Haelo Rising, page 20
“Where are Massáude’s Enforcers?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
Dagger answered without breaking his stealthy stride. “Behind that door. They’re about to sense us.”
I braced myself for a fight, tucking my chin and stoking my confidence.
“No,” Dagger ordered. “You will stay out here.”
We were out of time. For the sake of not screwing up this whole plan, I tabled any argument, and nodded. Jake and Wood stepped ahead of me, guns raised. With a glance at each of us, Dagger put his palm to the fingerprint scanner. At the exact moment a blue light appeared, he tore open the heavy door and went inside.
The muffled pings of silenced pistols popped in the chamber beyond. I heard grunts of pain, but every ounce of my senses was zeroed in on Dagger’s aura. Please be okay. His aura pulsed, supercharged with adrenaline.
The thud of a body hitting the ground.
The violent screech of iron cage doors slamming on their hinges.
Shouts from Dagger to one of the Beta kryptes.
“Go, go, go!”
I heard a door creak open, and the three soldiers moved further into the dungeons.
I stepped into the familiar room just as the backs of my three protectors disappeared behind the far door. On the floor were four bodies, two of which no longer housed auras. The other two were unconscious by the looks of it. Staying alert, I stepped past them, my knife still tight in my hand.
Right before I passed through the far steel door, my ears picked up on something my disturbed inner senses had not. I whirled around just as one of the Forçadores—head bleeding, leg bent at an odd angle—shot a gun from where he lay on the cement floor a few meters behind me.
The impact of the bullet jarred me with a force I hadn’t prepared for. My leg was forced out from beneath me and I hit the floor with a yelp, but quickly rolled behind the half wall of a nearby cell just as another bullet hit the concrete inches from my head.
I heard the shhwuum of the mercenary’s broken leg slide across the floor. He was crawling toward me. Forcing myself to take two quick breaths, I centered my focus, adjusted the grip on my blade, and whipped around the low wall. Without hesitation, I sunk my blade deep into his chest. Another shot fired, blasting my eardrums. It ricocheted off the cell bars but didn’t hit me.
In my shock, I watched the life drain from the Forçadoro, unable to tear my eyes away. My aura swirled with relief, gratitude, and dismay. Why hadn’t he just stayed unconscious?
The thunderous footfalls of Dagger came up behind me. He scanned the room with his gun before bending down to me where I was lying on my side. “What happened?”
I tipped my chin in my assailant’s direction. “He shot me.” For the first time, I noted that the cell I was currently lying in was the cell that had been Theo’s. It was empty now, but for Dagger and me.
“Where?” Dagger began a frantic search of my torso and limbs. His eyes looked crazed. “Your leg.” He quickly unstrapped the pistol and harness from my right thigh.
I groaned and gritted my teeth.
“The bullet went through your harness and busted the grip of your gun.” He searched the mangled handgun. “It probably ricocheted off.” The relief in his aura was palpable. But the relief on his face looked more like anger. He exhaled and looked away a moment to temper his panic, then faced me again. “You’ll be fine. You’ll have a massive welt, but it could have been much worse. Can you walk?” He pulled me up from the floor without straining.
Carefully, I tested my weight on the excruciatingly bruised leg. Hell’s bells. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Good. Come on.” He offered to support my weight, but I shook my head and headed through the back door into the area designated for high-security cells, trying to hide my limp.
This room didn’t have the old iron cage doors like the room behind us. I stared at the solid door in front of me, where months and months ago, my human friend Sam Legend had been held for questioning. From behind me, Dagger barked orders to the two Beta soldiers. “Hurry, someone could have heard the Forçadores’ guns.”
Wood stood at the wall, tapping furiously on a monitor screen. “Trying. But they must have changed the cell code.”
“Try harder,” Dagger warned.
Wisely, Wood did not respond.
Jake took position in the entrance we’d just come through. “Time’s ticking.”
