Rapture by L.V. Lane
CHAPTER EIGHT
Winter
“WE NEED TO get inside,” I say.
“You are bored with this life,” Jacob says, “and wish to pass into the afterlife? That is a war tribe. I am a lone warrior. You are a fairy who arms herself with a toothpick to battle orcs. The odds are not in our favor.”
I send him a withering glare, yet I cannot discount the sentiments with which he speaks.
Our odds are not good, as he so eloquently stated. Our odds are nil. And yet if there is a portal in there, as I suspect there must be, then there is every chance the keystone will be taken through the portal and we will lose it.
We stand at an impasse upon the wharf, where orcs dressed for battle pass no more than a hundred paces away. Panic rises within me, flashbacks to the day Sendar fell. My stomach roils, thinking about how often I gave blood that day, over and over until I was so weak, I could barely stand.
I would have given Andrich more. I would have let him drain me, but the warrior refused.
Then I fled to Sanctum. It was only the belief that he would not want me to die that had kept my feet moving, taking me away.
He died saving me, and I was inconsolable and desolate that my brave warrior was gone. After, they gave me to Leander. My blood was precious. It could make all the difference in the war. I was strong for the sake of my people, for the sweet Breeders with young. For the caring Feeders, who gave their all to keep the warriors fighting. For the lower Blood, who did not yet have the potency I bore.
But I was a shell.
I am still a shell.
“We need to follow,” I say, injecting every bit of strength I possess into those words.
His lips tug up in a smile that does not reach his eyes. “Fine, mistress. But I will need to do this next part alone.”
Without waiting for a reply, he pivots and strides off.
I stare after him, stupefied. Is he abandoning me and the quest? I am baffled that he can.
He doesn’t look back nor trouble himself with my safety.
Alone? I frown. He is not walking away as I first presumed. He is cutting a path toward the side of the warehouse.
I remain rooted, a lone woman, without even the comfort of a dagger—toothpick, I amend—given he liberated it from my possession before we entered the portal.
Alone and vulnerable.
There is no one to save me from the thugs. I am powerful, yet none of that power is mine to wield.
My lips tremble. A shake begins in my fingertips and passes over my body like a destructive wave.
He said he would do this alone, but I must follow him if I am to survive.
Yet I hesitate, fooling myself into thinking that he will be coming back. My mind digresses into scenarios where I am slain upon the docks by a cutthroat seeking coin. Any cutthroat would soon change their mind after a glimpse of my hair.
Slave.
My ears would seal my fate. Fairies are rare. Any captured are delivered straight to the Blighten stronghold for interrogation.
My hands clench, forming fists so tight that my nails cut into my palms.
The pain centers me.
The orcs continue to unload and march into a warehouse that cannot possibly hold them all.
Ahead, Jacob slips into a narrow alley, disappearing from my sight.
I follow, crossing the wharf at a brisk pace, fighting the urge to run after him and the safety he represents.
Damn him and his alone.
My heart thuds wildly in my chest by the time I arrive at the entrance to the alley.
There is a body upon the floor, an orc facedown and dead.
A scream bubbles up in my throat, cut off as a warm hand closes over my mouth. “You took a long time, mistress,” Jacob says.
I cannot get enough air in through my nose, and my vision turns to sparkling dots.
As his hand eases away, I suck hoarse breaths into my starving lungs.
Only now do I realize what he said. He expected me to follow. He was merely going ahead to dispense with an orc.
The black walls of the narrow alley in which we stand seems to close in on me.
He killed an orc. Alone. How does an Alpha kill an orc alone so swiftly?
The cloudy sky far above is dark and heavy with snow. The icy flakes drift down, settling against my cloak, my nose, and my cheeks.
“Did you see her?” he asks, arousing me from my contemplation of his unnatural skill.
I shake my head, frowning. “See who?”
“The child,” he says. “I’m certain she is a fairy.”
I can’t wrap my mind around his statement. Fairy? Child? What is he talking about?
