MasukChapter One Hundred and Thirty-Five*Aurelia's POVThe passages seemed to get narrower the deeper we went. Kaelen's body hung between Rylan and me like something that had already left, and Torin moved behind us with his hand on the back wall, keeping us anchored to something solid. The dark was so complete it had almost no texture. I could feel it pressing against my skin.Rylan did not waste energy on words. He moved with the kind of focus that came from knowing exactly what would happen if we slowed down. Every few minutes he glanced back, not at us but past us, the way you look when you are listening for something."How much longer can he bleed like this?" Torin said. His voice came from somewhere in the darkness behind us."As long as he needs to," Rylan said. It was not an answer to the question Torin had actually asked.The ceiling dropped lower. I felt Rylan's shoulder shift as he adjusted to it, and I did the same. Kaelen's head rolled back against my arm. His skin felt like f
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-ThreeAurelia's POVKaelen's wound was bound as best we could.Strips of torn cloth wound tight around his ribs, already soaked through dark in the center where the cut sat deepest. He hadn't woken. His face was pale and his breathing came in slow, shallow pulls that I kept watching from across the small room every few seconds just to make sure it kept coming.It kept coming.Torin wiped the blood from his hands on the inside of his cloak and looked at the binding without touching it. "That's the best it's going to be in here," he said, quiet."Will it hold?" I said.He looked at it for another beat. "Long enough," he said. "As long as we don't move him too much.""Then we don't move him," I said, looking at Kaelen's face against the dark stone.Rylan was at the entrance, turned sideways in the gap beside the fallen pillar, eyes on the chamber outside. He hadn't looked back once. "One of you should try to sleep," he said, still watching the dark. "We nee
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-TwoAurelia's POVWe moved deeper into the ruins, the darkness pressing in from all sides.Every corridor looked the same. Broken stone, crawling shadows, the faint drip of water echoing from somewhere ahead that we never seemed to reach no matter how far we walked. I kept my hand on my blade and my eyes forward.Torin came back from scouting ahead and fell into step beside Rylan. "Next stretch is clear," he said, keeping his voice low. "But it opens up about fifty paces out. Gives way for wider space."Rylan didn't look at him. "Wider space means kade's men will have more directions to come from.""That's what I thought," Torin said.Neither of them said anything after that.Kaelen walked beside me, his face pale, his eyes on the path ahead. He hadn't spoken since the healing kit in the small chamber. He still had the torn grey cloth folded in one hand, carrying it without seeming to notice it was there."Kaelen," I said quietly.He glanced over. "I'm f
Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-OneAurelia's POVThe ruins swallowed us whole.The passage narrowed almost right away, walls coming in close on both sides, the ceiling dropping low enough that Torin had to angle his shoulders to get through. The air was cold and wet and smelled like something old that had been shut away for a long time. Every step we took came back to us doubled, bouncing off stone. My hand stayed on my blade.Kaelen walked beside me, his face pale. He had the torn piece of grey cloth in his hand and kept glancing at it the way someone looked at something they were hoping would change its story. Rylan moved ahead of us without sound, his body low, his attention spread out in every direction. Torin came last, turning to check the passage behind us every few seconds like clockwork.We followed the drag marks.They took us past crumbling archways, past pillars that had stopped holding the ceiling up and were just leaning now, through gaps in fallen walls and over sectio
Chapter One Hundred and ThirtyAurelia's POVThe stairs creaked under our feet as we came down.The common room was busy, travelers hunched over bowls, a merchant in the corner sorting through a stack of coins like they personally owed him something, the innkeeper behind the bar working at a glass with a cloth. I did a full sweep before I let myself move further into the room. No guards. No colors I recognized. Nobody's eyes landing on us and staying.We found a table near the back with a clear line to the door and sat down.The food came and we ate without much talking. My head was running on its own the whole time, pulling at everything we still didn't have answers to. Rylan kept one hand resting on the table close to his blade without quite touching it. Torin chewed slowly and stared past the wall in front of him at something nobody else could see. Kaelen pushed food around his plate with his brow pulled low, somewhere else entirely.We finished and slipped out the back.The inn's
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-NineAurelia's POVWe stood in the wreckage of the alchemist's hut and nobody spoke for a while.The broken jars. The scattered herbs. The overturned furniture sitting where it had fallen like it had given up. None of it told us what we needed to know, where she had gone, who had come for her, whether she'd left on her own or been pulled out. The silence sitting in that room had weight to it, the kind that came with questions that had nowhere to go.Kaelen's face was pale. His jaw was tight,too tight. He finally spoke."We can't stay here," he said, his voice coming out hollow. He turned toward the door, one hand finding the frame. "The settlement inn. That's where we go." He looked back at us over his shoulder. "We need rest, food, and we need to find out what people in this settlement know. We can't do any of that standing in this room."Nobody argued.The walk took nearly two days.We stayed off the main roads, cutting through open fields and narrow
Rylan's POV.The passage behind the hooded figure split into two.Not obviously, not with any signage or indication Just two openings side by side, each sealed with a door made of something I didn't recognize, material that was neither stone nor wood nor metal but caught the torchlight and threw it
Rylan's POV.I heard Kaelen and Aurelia's footsteps fade into the left passage and then there was no more time to think about them."Let's take this thing down together." Torin said, beside me, blade up."Together." I said.The creature came.It was fast in a way that made no sense given the size o
Aurelia's POV.Something shook my shoulder and I came up out of sleep like breaking the surface of water, hand going for my blade before I was fully awake."Easy." Kaelen's voice. Close. "It's me."I exhaled and let my hand drop. "How long was I out?""Long enough." He was crouching in front of me,
Warning!This chapter contains erotica. Reader discretion is advised. Chapter Seven.Aurelia’s POV.My skin burned… the exact spot where Torin’s tongue had touched tingled in a way that made me ache for him to do it again.What was wrong with me?! I need to get away from them. Before I could reac