I joined Wood at the monitor. Half of the screen showed a live feed to the inside of the stark cell. Galana Cora, still in the dress she’d worn to the reception, stood with two hands on the wall. Her eyes were tightly closed, the muscles in her arms strained. The frustration on her face looked almost painful. But where were the others?
“Where did Massáude send Hyacinth? And Cora’s bodyguard, Fia? Where are the others that were with them?” I asked.
Dagger checked the various weapons strapped to his body. “We’ll figure that out. But right now, the priority is getting Galana Cora out. Wood? Are we close?”
“No.”
Dagger ran a hand across his head.
A speaker system in the room clicked to life. I jerked, looking for the source.
“Colonel Stravins?” a quiet voice asked over the intercom.
Dagger froze. “Lieutenant Day?”
“Yes, sir,” the voice whispered back.
“Where are you?” Dagger asked.
There was a moment of silence. Had the line cut out? “In the intelligence gallery. I hid in the server room when the Forçadores showed up. They took everyone away.” The voice caught, like he’d swallowed mid-sentence.
Dagger nodded into the camera above the monitor. “Day? I need you to unlock the high-security cell.”
“Yes, sir.”
We waited, anticipating. But nothing happened.
“Lieutenant Day,” Dagger said.
“Sir—” Lieutenant Day’s voice dropped barely above a whisper. “They’re coming.”
Dagger tensed. “Lieutenant Will Day, unlock the door.” Nothing. The intercom went silent. “Day!”
With a deep chink, the cell door opened. Dagger, Jake, and Wood rushed in.
“Ridion!” Galana Cora exclaimed to Dagger. “How did you get in here?”
I limped inside the cell. The fear and relief clashing in Cora’s aura was enough of an assault on my senses to make my legs weak.
“Your Majesty, we need to get going.”
“But Hyacinth! Where is my daughter? We need to go find the other hostages.”
“We will. After we get you out. Can you run?”
Cora swallowed. “Yes.”
“Good.” Dagger indicated the exit. “Everyone. We move silently. Stick to the walls. Go.”
On the way out, I pulled my knife from the dead Enforcer. I couldn’t think about it. Just do it. Once outside the dungeons, Jake and Wood took the lead this time, followed by Cora and me. Dagger swept the rooms and halls from behind us, urging us forward. Adrenaline kept the pain in my leg at bay. We passed the Krypteia sleeping quarters and were approaching the dark pool in the bricked floor at the end of the corridor when Cora stopped.
She grabbed Dagger’s forearm. “Ridion. I can’t leave without knowing everyone else is okay.”
Dagger’s aura clenched with pity. “Your Majesty, not everyone will be okay. We all have to live with that.”
She clenched her teeth. Her aura burned, wracked with guilt. “Please, Ridion.” Her eyes misted. “Please.”
The veins in Dagger’s neck pulsed. He looked like he was about to deny her.
Cora let go of his arm. “I’m only leaving if you promise me you will look for the others.”
“I am not leaving your side—either of you”— he looked to me—“until I know that both of the Galanas of this empire are safe. We’re leaving now, before the Forçadores discover you’re gone.”
“Colonel Dagger Stravins,” Cora commanded. “I order you to search for the other hostages. Beta Agema can escort Galana Haelo and me to safety.”
Dagger stood frozen, eyeing his empress with shock. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
“No,” I said before I could stop myself. “I’m staying here. You need my help. And I’ve already proven myself capable.”
Dagger shook his head, but Cora hesitated.
“Nothing has changed, Dagger. If you didn’t have a problem with me here before, you shouldn’t have a problem with it now.”
He shifted his weight.
After a thoughtful moment, Cora nodded once. “Help him find my daughter.” Again, her aura flared with guilt. She turned to face the two Beta Agema soldiers. They bowed and gestured to the dark, lapping pool.
Dagger muttered threatening orders to the kryptes concerning Cora’s safety. They responded with yes, sirs and helped Cora into the water.
Just before her head went below the surface, she looked to me. “I only wanted them to have what they needed.”
“Your Majesty?” I asked, confused.