“We have a mission,” I repeat, trying to cling to solid rock as the ground crumbles beneath me.
“A selfish fucking mission aimed at saving only your own people!”
His words cut deeper than any orc blade. He is not wrong. I wish he were.
“We have lost so much,” I say, feeling sick and hopeless.
“We have a fucking duty to the worlds you have exposed through your carelessness. We have a duty to the child with the too solemn face.”
Is asking me or telling me that the child is now the priority?
Is this Jacob bent upon saving another slave?
I only know that if I don’t do this, I have lost him in a way that cannot be mended.
I am conflicted.
And yet my clarity of thought is crystal clear.
A child? A fairy child?
“Show me,” I say.
He leads me along the alley in the way that shows his familiarity. He has been to Bleakness many times. Once as a slave. On the other occasions, he was freeing them against the wishes of his patrol master.
“It is the roughest part of town,”he said back at the inn. “It is where they keep the slaves.”
Perhaps this warehouse is part of that terrible trade?
The passage comes to a T-junction. We slip around the corner to the left, just as a cry comes from the street.
The dead orc has been noticed.
“They are coming,” I say, my breath sawing unsteadily.
“I know,” he replies.
He stops at a thick grille set into the ground against the wall. Footsteps approach, building a sense of urgency.
“What are you doing?” I hiss as he grabs the grille and heaves.
The front side lifts like a flap, and he props it against the wall. He cannot mean for us to go in there, can he? All I can see is darkness. It might drop for miles!
He takes my wrists, lifting me up, dangling me over the gaping hole before lowering me inside as I thrash and mutter threats under my breath.
The footsteps are drawing ever closer, setting my mind and body into a state of riot.
My feet touch a rough stone floor before my wrists pass the level of the alley. Jacob motions me to move aside. It is dark, and I can’t see a thing, but no sooner do I shuffle tentatively to the side does he drop down beside me, swinging the heavy grille shut with a faint creak.
His hand closes over my mouth like he is expecting me to make a sound. I’m scared spitless and couldn’t get a squeak past my parched throat if I tried. The footsteps stop, and a murmured conversation follows.
The alley was dark, but this underground hole is black as pitch.
As the voices and footsteps fade away, the fingers wrapped over my mouth slowly peel away.
“Shield your eyes, mistress,” he whispers.
A hiss and crackle precedes bright light leaking around my fingers. As I slowly ease them away, I find Jacob crouched to fit beneath the low ceiling of the narrow passage, holding a torch.
“It is not far,” he says and, brushing past me, stalks off.
I hasten after him, wincing as my boots clatter against the stone flooring.
He throws a glare over his shoulder.
Fairies are supposed to be nimble on their feet. They are also supposed to be playful tricksters and gregarious, yet I am none of those things. I seem to recall a time when I was playful, wore the prettiest dresses to balls, where I would delight in teasing handsome men and watching lust shine in their eyes.
I had loved openly then, with both my heart and my body.
The memory holds no potency, like a faded transcript upon old parchment that you need to squint at, and even then, can make out no more the occasional word.
He suddenly douses the torch, sending us into blackness.
“We are here,” he says.
Before us is an underground chamber carved into the black rocks of Bleakness, with a double row of thick support columns bearing flicking sconces. Daylight spills into the chamber from the left, where orcs enter via a long stone ramp. They march past us and into the portal on our right.
Only those with the strongest magic can call a portal. Yet clearly such magic has been used to create a portal here in this underground cavern of an otherwise unremarkable warehouse on Bleakness’ wharf. From where we hide in the shadows of a giant pillar, we have ringside seats as the orcs disappear through the shimmering portal.
What lies on the other side, I cannot say.
I’m less interested in the orcs than the child standing beside the portal. Flanking her is a wall of towering orc guards. Power emanates from her. And as Jacob suggested, she is indeed a fairy. Plain brown pants and tunic are covered by a fur-trimmed royal blue cloak. Her drab clothing sets off the brightness of hair a deeper shade of red-gold than mine. There is no mistaking the delicately pointed ear I spot peeping out between the curls.
