“A group of warriors in black leather are attacking The Pits,” he said, rising to rush to Arden’s dresser for clothes.
“Do you know who they are? Where they came from?” I asked as he returned, dropping the clothes at my side before unsheathing a dagger.
“I don’t know anything yet,” he hissed as he ran his blade across his wrist. “It won’t be enough to clear the Aethersbane from your system entirely, but it should help clear the sedative enough for you to move.”
He pressed his wrist to my lips, and my fangs elongated immediately at the taste of his blood, at the deluge of fae magic. It was potent enough that I couldn’t stop myself from latching on and drinking deep. It had been too long since I’d last fed, and the rush of it was like a punch to the gut.
Before I could give wholly into it and take too much, I pulled away, though every part of me screamed for more. I bit back the hunger, panting on air that was too thin. “Where’s Kish?”
He began dressing me, my limbs still unresponsive.
“Rhyas,” I demanded when he didn’t answer.
“She’s evacuating the survivors,” he said through gritted teeth.
My blood chilled. “Survivors?”
“It’s a shit show out there right now. Guards are using the chaos to drag females off, prisoners are trying to escape, one of the beasts got loose. Their binding triggered one of the wards and collapsed the lower tunnel cells.”
“Oh, gods.” I forced the fear back, balling my hands into fists. The effects of the drug were starting to fade as his blood soaked into my system. “Why the fuck are you here and not with her?”
“I couldn’t leave you to face Arden alone,” he said and then looked at me guiltily. “And she told me either I came for you, or she would.”
Gods, anything but that. If she had come when Arden had still been here…
“You can understand why I told her to evacuate while I broke you out,” he said.
I drew a deep breath and pushed myself up to sit, my fingers still numb, my body still aching but useable.
“What the hell are you doing?”
We twisted around to the open doorway to find two guards staring at us. One of them turned to look over their shoulder. “Get Arden!”
The two guards charged for us, and Rhyas leaped to his feet, drawing his sword before he blocked one of the guards’ blades.
“Get up!” Rhyas growled without looking back at me.
I groaned through the pain, muscles protesting my commands.
Get up, get up, get up!
The feeling returned to my hands as I pushed myself onto my hands and knees, desperate to get out, to help him as blades clashed and grunts of pain filled my ears. A guard crashed into the dresser before he fell to the ground in a heap. I crawled toward him, elbows buckling under my weight, my sweaty palms slipping against the stone.
Rhyas slammed into the wall, barely bracing the guard’s sword as he tried and failed to hold his ground. Fuck, I needed more time, just a little more. I could feel the drug’s effects wearing off, but not fast enough. Rhyas grimaced as the guard overpowered him, the blades shaking as they inched closer to his throat.
I grabbed the sword from the unconscious guard and steadied myself against the dresser. Rhyas’ amber eyes flashed to me as I forced myself to move, running the sword into the guard’s side. He cried out before we collided, falling to the ground in a mess of limbs. His sword clattered onto the ground, and Rhyas quickly kicked it aside before pulling me off him.
“Come on! We’ve got to get out of here!” he shouted, shoving me toward the door before slamming his dagger into the guard’s throat, silencing him for good. I hesitated, my eyes falling on the pile of clothes on the ground nearby,myclothes.
“The fuck are you doing?” Rhyas shouted.
“I can’t leave it,” I said, feeling stupid in my inability to leave it behind as I dropped to my knees and fished the small scrap of remaining fabric from the boy’s coat out of my pocket. I rose, rushing after him and stumbled into the tunnel, my legs and armsstrengthening.
Rhyas stopped at my side, looking up and down the tunnel, blood rolling down his face from a cut above his brow. The ground heaved, and we stumbled against the wall for support.
“Sounds like another creature broke loose and brought down another ward,” Rhyas growled, pushing off and grabbing my arm to help me down the tunnel. “We’ve got to get back to Kish and the others.”
We hurried through the tunnels, ducking out of sight when we crossed paths with guards, running once they’d passed. As we reached the mouth of a tunnel that opened up into a cavern, Rhyas grabbed my arm, pulling me back behind cover. I gasped at the sight of an enormous creature gorging itself on the entrails of one of the guards, bodies littering the ground from its rampage.