Her eyes dimmed in luster, her shoulders slumped. “I thought if they had everything they needed to take care of themselves, if they felt heard, they wouldn’t need him. Or even that Massáude may have backed down if he felt like his people were noticed. They needed to feel heard.”
She waited for a response, but I was certain the words I had to give her weren’t the words of comfort she was looking for. Gently, I shook my head. “Massáude never wanted his people to be heard. He wants to speak for them.”
I would remember the look on Cora’s face for the rest of my life. Once she gathered her emotions, she nodded, said softly, “I think you are right,” and dipped below the water.
Dagger stilled, his face tight with his inner battles.
Galana Cora was, for all intents and purposes, his second mother.
I cleared my throat. He shook his head, the gesture rippling down his arms as if he’d shaken off his thoughts with the movement. His face hardened into a mask of unshakable direction.
I didn’t mean to feel his aura—honestly, I didn’t want to experience the emotions roiling inside him—but those emotions were too strong, and we were standing too close to each other. To my shock, his aura didn’t feel conflicted at all anymore. He didn’t regret letting Cora go; instead, his aura had moved on to a deliberate stoking of the hot fire of revenge. He looked forward to this chance with welcoming, weaponized arms. Massáude had ruined his family, his empire. The only emotions holding him back from running right toward the Throne Court to finally deal with Massáude were his duty to protect me and his promise to Cora to find the hostages.
He remained still, analyzing his options. Keep Haelo safe. Find the hostages. Kill Hector. Kill Massáude. He had four objectives. The problem was accomplishing all four in the same mission. Memories of watching Hector torture others flooded his mind.
Shaking my head, I stepped away, hoping a bit of distance would help me get out of Dagger’s head. But I couldn’t. Dagger’s thoughts overpowered me. A memory of Dagger watching me hover above the sea rooftops of Atlantis, backing away from Karchardeus, played out behind my eyes. The urgency to protect me in that memory was fierce, culminating in a pulsating anger. He recalled the way his senses had at one point enveloped me with a passion so intense that his own aura overtook his senses and projected onto me, effectively cloaking me and hiding my aura with his own. He had known my aura so well. Our connection—and his anger—had allowed him to do the impossible.
“It won’t work anymore, Dagger.”
His back tightened.
“You don’t know me like that anymore. If you try to hide my aura from a distance, it will fail.”
“So you say.” He slid a new magazine into his gun. “We need Zeta. Let’s hope she’s still in the Fire Room.” His eyes flashed to me. “Ready?”
“Always.”
He softened, his mouth turning up into a slight grin. He faced forward and cocked his gun. “Good. Time to poke the bear.”
16
Burning Brimstone
From a room off the side of the Krypteia dorms, Dagger pulled a plastic box, like a briefcase. Inside were fist-sized white bricks, which he secured to the door frames and support arches all along the hall. It didn’t take a genius to deduce they were explosives.
We ran into two Forçadores on our way to the Fire Room. Dagger dealt with them so swiftly I could almost lie to myself that someone else had crumpled the mercenaries to the floor before we got there.
We went up one cramped flight of stairs, which emptied into a secured room off the North Wing corridor.
Dagger closed his eyes, sensing, then stepped out into the corridor. “Stay calm. Keep your aura as unnoticeable as possible.”
We kept moving, past the elaborate doors into the High Court, past the public judicial parlor, and then swiftly entered Alcaeus’s office. We weaved past the expensive furniture and gilded wall frames and then came behind his rich black marble desk. “Where’s the door to the forge?” I asked.
Dagger inspected the shelving behind the Basileus’s desk, looking for a handle, lever, or trigger. His aura grew frustrated.
“Here,” I said, lifting a gilded lever on the right side. The entire display behind the desk swung slowly inward, revealing a room cast in an orange glow with low ceilings. A wave of heat rushed over us.
“I almost shot you,” Zeta said, lowering her gun. Her forehead glistened with sweat.
We stepped in and quickly shut the office door behind us. One wall of the small forge was cut directly from the island’s stone; the three others were constructed with Pankyran stone bricks. If someone were to sense us, it would be through the hidden door we’d just come through.
