Page 85 of The Lost Prince
“L?” I whispered.
His head turned to me, and we locked eyes for just a moment. There was a flash of anger, but regret quickly replaced it. Was this why I hadn’t seen him around the palace in a long time? Had he been banished to the mud quarter for associating with me?
I shook my head. That was ridiculous. Wasn’t it?
“Go! What are you doing?”
I left L and Mari’s mother as we sprinted down an alley. The girl was fast and took branching alleys and twisting turns so quickly that I soon lost my bearings. If I lost either Shava or the girl, I’d be utterly lost.
“Just up here. Between the two rows.”
A large boulder jutted up from the ground, separating two more ‘rows.’ The mud quarter had some kind of order to it, but the streets were anything but clean and straight. At least it made sense to the girl leading me through it.
“Under the boulder?” Shava asked, almost disappointed at how obvious it was.
Mari huffed. “The crack is small and narrow. Not many people can get under it.” She eyed my taller, lanky frame with incredulity.
Little brat. If she thought I was hauling her ass to the Seat or feeding her, she had another thing coming.
“Right,” Shava said tiredly. “Thanks, Mari. I—”
WHAM.
Mari’s eyes rolled back into her head as she fell perfectly into my arms. My fist didn’t even hurt from nailing her in the jaw, a footnote I’d read once in the archives indicating it was the preferred striking area if you wanted to knock someone out.
“What thefuck,Zephyr?”
A bolt of unease shot through me as she stepped towards me, hands raised. My bloodmagick flared gold in response to my adrenaline, but I’d anticipated her anger. That’s why I had to hold the girl in my arms, like a shield.
“You didn’t want her following,” I protested. “We can leave her in the tunnel and she will be safe. Everyone wins, yes?”
A war waged in her eyes as she stared me down. If I thought my little display of bloodmagick earlier would cow her, I was mistaken. She wasn’t afraid of me. She never had been. “Fine. But fuck you.”
She turned on her heel and bent down at the rock’s base, uncovering a large (yet narrow) crack.
“Repeatedly,” I murmured back as she disappeared into the void with a grunt and shuffle.
“Pass Mari down next,” came Shava’s echoing voice.
The girl was so skinny it was easy to fit her down the hole; the difficult part was not knocking her head against the rocks.
Then it was my turn.
My stomach flipped and twisted as the memory of nearly dying in the cave in the mountains came back to me. I closed my eyes and fought through it.
Shava is here with you. It is safe. She is already on the other side. Grit your teeth and do it.
So I did it.
ChapterTwenty
The tunnel was dark, but my thoughts were darker.
“Is that … Is the entire mud quarter like that?” I asked as we gingerly traversed the uneven, rocky ground. It was darker than the queen’s soul down here.
“What, you mean poor, dirty, and decrepit?” Shava shot back, her voice echoing in the stone chamber. She was ahead of me somewhere. Not because I was afraid, but because she was more sure of herself.
I hated that.