I am shaken by her presence here.
Where did she come from?
Where are her parents?
Certainly, she’s not related to the very human man who holds her right hand.
Her left hand clasps something that hangs around her neck. Within her tightly clenched fingers is the keystone, I am sure.
We have found the keystone. We have also found a fairy child.
How is she not afraid? How long must she have been indoctrinated in their culture that this scene stirs no fear?
Kotan are not the only race to include fairies, although we lost contact with others of our kind after the fall of Sendar when we retreated to Sanctum. Did our carelessness with the keystone bring other fairies into suffering at the hands of the Blighten?
I have no answers, and all the while, the orc army marches past us, two by two, into the shimmering light. As they near the sacred barrier, they seamlessly place a hand upon the orc’s shoulder in front of them so that the chain does not break.
“Do you think they will take her into the portal?” I ask in a whisper.
“She has the keystone?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “I believe she does.”
“Then yes, I believe they will go through,” he replies.
As if in answer to that question, the child, her overseer, and the orc guards slide seamlessly into the line.
Beside me, Jacob emits a low growl that causes the hairs on the back of my neck to rise.
The child shows no hesitation as she nears the boundary. Her overseer leans forward to grasp the cloak of the orc in front, the child holding his other hand.
She turns, and just before she is sucked into the vortex, her eyes meet mine.
Recognition flares on her face, and then she is gone.
“Fuck!” Jacob growls. “We cannot get her. We cannot fucking get her, not with so many fucking orcs.”
He is right. We also cannot get the keystone.
My heart rate rises to an erratic thud as I understand what we must do.
The end of the orc line comes into view. Following are horse-drawn carts laden with supplies. Human slaves, harsh metal collars at their throats, are interspersed between the carts, along with club brandishing overseers.
I shudder. The slave collars are heinous enough, but iron has a weakening effect upon fairies. Should I be fitted with such a collar, I would feel unwell and likely blister at my throat.
Finally, at the very end, three empty cage wagons.
A great creaking emanates from our left. The natural light wanes and then ceases as the great doorway closes.
My eyes shift to Jacob, settling on the tic that thumps in his jaw.
I thought he might force the matter. I almost wish that he would. None of the former Blood entrusted with maintaining the keystone’s whereabouts ever mentioned a child, nor anyone with the ability to generate portals.
It feels like a new and terrifying development in this already desolate war.
She has entered the shimmering oval. Now both the girl and the keystone are lost, along with our opportunity. It may take us weeks or even months to travel to her new location by horse.
It might not be possible at all if they have traveled to a parallel world.
He pushes away from the wall. “This is fucking suicidal,” he mutters like he knows what I am thinking.
I am terrified. I have just watched hundreds of orcs enter the portal. Depending on what awaits on the other side, we will likely be conspicuous. They are moving with purpose like they will just keep on going. But we can’t be sure.
The Chosen will expect me to follow. If I return empty-handed, they will question me in ways I cannot help but answer.
As my opportunity disappears through the portal one orc at a time, it is the child and not the wrath of the Chosen that finally sways me.
Turning to Jacob, I say, “We must go through.”
His eyes meet mine for only a moment before he nods.
The only light within the chamber now are the weak sconces and the sparkling gold and blue from the portal. We circumvent the room, keeping to shadows, my boots barely making a whisper against the stone floor, until we arrive at the pillar behind them that is nearest to the portal. Here, we watch as the cage wagons roll past, followed by the final two club bearing overseers.
As the last men step into the glowing sphere, we break from the shadows.
She saw me,the little voice inside my head taunts. The child stared right at me before she passed through with a look of recognition. The hood of my cloak was drawn forward to hide my bright hair, but my face still holds the features of a fairy. Just as I instinctively recognized her as a fairy, even before I saw her ears.
I know nothing about this child who was so at ease with orcs.
Suddenly, I am certain she will raise the alarm.
As this terrifying possibility assaults me, we crash in behind.
