Page 58 of Into The Rift

“We’re still going to kill Linnius. I think it’s the only way.”

“Kill him? But how? We can’t even leave this room.”

“Shh,” he said, tightening his hold on my shoulders. “We’re fine now, and you were brave. Time to think more about this after we rest. Let me help you undress and lie down.”

Chapter Eighteen

I let him do whatever he wanted to me, and he told me I was suffering a bit from shock. Maybe I was, because I couldn’t seem to think clearly. He soon stripped off my clothes and helped me lie back down, covering me with a warm blanket, and I turned on my side and curled up, hardly even knowing when he joined me.

Hours later, I woke up, wrapped in his arms. I’d been having some crazy dreams, and he was soothing me and telling me to go back to sleep. I closed my eyes and did as he said.

The next day, the smell of food woke me up as Niko brought a tray of things over to the bed. He gave me hot tea, which went a long way to restoring me, and after a while, I ate some bread and cheese, along with some little cakes. I was shocked to find out it was already evening and I’d slept the day away.

Then, feeling restored, I checked out my clothes, which were mostly unusable. Niko got me a robe from somewhere outside the room—he had the door open and was moving back and forth freely—and brought me some things so I could clean my teeth and brush out my hair, which was all in tangles.

I still didn’t need to shave all that often, though I noticed Niko had done it and he smelled fresh like he’d bathed recently too. Lord Miaas knocked on the wall by the door frame and Niko told him to come in.

“I have everything ready,” he said.

Niko nodded. “Good. I don’t think he’ll be expecting anything so soon.”

“Wait, are we going after him now?”

“I am, yes. You’ll stay here until I come for you.”

“No, I won’t let you leave me behind. Please, Niko. I can’t stay here and just hope you’ll make it back. I’d go crazy.”

Niko looked at Miaas and he shrugged and smiled. “May as well let him go, Dominiko. He did well against the attackers last night.”

“All right,” he said, bad temperedly. “But don’t you get in my way, and I mean it. You do what I say, when I say it. And if you get yourself in trouble, you’re on our own. Is that understood?”

If he hadn’t spent the hours since we arrived here caring for me so tenderly, I might have been a little offended. But I had heard Davos speak to Blake that way so many times. Not to mention my father to my omak. I knew he was just worried and trying to make me back off. I nodded dutifully and made a big cross with my fingers across my chest,

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” I said.

“Well, what the hell does that mean?”

“It means I hear you and I promise. On my life.”

He gave me one more frown. “Don’t say that again. I don’t like it.”

“Yes, Niko.”

“Don’t take any stupid risks, all right? I don’t want to have to come after you.”

“I thought you said you wouldn’t do that. You said I was on my own.”

“Don’t tell me what I said. This is what I’m saying.”

He gave me one more dark look—I may have overdone the meek attitude a bit, and he was suspicious—and we began to get ready.

“We’ll use the tunnels again,” Niko told me. “They run in several directions from this house as well. All of this was Itaka’s doing over the years.”

“How did she manage all that?”

“She had the help of the old emperor. They used the ones from her house to keep down the gossip and jealousy of the other wives. Most of them go from her home to the emperor’s palace. But she had a few extra ones dug that she never mentioned to her husband. The one we took last night to Miaas’s house, for example, and some branching off from there, back to the main courtyard and the palace. They’ll have found some of them last night, though I blocked most of the main ones with that explosive. Hopefully, they won’t have discovered the others yet.”

“Why haven’t you mentioned this before? You said you didn’t have a plan.”

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