Silence. They had escaped. Barely.
“Magnus,” she said through panting gasps. “Wait.” She ran to catch him, and they both slumped against the wall with their shoulders heaving. Nadine threw off her pack and let the heavy thing hit the floor with a dull thud. The barbarian would be carrying it for the next jaunt through the tunnel. As soon as she could breathe again, Nadine knelt to dig for water, the only thing she needed more than a swig of whiskey. She brought the skin to her lips and sucked down a greedy gulp before offering it to Magnus. He took it. At least their load would be lighter. They had better find more water soon.
The second he pulled the skin from his lips, Nadine bolted to her feet. “What the hell were you doing?”
Magnus wiped his face with the back of his arm. “You offered it to me.”
Nadine glared at him. “Did you fall off that shelf, barbarian? Or did you jump?” She thought back to all the crazy things she’d seen this man do in the short time she’d known him. Her question didn’t feel ridiculous. Not in light of all that. “Don’t lie to me.”
Magnus frowned at her. “I’ve never lied to you, woman.”
No. She supposed he hadn’t. And yet he hadn’t answered her question yet either. Why did she feel like he didn’t need to—like she’d known the answer the moment he’d hit the water?
He tilted his head at her. “And what about you? I thought you planned to master a gegatu, not an arachnai. Did you mean to ride it straight to the gates of . . . what do you call it? Oblivion?”
Nadine poked a finger to his chest. “I was trying to keep it from escaping. I didn’t have time to think.”
He stared down at her, his only defense a simple shrug. “Yeah, well, neither did I.”
Nadine narrowed her eyes at him. Something in her heart wrinkled. He had jumped. Why? Why would any sane man do that?
The silence stretched between them long enough for Magnus to shift awkwardly. He hid it by looking her up and down. “You’re sure you’re not hurt?”
His question sent a jolt of awareness through her. The Eye!
Nadine plunged her hand into the neckline of her tunic. She plucked the pendant out so quickly she could have snapped the chain in her haste. The golden thing was intact with a faint glint of magic that told her she was holding no mere piece of jewelry. She relaxed a bit before moaning with despair. “The others will be without it now.”
Magnus clicked his tongue. “It’s on cooldown, anyway, kandiri. Don’t worry about it. They have each other, and I suspect Azolirum chose the path he did because it was the safest. Or quickest.”
Nadine heard his words and took them to heart, but she kept her gaze on the Eye. She fingered the cool piece. It felt different when it was ready to be used. She couldn’t describe exactly how, but it was obvious to her. Like the charge in the air before a sandstorm.
“Can I see it?” Magnus asked.
Nadine looked up. He was watching her with innocent expectancy, as though he’d asked to admire a hair pin. But this was the Eye. Nadine had only ever handed it over to one other person. And then, only on one occasion. She realized suddenly that in this moment, Nadine’s trust in Magnus equaled that of the trust she’d placed in Samar. Perhaps it even surpassed it. How had such a thing come to pass? She was taking it off and dropping the Eye in Magnus’s hand before she could come up with an answer.
She watched as he studied the amulet with an intensity Nadine rarely saw in him. His face was usually lit with an almost childlike amusement. Not now. He turned the Eye over and stretched out the chain, not saying a word.
Eventually, Nadine began looking around the tunnel through the little halo of light their torch let off. She was struck again by the peril of their circumstances. They were cut off from their group. Their guides. Most of their resources. They might as well be in Yudvir’s boot, and all they really had was each other. She glanced back at Magnus. “What do we do now?”
Magnus answered without looking up. “I think this path will lead us back to the others if we continue on it.”
“Why would you think that?”
Magnus nodded at the pack, and Nadine squinted down at what she’d thought before to be a mess of splattered blood. She squatted for a closer look. Someone, probably Azolirum with those sharp claws of his, had drawn a crude sort of map on the canvas of her pack using blood for ink. Nadine could barely make sense of the thing. She glanced back up at Magnus. “This is a mess.”
Magnus shrugged. “That’s because the path zigzags. I’ve been talking with Azolirum, and he’s as eager as any of us to complete our mission quickly. Wherever that shelf we fought on lead, it would have gotten us to the Soul Thieves faster than this route.” Magnus’s fingers folded around the Eye, and he squeezed it. Hard. “Much faster.”
Nadine bolted to her feet and threw her hands around Magnus’s balled up fist. “Stop that. Give it back.”
He practically shoved the thing at her, and Nadine hissed a curse at him in her hurry to get it back around her neck. She almost missed the way he turned, no, hid his face from her by looking toward the darkened end of the tunnel. Nadine pulled her hair out from under the metal chain and settled it with a huff of dissipating irritation. The underground hum of the mountain filled her ears, smoothing the silence between them as Nadine studied the turned away side of his jaw, watched the way the muscles worked.
Curiosity stirred within her, but it was more than that. A host of unanswered questions, which had been building upon one another in the weeks since she’d met him, rushed to the forefront of her mind. Azolirum wasn’t the only one in a godsforsaken hurry to complete this mission. She thought of the strange things she’d heard, like the horde king’s comment about how Magnus had lost a lover down in the pits. How Magnus himself at times said things that didn’t make sense, but made her heart twist all the same.
Nadine fingered the lancet hanging at her belt as she searched for the right words. She opened her mouth twice before she found her voice. “Why are you here, Magnus?”
Her words must’ve surprised him, because he turned his whole body toward her and gave her a quizzical look. “Why are any of us here?”
Nadine swallowed and tried again. “I mean, why are you here? Instead of your brother? Instead of any other Dokiri man?”
Her skin went hot as the answer she wanted to hear spoke into her mind. Say it’s for me.
But that was stupid. It wasn’t really her having those thoughts. That was some silly part that had somehow survived her childhood. A part driven by hope, purity, and the belief that things could be exactly what they looked like, what she wanted them to be, simply because she wanted them to be so. Because they felt good. Because they were good.
That wasn’t Nadine. That was weakness. And this life had taught her over and over again that weakness was an opportunity for pain. It would always lead to pain.
Still, she had to know. She had to understand this man before her who was always the first to drink questionable water, to walk out on thin ice, to go down on the ropes leading to nests of bloodthirsty arachnai.
“What was the reason you spoke of that day at the vault? You said you had more reason than most to be here.” She steeled herself with a breath. “What was the more?”