nikolai’s gut knotted as he noted the other man’s nervousness, but he refused to let his reaction show. Instead, he sat quietly, waiting.
“I have come to warn you,” Mosode finally said.
“Warn me about what?”
Mosode leaned against a boulder, something Nikolai interpreted as an effort to appear casual despite every muscle in the man’s body being strung tight. “We buried Ngubi last night.”
Despite the numbness in which he had encased himself, it was as though a spear pierced Nikolai’s heart, taking all his breath with it. He steeled himself to keep his expression blank. As though the news meant nothing, when in reality, it crushed him.
