Page 58 of A Promise of Peridot
I rubbed at my neck until she settled on an orientation and continued forward.
“Doubt that,” Niclas huffed. “Your king is a sadist.”
I held a hand across my mouth to hide a snort. My eyes caught sight of Fedrik’s shaking shoulders.
“It’s horrible, isn’t it?” Kane asked, forcing Niclas to turn around and face him. “Someone should remove him from the throne.”
“Oh, they will,” vowed Niclas.
“Where’d you hear that?” I asked.
“From all over.”
So my assessment of a sailor or a smuggler had likely been right. We were lucky that our new companion wasn’t from Onyx and couldn’t recognize the terrible King Ravenwood on appearance alone.
“What kind of treasure brought you here?” Mari asked.
Niclas loosed a gruff laugh. “You don’t want to hear my story.”
“Correct,” Griffin mumbled.
“Sure we do,” Fedrik said at the same time, stepping around a boulder.
“After the south of Rose fell to the north, the Scarlet Queen punished everyone who fought against her. My family still lives in poverty due to her sanctions. But our most famed historians were said to have kept two ledgers, one of which contained the names of those who won the war for the north, and one which identified every southern dissenter by name. As you can imagine, the latter became quite valuable—a physical document of those responsible for the revolt.” Niclas’s grin was a flash of white in the torchlit darkness. “But my grandfather was a peaceful man. He never took a single northern life. He was a wind chime maker, for Stones’ sake. That second ledger will exonerate my family, and it’s here, in these caves.”
Niclas’s plight was more honorable than anything I had been expecting. “Why would the ledger be in here?”
“You know the name Drake Alcott?”
I shook my head.
“He was the most brilliant thief to ever live. And from Pitney, too. More than a burglar, this man was anartist. He stole from lord and criminal alike and evaded capture for over forty years. He’s one of the only men to make it through Reaper’s Cavern, and he told the men of our city that when he saw the Peridot pirate’s treasure, it contained the ledger.”
“Why didn’t he take it?” Fedrik asked.
“He didn’t take anything from the cavern. Wasn’t in it for the gold. Just the glory.”
“What happened to him?”
“He eventually made a misstep. I heard he was sent to Hemlock Isle five years ago, so he’s probably long dead. Careful,” Niclas cautioned, and I looked down just in time to see my foot nearly crush a human rib cage.
“Bleeding Stones.”I walked around the fragile skeleton and picked up the pace, adrenaline making my palms itch each time I remembered how deep underground we were.
“At least we’ve made it farther than that sorry—”
A guttural rumble erupted below our feet, shocking the breath from my lungs.
Kane was beside me in a heartbeat, and I gripped his arm without thinking as the walls shook and roared, my heart spasming in my chest.
“What’s going on?” Mari shrieked.
Small rocks unearthed from the larger stones around us and fell to the cave floor like hail.
“The cavern is moving,” Niclas said, unnervingly calm.
The roaring grew louder behind us.
I spun just in time to hear the groaning of shifting stones and watch with stunned dread as a slab of pure gray crashed down on the tunnel behind us, slicing off Mari’s luster path—and our only way out—like a knife through marbled meat.