“Update,” Dagger ordered.
Zeta tucked her gun into her divesuit's hip holster. “He’s on his third medallion. He’s just through there,” she pointed to a narrow gap in the wall on our left. I moved around to see Malik, wearing a welder’s-type helmet and heavy apron, just inside the Fire Room beyond. With thick gloves and a pair of industrial tongs, he carried a sizzling, steaming pitcher.
“Whose medallions are made?” Dagger asked, swatting thick steam from in front of his face.
“You, me”—Zeta coughed—“and now Haelo. He did us first since we’re already here to activate them.”
Malik carefully poured searing liquid gold into a mold on a stone table fabricated to look more like an altar.
“And the Forçadores?”
Zeta jerked her head toward the Fire Room. “In there.”
Dagger and I stepped through the narrow gap in the wall to discover three men crumpled on the floor, two of whom were unconscious with hands bound behind their backs. The third—sprawled facedown against the wall beneath one of the four basins of floating flames—no longer had an aura.
Zeta kicked an axe lying on the ground. “They were dipping the axe in the lava and trying to bust the medallions in half.” She tilted her head to a corner of the room at a pile of mangled medallions splattered with blackened lava.
“Did they put up a fight?”
“One.” She looked at the dead body. “The others surrendered, exhausted. I knocked them out.” She sneered. “Amateurs.”
“Where does Malik get the gold?” I asked.
“From the lava pool, apparently.”
“Inside the lava pool?”
“From what I could gather, yes.”
“Malik!” Dagger called.
The goldsmith rushed into the Fire Room through the gap in the forge’s hidden door. “Yes, Colonel Stravins?”
“Will these new medallions work?”
“We can only try.” He handed Dagger a shiny new medallion with the name Ridion haphazardly stamped on the back.
“I’ll need another.”
Malik handed him a second medallion. “It’s mine. It’s one of the only ones left undamaged; I’ve always kept it in the forge.” He nodded, handed Zeta her new medallion, and went back through to the sweltering room beyond.
Dagger took the two medallions to the edge of the pool and tossed them atop its steaming, cragged surface. Within seconds, the hardened lava beneath the medallions melted away, taking them below. Dagger’s eyes remained shut, the strain on his face giving us a preview of what Zeta and I could expect in the coming moments.
Under the tap-tap-tapping soundtrack of Malik’s engraving tools, we waited for Dagger to finish. I crossed my fingers.
Eventually, Dagger exhaled and stepped away from the pool. The lava once again hardened a bit, now displaying two medallions and a brand new ring resting atop. Dagger removed his old ring and tossed it into the pile of broken medallions. Then he used his shirt to pick up the hot items, blowing on them until he could slide on the ring.
Of course, nothing about this process seemed to follow the actual rules of goldsmithing science.
Dagger tossed his medallion to Zeta. “Hurry. We’re running out of time.”
Zeta looked his over, now magically emblazoned with his mosaic design on its backside, and then looked at hers, where in uneven letters, the name Verdi was stamped on the back.
Zeta set both medallions on the pit, tossed her old ring aside, and then planted her footing at the base of the pool.
Both of them—Dagger and Zeta—made this process look so easy. But I knew how excruciating it actually was. How their lower backs (and entire bodies, for that matter) pulsed with a unique pain.
Once done, Zeta backed away, panting slightly. “You’re up, Your Highness.”
Malik, with sweat-and-steam-soaked clothes, rushed back into the room. He extended his hand to me. “Your Highness, my apologies for the lack of craftsmanship.”
“Malik, you have done this empire a service. Do not apologize.”
He swallowed, a slight nod to his head.
I set the medallion onto the pool, then looked to the two kryptes standing behind me. “Which one of you am I earning pola rights with?” After a moment’s hesitation, Zeta tossed hers back to the blackened, cracked surface. I shut my eyes, then was startled by the sound of a third medallion’s clink. My gaze shot to Dagger.
