Page 74 of Of Nine So Bold

A strange sensation like prickly feathers ghosted over my skin and then faded, leaving the sensation of somethinglessin the air, even if I hadn’t noticed anything before.

“Excellent,” Casimir said. “It is likely neutralized.”

“Likely?” Clay repeated.

Byron gave the blond man a tired look. “A warning spell was tied to a token tucked within the fallen tree. It was probably designed to alert those in the mines if someone was approaching. It shouldn’t trigger now when we pass.”

Dex nodded. “We move quickly, then. Just in case.”

As the others started forward, Clay shook his head, mumbling something about people hardly being reassuring.

Nervously, I trailed after them, straining my senses for any sign of someone on the path ahead. The forest gave no hint of that, though. Only the occasional rustle from the undergrowth broke the silence. I’d flinched at first, worried, but each sound proved time and again to merely be a small animal racing from our path, their brown fur darting swiftly beneath bushes or around trees. Bats swooped by overhead, squeaking intermittently, and nothing about the path seemed to say a mine lay at the other end with the giants my father and stepmother had imprisoned.

But then, maybe that was the way of things. Nature continued on while people inflicted horrors on one another, and even though it seemed like all the world should mark the nightmare of what we’d done, somehow… it didn’t. The sun still rose. The trees still grew. You wanted it to stop, somehow. To recoil in horror because what was happening was so wrong, and yet nature carried on.

Because it was bigger than you. Older. It would be here after all the horrors were gone.

Was it my imagination that the forest still felt hushed, though? That the air was sharper, clearer, like cut crystal through which everything held a strange sort of focus? That even though the bats squeaked and the little creatures scurried, somehow I couldfeelthe pain of all those trapped in the mines as if it was carried on the air?

Or would this seem like any other forest if I didn’t know what was waiting at the end of this path? Or if I still believed the stories I’d grown up hearing, that all these prisoners were my nation’s enemies? That they deserved this horror somehow?

Would I still feel this pain if I’d chosen to see the world the way my father had?

Ozias came up beside me and placed a hand on my shoulder. I glanced up at him, torn between relief and guilt for where my thoughts were going—and what might have been.

“Breathe, little mate,” he murmured to me, so low only Casimir could have heard. “Breathe.”

I nodded, trying to do as he said.

In the lead with Casimir and Byron at his side, Dex held up a hand and then glanced back at Ozias, nodding briefly for the bearded man to join them.

No way was I staying behind.

Dex’s mouth tightened a bit at the sight of me, but he only said, “Noises up ahead,” when we reached them.

Casimir pointed down the path and then to the left. “I hear at least two voices. Six heartbeats. They’re not moving much.”

“Soldiers,” Valeria murmured, coming up behind us.

The others nodded.

“Can you feel anything about the mines?” Dex asked Ozias. “Anything at all?”

My mate closed his eyes, and it only took a moment before I could feel the frustration coming from him.

“Nothing. Their little charms make the earth lie.”

“So what’s the play?” Clay prompted, coming closer. “Go in swords swinging or…?”

Dex cast a concerned look at the narrow track, but it was Casimir who spoke first. “Ruhl and I could remove them.”

“And if they raise the alarm first?” Roan countered.

“I can help,” I said before Casimir could respond.

A chorus of whispered protests rose, and frustration surged in me. Yes, fine, I wasn’t a fighter like them. But I was hardly helpless.

And every second we waited meant Niko spent more time with people who might kill him.

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