Page 26 of Princess Broken

“And the others down here—like Ebony and Gracen?”

“It varies,” he says, with no further explanation.

I’m exhausted, too tired to push for more information right now. I’m spent from the excess of emotions and the events of the past days and nights. But despite my obvious fatigue and hunger, my body is humming with electrical awareness, as if the four males’ bodies are generators powering mine.

No matter the source, I can’t deny that my internal humming increases when all four men are near—like the are now—as the five of us pass through a tight hall.

Following Flame, I enter their gymnasium, another massive room, this one as high as the cavern were we met the two female vampires.

I spin around, taking it all in.

Phil leaps up, and I gasp as he rises out of sight. He grabs onto two stalagmites at least four stories up from the ground. Gripping their points, he uses the two mineral spikes like a chin up bar, rapidly pulling his bulk up and down.

“Show off,” Crusher mutters under his breath. “We’ve got a fully equipped weight room back there.” He gestures to the side.

“Basketball and volleyball courts are this way.” Flame lights and then tosses yet another match, and it lands in a brass urn far to the side. “Do you play?”

I shake my head.

“I’ll teach you.” Blade grins.

Dropping down, Phil lands barely three feet away from me.

I jump, annoyed at myself for continuing to reveal my nerves to this man.

“What’s the point of teaching her to play sports?” He frowns. “She’s too small. Plus, she’ll make the teams uneven.”

“Squash court is through there,” Flame says, ignoring Phil.

“Squash?” I ask, then remember that there were courts for this racquet sport at the Academy, near the palace—the place where they train the King’s Guard as well as vampire children, rare as they are. When I attended the Academy I was already seventeen and yet the youngest in attendance at the time.

“Secret passage to the pool through here.” Blade reaches for my hand, stopping short of taking it.

I reach out and take it before his arm falls, and my fingers tingle at the contact with his, my body heating as he leads me through a very narrow tunnel ascending steeply.

“Where is the pool?” I ask as I hear and feel the other three men arguing about whether to follow Blade and me up the narrow tunnel.

We rise for what feels like two hundred feet, and the air turns humid as the unmistakable sound of rushing water fills the air, but all I see ahead of me is darkness—and Blade. And I sense Flame behind us.

Blade stops.

Flame lights a match, holding it as he nudges me toward a dark spot in the cave floor. No, it’s not a dark spot, it’s a hole!

“Look down,” he says with a huge grin on his face.

Leaning forward, I look through the opening that’s close to circular in shape, and maybe three feet in diameter. My eyes adjust. Below us, through the narrow aperture and down at least two hundred feet, I see water. A light mist rises up through the hole, presumably created by the churning of water I hear falling and creating ripples in the water’s surface.

“Do you really jump through this hole to get down there?”

Flame grins. He lights another match and lets it drop, but it extinguishes before striking the water.

“How do you get back out?” I saw how easily Phil leapt up four stories, and I’ve jumped at least that high myself, but not while coming out of water and not aiming for such a small hole.

“Scared?” Lighting another match Flame winks.

“There’s another entrance.” Blade’s voice comes from behind me, before I can respond to Flame’s teasing dare.

“You okay?” Blade asks me.

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