The Power of the Eight by Suzanne Rho

Author:Suzanne Rho [Suzanne Rho]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Suzanne Rho
Published: 2021-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Brennett, with a high level of reluctance, led them. The tip of Lance’s sword remained dangerously close to the centre of his back as they walked down the corridor Ren and Brielle had followed less than an hour before. Ren walked behind Lance. Shae and Brielle, side by side, brought up the rear.

They passed several doors, none of which Brennett paid any attention to and none of which Ren remembered from their previous journey. Stopping at one door, wooden and unassuming, Brennett hissed as the sword made contact; he pushed it ajar. “Is that really necessary?”

“Yes,” Lance replied.

“How many of my men did you kill to get here, by the way?”

“Why?”

“Just wondering…”

“A few.” Lance’s free hand flexed backwards, touching Ren’s arm. “None I knew.”

“Fantastic,” Brennett muttered as he stepped through the door.

It led to a gloomy stairwell. One small torch, long since extinguished, hung on the wall in a dusty sconce. There was a window, through which a dark silhouette of giant pines across a red-tinged magic-strewn sky was visible.

They were swaying, or Ren was. She took a long breath she instantly regretted, and reached for Lance’s hand, clinging to him like an anchor in her sea of wooziness.

Lance’s fingers closed around hers as they began to descend the staircase.

The walls of the place were castle-like: thick and grey and old. The place was vast, and Ren suspected she had seen very little of the building…fortress…whatever it was. They started down yet another identical hallway.

Who knew when she and Brielle had last eaten, not to mention the effect the forest had on her. No doubt the shikkane had dampened the symptoms, but Ren was unprotected, and grew weaker with each step. A sharp pain was settling behind her eyes. How she missed Brielle’s potions.

Just as she was beginning to question how long she would be able to keep going, Brennett stopped. He stood in front of a door so small only Ren was shorter than it. It looked older than all of them put together, and what had to be knife marks were cut across the dark wood.

“This is a side entrance,” Brennett said, turning. “You’ll be able to find cover quickly if you head to the right, but if anyone spots her taio I won’t be able to stop them chasing you.” He turned his head, to Ren, boring into her eyes with his only working one. It was, Ren realised, not the black she had first believed, but blue. “But I’ll try to give you enough time to get away.” Ren suspected it wasn’t for her. “Some very dangerous people want you.”

Lance’s hand tightened over Ren’s. For the first time, he lowered his sword. “Brennett, I…”

Brennett’s face was an unreadable mask.

“Priya isn’t dead.”

At the mention of whomever Priya was, Brennett’s breathing shifted, his jaw twitching. “Don’t–”

“She wasn’t in the Hull.”

The only part of Brennett that moved was a further twitch in his jaw. “Lance, if this–”

“She was at the docks, already on a boat.”

Brennett’s brows met. “How the fuck–?”

Lance was looking as if he would rather confess to anything else.

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