Page 98 of Kept to Kill
The fog was thick as the outline of a large ship came into view. They climbed aboard, Quin thanking the gods they were alive. He hadn’t voiced his fears to the others, but there had been times he’d thought they would all die out in the forests, becoming just more piles of bones like the ones they’d found littering the roads.
He couldn’t understand why no one knew what was happening. Why was no one in Kitore talking about it? They must know.
A man on the deck approached them.
‘I’m the captain,’ he said with a flourish. ‘Where do you come from?’
‘Kitore,’ Mal ground out menacingly, causing the man to take an abrupt step back.
Quin put his hand on Mal’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze, a silent command to calm down.
‘We journeyed from Kitore.’
The captain looked surprised. ‘No one’s come from that city in a long while, not this way.’
‘Do you have news from the Ice Plains?’
The captain grimaced. ‘Nothing good. The portals through to the Underhill collapsed, they say. Some of the poor blighters got out before the rest were sealed off. Went to Kitore for help, I heard, but that’s all I know.’ He shook his head. ‘Don’t know what’s happening in this realm.’
‘Do you have any cabins?’ Bastian asked, changing the subject.
‘Aye, if you can share. I’ll have one of the men show you down. There’s a galley.’ The captain paused, his eyes narrowing as if it had only just entered his mind that they might be paupers. His demeanor suggested that they’d be cast over the side if they were. ‘If you can pay.’
‘We can,’ Quin said, drawing out a jingling pouch and handing it to the captain.
A sailor approached and took them down a ladder and through a hallway to a smaller stately room that had two small beds, a table, and a couple of chairs.
‘You’ll have to share,’ he grumbled. ‘There’s wine there. Go to the galley for your evening meal.’
Quin nodded and the men left. All four of them threw their bags down and heaved a collective sigh of relief, Lily and Bastian sitting down heavily on one of the beds while the other two sat on the chairs by a small table.
‘I don’t want to count my chickens,’ Bastian said, ‘but it looks like we got out of there alive.’
Quin gave him a look. ‘Why did you come to this realm?’
Bastian grimaced. ‘I’d been on the Mount a long time.’ Then he glanced at Lily. ‘It’s not unheard of for gods to live as mortals.’
‘Why did you come back?’ Lily asked, her eyes searching.
‘There’s nothing on the Mount for me now,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘There are things I value more here.’ He turned to Quin. ‘How long before we get back to the Westport,’ he asked, ‘assuming we aren’t slain before we get there?’
‘Five days. The currents and the winds are in our favor,’ Quin replied, and Bastian nodded, lying down on the bed.
‘I’m going to rest. Coming back from the dead is tiring work,’ he stated airily, drawing Lily down into his arms and holding her close. She let him and closed her eyes, clearly as fatigued as Bastian was.
Quin sat in the chair, leaning back in it and trying to find his calm. After days on high alert, he was finding it difficult. Mal disappeared out of the room, mumbling something about food. Bastian and Lily seemed to have fallen asleep, the solitude giving Quin time to think on their situation.
He didn’t know what Lily was feeling now. Would she ask him to unbind her when they got back to the camp? Would Mal and Bastian let her leave if she wished it? Would that even be safest for her?
It was clear that there was much more going on now than just the portal wards failing. That was just the beginning and Quin couldn’t help but think on the original purpose of the Dark Army. Could it be that the wards had failed before? Or, perhaps, that they had not existed once?
He’d studied all of the old tomes in the Brothers’ archives in preparation for becoming Commander, and the oldest texts didn’t mention the wards at all. Maybe there hadn’t been any. That would explain why the Dark Army had come to be, and why they had not been needed to protect the Realms in so long; why they were now mercenaries instead of sentinels.
But there were other questions as well. If all the portals further north were gone, where were the Dark Realm beasts coming from? A new portal hadn’t opened in many, many years. Could it be that one had been birthed somewhere in the northern wilds?
Mal returned a moment later.
‘Heard some of the sailors,’ he said quietly, so as not to wake Bastian and Lily, who seemed so calm on the bed together. ‘The Underhill was overrun. Portals collapsed. Many fae died fighting. Ones that escaped went to Kitore.’
