Page 82 of Swords of Soul and Shadow
“Silence!” someone shouted above the din.
Kase looked up. The crowd parted, and Kase’s blood ran cold.
Harlan Shackley, the Stradat Lord Kapitan himself—and his own father—strode toward him with an expression chiseled from stone.
Chapter 16
THE HOLY METAL
Jove
“JOVE.”
His eyelids were entirely too heavy. Most everything ached. What little didn’t ache throbbed with a piercing pain instead, but his head was the worst, only rivaled by his shoulder. Weakness spread through his limbs, and his stomach roiled.
“Jove?”
With great effort, he moved his head to the side—and promptly vomited.
A ripping sound. The kiss of silk against his mouth was nearly as painful as the heaving had been.
Gentle fingers felt his forehead and smoothed his hair.
Clara?
He tried to open his eyes, but it hurt. He tried to say her name, but he couldn’t get his mouth to move.
“It’s okay. You’re going to be okay. I’m here.”
He blinked harder. It was nearly as dark as it was with his eyes closed, but a little light filtered down through something above. The shape was jagged and small and impossibly far. A star, maybe?
No…no, he was underground. The Catacombs. He, Harlan, and Saldr had made it to the safe houses underneath Kyvena. He’d been looking for Clara. He’d seen Clara—or so he’d thought. But then…
He scrunched his face against the pounding in his head. The sour tang of vomit was too close, too pungent. It nearly made him empty his stomach a second time.
He turned his head to the opposite side to get away from the smell, though he was certain there was some sick on his shirt. A face loomed there in the near-darkness. Besides the light coming from the star or hole above—Jove still hadn’t figured out which—another soft glow came from someplace nearer. Golden. Flickering.
His mother’s face came into focus, gold and red annealing into light and blood.
Blood.It carved paths down her face from a wound near her hairline. She sat at an odd angle, as if trying to keep weight off one of her ankles. Jove tried to sit up, to no avail. His body simply wouldn’t respond.
“Mother. What happened? Did we…how did…?”
He wasn’t sure how he’d survived such a long fall, if that indeed was a hole above. He could remember only bits and pieces of what had happened. One moment he’d been running toward his mother—the next, he’d been falling.
He looked up again at the speck of light. How far had they fallen?
His mother brought a shaky hand up and wiped her tears, but that only smeared blood across her cheek. She sniffled a little. “Holes have been opening up all over these tunnels. I’mguessing one took us, but I didn’t see…I just saw you running to me, and then we were falling. We must’ve slid most of the way down, because…well, I think we’re alive. This isn’t the sort of heaven I’d ever read about. Far from it, in fact.”
Jove wasn’t so sure. If he was dead, he wouldn’t expect to wake anywhere close to heaven. Clara was the one who believed in all that, and Jove would never reach the same saintly goodness as her. If anything, this hole seemed fitting.
But his mother wasn’t guilty of the same things he was. So…alive. Probably.
He groaned. “Can we climb out?”
His mother chewed on the inside of her cheek and fidgeted with the ring on her finger. It was her engagement ring—a Zuprium band with a matching crystal. He’d given Clara a similar one, but his mother’s crystal was much larger. “I’m not sure we’re fit for climbing. My ankle is a bit swollen, but I believe it’s only a sprain. I don’t know if we should move you. With all that blood—I thought—” Her words choked off in a small sob. “I’m so relieved you’re awake.”
Now that he’d been conscious for a few minutes, Jove was able to separate the different pains in his body. Most of him was incredibly sore, which was to be expected if he’d truly tumbled down some hole and landed on solid rock. His shoulder was probably done for unless he saw a medic sometime soon, or Saldr with his magic dust stuff. His head ached the worst after that—with the vomiting, he probably had a concussion. Maybe.
