For the first time since the vines had dragged us into their grasp, my body began to loosen.
The water shifted behind me before a hand settled against my shoulder, firm yet careful as he turned me slightly to face away from him.
Talon dipped a mineral sponge into the water and began to draw it slowly along the length of my back.
My thoughts, however, refused to quiet.
They circled relentlessly through the last few days. Through the moment the bond had sealed itself between us. Through the revelation that the creature I had been taught to fear since childhood was not merely a monster of legend but the ruler of an entire hidden realm.
And now here I was.
Standing in the heart of that realm with his hands on my skin.
The contradiction sat uneasily in my chest.
Peace. Order. Harmony.
That was what he had shown me.
Yet somewhere within this mountain lay the place where the unbound souls were brought. The price of that peace.
The thought refused to loosen its hold on me.
“Where are the Thrynn chambers?” I asked quietly.
Behind me, Talon went completely still.
The sponge halted against my chest, his hand flattening there as though he had forgotten the motion entirely. A slow tension gathered through the length of his body before he finally spoke.
“Hidden,” he said at last, his voice low and edged with something restrained. “And you will not go there, Kaelia.”
I turned my head slightly, studying the hard line of his jaw over my shoulder.
“Why not?” I asked. “Do you think I am too fragile for the sight?”
His gaze darkened.
“It is not a place for mortals to wander,” he replied, the words rougher now as his hand began to move again, the sponge dragging across my skin with a firmer pressure than before.
My fingers drifted across the broad plane of his shoulders, tracing the familiar patterns of ink there while my thoughts turned restlessly beneath the surface.
He might wish to shield me from it. But I had lived my entire life beneath the laws that demanded those souls be taken. I would not pretend ignorance now that I stood within the realm that carried out the cost of that peace.
Tomorrow, when Talon was occupied elsewhere, I would find those chambers myself.
27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Iwoke to the quiet pulse of the city.
The sound was low and steady, less a noise than a presence, humming faintly through the bedrock beneath the chamber and into the cool bed of moss beneath my back.
For a moment I lay still, letting the strange rhythm settle around me.
Across the room, Talon was already awake.
He dressed in silence, the broad line of his shoulders outlined against the faint violet glow bleeding through thin veins in the cavern ceiling. The dim light caught along the dark ink across his back as he pulled his shirt into place.