“There’s nothing to talk about.” He coughed into his fist, then surreptitiously checked his hand. Yep: blood. Wonderful.
“Jadren, I don’t hold any of this against you,” she persisted. “I won’t pretend to understand everything that happened here, but I believe that all you said and did was in an effort to protect me. We’re tied together now, bonded, which means we’re partners, for better or worse.”
“Not partners, poppet,” he sneered in a deliberately insulting tone. “You’re my possession now. In the eyes of Convocation law you’re—” A sudden, involuntary cough convulsed him, wrenching enough that he stumbled, then bent over as a wave of dizziness hit him, bracing himself with hands on knees. An incriminating spray of bright red blood scattered across the floor.
“You’re still too wounded,” Seliah fretted. “I knew it.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He wiped the blood and spittle from his mouth with the back of his hand. “There’s no going back.” He’d meant to shoot her a harsh grin, but when he met her eyes, so lambent and lovely, filled with concern and other emotions he really hoped were a product of crisis and not anything more, he felt the smile fade away. Stepping around the blood, he broke into a slightly less brisk jog than before. “No going back and no stopping. We have maybe one chance here, if that.”
“At least take some magic.” She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, cool silvery water beckoning him to drink. And drain her dry.
He shook her off. “Look alive. We’re at the end.” And at the bottom, by the feel of it. Ahead of them, a dark archway loomed, lined with ancient-looking stones. A dank flow of air wafted from it, musty with old death and ghosts of the newly dead. “Ready for this?”
“Catacombs, huh?” she asked, raking her unruly curls out of her face as they slowed on approach. “I think I’m not afraid of dead people. It’s the living ones in this house that have proved dangerous.”
Including himself, he presumed. “Eminently logical.” Taking a breath for fortitude—a mistake as something ground painfully against a rib—he led the way into the graveyard of House El-Adrel.
The catacombs were quiet, dimly lit by embedded fire elementals, and oddly peaceful. Seliah had the right of it that they had more to fear from the living. Unfortunately, the catacombs were also labyrinthine, with innumerable alcoves and blind alleys. Though they both tried to keep up the pace, they lost time getting repeatedly lost and having to retrace their steps.
“Are you sure there’s a way out of here?” Seliah asked as they backtracked for the umpteenth time.
He slid her a sardonic look. “No. Although there’s usually a way in, else they couldn’t entomb the dead in the first place. It’s a special skill set and we keep a cadre of wizards whose sole responsibility is opening passages to various aspects of the house that require access.”
“This is a very strange place.”
He breathed a laugh. “You have no—.”
“At this juncture,” she interrupted, “you have to admit, I do have an idea.”
She had a point. And she actually knew more about him than anyone outside the cruel embrace of his immediate family did. He stood at a crossroads of equally likely looking stone corridors, their destinations hidden beyond the curving walls of the passageways. He had no idea how to navigate this maze.
“Are you all right?” she asked, peering at him in the gloom. “You don’t look good.”
“You say the nicest things.” Picking one corridor at random, he started jogging down it. “We have to keep moving. Time is ticking.”
“I think we’ve been down this one before.”
“No, we haven’t”
“I recognize it—look there’s the effigy of Elizabetah El-Adrel in her niche.”
“How do you know who it is?” He sure didn’t.
“Her name is etched on the plinth there.” Seliah was right. He remembered the scarlet-clad statue now.
“Fuck me,” he muttered, spinning on his heel to reverse direction, then colliding with Seliah. She caught him around the waist.
“Take some magic,” she urged.
“No time. Whatever my father did to delay them discovering our escape, it will run out soon.”
“Breathe,” she advised. “Think. Like you’re always telling me to do. Fyrdo said the house likes you and will show you the tunnel we need.”
“The house doesn’t like anyone,” he assured her.
“Your father had a reason to believe it does, that it will show you the tunnel. Maybe you just need to show it you like and trust it.”
He raised a brow. “I don’t trust the house.” Behind Seliah, the formerly blank face on the effigy of Elizabetah El-Adrel sharpened, pretty features contorting into an astonished and offended grimace. He nearly made a rude gesture at it. “Because the house is not trustworthy. It doesn’t like for people to leave,” he added, speaking directly to the stone statue. It stuck its tongue out at him. And people wondered why he was the way he was.
