“Penn?” I whisper-shouted. “Shadow?”
“Here,” a hoarse voice called out, and my heart galloped.
I tiptoed toward the sound, feeling my way in the dark until my slipper felt the edge of a pit. I crouched down, putting the gloves on. A hand shot up through the grate and gripped my throat.
“Well, hello pretty,” a nasally voice said.
Not Shadow. Definitely not Penn.
“You’re choking me,” I gasped out, face pressed against the metal bars.
Another loud bang echoed through the cavern, which no longer mattered, because I was about to be strangled to death.
The hand stayed clenched around my throat. “You’re going to lift up the grate like a good little girl, and in return, I won’t bash your head into it.”
That sounded like a reasonable trade.
“Yes,” I rasped.
The hand loosened its hold on my throat, which was when I remembered that I had training in this exact situation. Shadow and I had sparred, and she’d taught me how to break severaltypes of holds, including a chokehold. I wasn’t some helpless princess. I could get myself out of this situation.
His hand stayed tight around my throat.
I jammed my fist down into the grate, right in his nose. He let out a yelp, and his hand fell from my throat.
I stood, out of breath and shaky from the encounter. Calling out their names hadn’t worked, but I couldn’t see anything and had no idea how I was going to free them from this place.
This had been a terrible plan. Well, it would’ve been terrible if I’d actually had a plan. Which I clearly didn’t. How many times had Hammer told me you never go into a mission unprepared? And here I was, wandering around the sand pits like an idiot.
I had no magic, no way out, and no idea where Penn or Shadow might be. I should’ve pressed Jasper or the guard for more information, shouldn’t have acted so rashly.
I continued through the dark, walking slow and careful. Then I remembered something that Jasper had told me a long time ago.
He’d said they put the most wanted criminals near the back. He’d taken me there, shown me a few of them huddled in the pits. Those were the deepest ones, the hardest to escape from, and they didn’t want to take any chances. Surely Penn would fall into that category. Everyone on the continent of Arathia wanted to see him imprisoned. He was infamous for his heists. Feeling more confident, I marched forward, and that’s when I heard a splitting sound that cracked through the air.
They’d broken the door.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ihurried my pace, remembering that the pits were all in rows, so as long as I stayed my course and didn’t veer from it, I shouldn’t have to worry about breaking an ankle on one of the grates.
If I remembered correctly, it had taken Jasper and me about ten minutes to walk all the way to the back, so I had to be close.
“Penn!” I whispered. “Penn, where are you?”
“Please tell me this isn’t your plan,” a voice said in my head.
“Dammit,” I replied, “not now.”
Then I stopped. Wait a minute. That voice hadn’t been in my head. It was out loud.
“Penn!” I made my way toward him.
“What are you doing here, Lilypad?”
“Rescuing you, you idiot.”
“Fucking blood and earth,” he muttered. “I needed you to stay put. Now you’ve brought the guards upon us.”
