Page 60 of The Storm of the Empire

The ship was dirty, full of smells overwhelming to my dragon senses. I didn’t know how Luka did it, going from the palace to places like this without hesitation.

We were on our fifth or sixth trip to the hull when we saw males in chains being taken down to a different part of the ship. My eyes went wide at the sight. Who knew these cargo ships carried such diverse cargo?

“Keep walking,” Luka ordered under his breath, nudging me on.

“Were they prisoners?” I whispered as we put our boxes down.

“Later,” he scolded.

I huffed. I was getting tired of all the orders, but if we were really going to set sail with this ship, I might need to get used to it. Nothing would change once we were out on the water.

The fae loading the cargo were thinning out, and I assumed the ship was almost loaded. Luka glanced up the stairs and down the corridor. “We should look around.”

“Now?”

Luka looked at me meaningfully. “We don’t know when we’ll get another chance—trust me.”

I nodded, and we began to inspect what we could see in the small hold area. Luka found a bar to lever lids open, and we went through several boxes, turning up nothing but goods being shipped for sale.

“None of these are marked,” he said almost to himself.

“What do you mean?”

“When I found the eggs, the crates were marked with a sun symbol. It’s a symbol I tracked through the temple. It was very similar to another I’d seen on…”

I tried to meet his eyes, but he looked away. “On what, Luka?”

“On the Dragon’s Bane I used to deliver,” he said carefully. “It’s how I know it’s all connected to the same group.”

I dropped down to a seat on a crate and studied him.

“What?”

“I don’t know. It’s just easy to forget how involved in all this you have been.”

Luka frowned. “Only out of necessity.”

“And for Nyx, right?” I pushed.

“Right.”

I folded my arms, wishing I had a week to process everything.

Luka moved in, pulling me up to face him. “Hey, you aren’t doubting me are you?”

“No, it’s just a lot to take in.” I rested my forehead on his chest.

“I know, but we will get to the bottom of it, I promise.”

“Okay.”

“Come on. We need to search a few more rooms down here before they close them up.”

We worked our way through room after room. Nothing stood out, and I got no sense of the eggs in this space. But with so much export down here, it was harder to isolate the sense of opal anyway.

“What about those prisoners? Why are they here?” I asked, remembering that was yet another thing that was a big question. Nothing about this strange underworld Luka seemed to know so well sat right with me.

“I have no idea,” he admitted. “They were collected from the temple while I was looking around this morning.”

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