Page 67 of A Blade of Blood and Shadow
Gritting my teeth, I bent my knees and threw myself toward the next column.
I knew immediately that I wasn’t going to make it when my body sank like a stone.
Panic like I’d never known surged through my veins, but then something hard and heavy tackled me from behind.
I grunted as Kaden’s momentum carried me forward, sending us careening into the stone. We landed ungracefully on the column, a tangle of limbs and leather. His strong body curled around mine, and I closed my eyes in relief.
For several seconds, I just lay there, waiting for my heart rate to return to normal. Then Kaden’s warmth vanished. His hand went to the crook of my elbow, tugging me to my feet.
I opened my mouth to tell him there wasn’t room for both of us, but before I could, he thrust out those magnificent wings and glided us across the final expanse.
We landed roughly on the ledge, and I stumbled out ofhis grip. My body was shaking so badly from the adrenaline, I knew I wouldn’t have made it on my own.
The merpeople’s shrieks started up again, but I felt nothing but grim satisfaction as I stepped into the small alcove that sheltered the stone pedestal.
A huge metal chest was perched on the pedestal, the sides blackened and pitted with age. All along the edges, strange runes glinted in the low light, and the pulse of magic was so intense that my bones seemed to hum right along with it.
Unlike the power that imbued every inch of the Watchman’s fortress, this magic didn’t make me recoil. No. This magic felt compatible with my own — as though it were a part of me.
“Are those . . .”
“Coranthe runes,” Kaden answered. He sounded slightly breathless.
I wet my lips. Although I’d never seen these runes, I knew that if I placed my hand on the chest, it would open for me just as Caladwyn’s drawer had.
Instinctually, I reached for the latch, but Kaden caught my wrist.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “We don’t know what sort of enchantments might be triggered if we try to open it.”
“This is a Coranthe chest,” I said. “Which means that bookmustbe in there.”
The book was the whole reason we’d come to the in-between — why we’d risked our lives battling the Vikkarni and the merpeople.
I knew Kaden was still hesitant, but he didn’t say a word as he released me. Slowly, I placed my trembling fingers on either side of the lid.
All at once, the hum of magic ceased. I could sense it rubbing up against my own, greeting it like a friendly cat.
I shuddered at the strangeness of it and gingerly unhooked the latch. I folded it back and lifted the lid, and the scent of mildew wafted up to greet me.
Inside, nestled on a bed of what looked like dried leaves, lay an unassuming black book barely as large as my hand.
“That’sit?” Kaden rumbled, his tone slightly indignant as I reached for the tome.
As my fingers brushed the fraying spine, the magic in me seemed to sigh. But then I sensed something else approaching — something dark and powerful.
I froze at the scuff of boots on stone, jerking my head up as my free hand went for a dagger.
There, standing just inside the little alcove, was a man more terrifying than either the merpeople or the Vikkarni.
His skin looked as though it had been made a size too big —his flesh rotten and sagging along the planes of his skull. His eyes were two bloodied pits —or rather, his eyesocketswere. His eyes were gone, I realized — gouged out with a dull knife or perhaps eaten by vultures.
I wondered if Kaden had known the Watchman was blind and if it had been part of his bargain with the gods.
The Watchman was clothed in moth-eaten furs, and his hair and beard were the color of old bones. That hair hung in long matted locks decorated with carved wooden beads. In his withered hand he held a driftwood staff with a slightly hooked end.
Kaden had said the Watchman was neither alive nor dead, though he looked as though death had come to claim him on several occasions.
“Whodarestrespass here?” The Watchman’s voice wasso low and unearthly that it took me a moment to decipher his words.
