He fought the darkness and followed Cynna around a corner. She led him through a tunnel to the right, then stopped in front of a door he’d never seen. After sliding the key in the lock, she turned, then pushed the door open with her shoulder.
Weapons lined the back wall. They were in some kind of armory. She didn’t illuminate a torch on the wall, but there was enough light coming from the corridor to see the racks of knives and swords and weapons with jagged teeth intended to tear through flesh. Cynna crossed to a row of knives, chose two, and strapped them to her thighs. Then she moved to a case holding a selection of daggers, hooked a harness over her shoulders that crisscrossed her back, and slid two arm-length daggers into the holders.
“Hurry,” she whispered. “The guards will be making the rounds again soon.”
Nick moved toward the cabinet, wishing for a damn gun. Bullets weren’t generally effective against Hades’s daemons, but they were with satyrs. Finding no firearms, he chose a parazonium—an ancient Greek sword similar to one he’d left at the colony. He lifted the weapon in his right hand, tested the weight, and swung it back and forth. Satisfied, he reached for knives similar to the ones Cynna had chosen, but with curved handles and jagged blades, grabbed a couple of throwing stars, which he tucked into his pockets, then reached for a mace—a club-like weapon with a long wood handle and multiple sharp teeth protruding from the metallic ball at the end.
Cynna eyed the weapons he’d picked, but didn’t say anything and turned back for the door. She hesitated just before opening it. “The stairs aren’t far. But we may run into satyrs. They’ll sound the alarm if they see us.”
Which meant they couldn’t be seen. Or reported.
Cynna pulled the door open and slinked back into the corridor. Torchlight reflected off the weapons at her back. Nick stayed close, but her scent—that sweet jasmine aroma—was distracting. As was the heat radiating from her skin and her own adrenaline he felt pulsing in the air.
Something had happened. Something between the time she’d pleasured him and now. Something that had propelled her to take this risk when she hadn’t before. Nick wanted to ask just what that was, but knew this wasn’t the time. The minute they got free, though, he was determined she’d come clean. He wasn’t letting her off the hook for any of it.
They rounded three different corners. The rock tunnels seemed to go on forever. Water dripped down the walls and pooled in puddles along the floor. Torchlight grew sparse the farther they went, but the moans around them didn’t stop. And every cry of agony, every sound of tormented pain, rippled in Nick’s limbs and radiated across his chest.
Cynna drew to a stop in front of another door and reached for the key from her pocket. Her hand shook as she slipped it into the lock and turned. The lock gave with a click, then she wrapped her fingers around the handle and pulled. Metal creaked through the dark corridor as the door swung outward toward them.
A set of stone stairs disappeared up into darkness. Cynna took a step past the door. “This way. Almost there.”
A scream ripped through the cavern before Nick could move inside, and that energy—the dark energy he fought day in and day out—leapt with both exhilaration and repulsion.
He captured Cynna at the arm. “Wait.”
She turned to look at him, her face shadowed, her dark eyes narrowed as they leveled on his. “What?”
Nick glanced back down the empty corridor to his left. The scream was now a muffled sob. A sound he recognized. One he’d made more times than he could count in this hellhole.
He looked back at Cynna. “We can’t leave them.”
Confusion clouded her eyes, then cleared as she realized what he was saying. Her gaze darted to her right, past the door. “We can’t get them all out. There are too many.”
“We can give some a chance. The same chance you’re giving me.”
Indecision swam in her familiar eyes as she looked back at him. She’d told him she was freeing him because it was the right thing to do. He needed to believe she’d meant that. Needed to know there was something good left inside her, even after all the bad shit he’d seen her do. Needed to know she wasn’t Zagreus’s puppet after all.
“The guards will hear,” she whispered. “There’s no way we can keep them all quiet.”
“I can’t leave without trying.”
Her eyes held his, and a thousand different emotions swam in her deep brown irises. Too many to name. But he recognized fear, and compassion, and, mostly, self-preservation.
Several tense seconds passed. Neither of them spoke. Neither looked away. Finally, her eyes closed, and she muttered, “Skata.”
She pulled her arm from his grip and stepped around him. “Several will die because of this. That’s not my fault.”
He wouldn’t hold her accountable for that. But relief rippled through him just the same. Relief that he’d pegged her right, from the start. He turned and followed. “If they stay here, they’re already dead, and you know it.”