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“Okay,” Tinsley grinned. “Kiss for luck?”
After a very long, thorough, and annoyingly arousing kiss, he pulled away. They walked to the vent. Dante carefully pulled the cover open, and they peered inside.
“Ladies first,” he offered. “Isn’t that a human thing?”
“So is age before beauty, old man.” Tinsley climbed in. “But I’ll go ahead and take one for the team, as they say.”
Chapter 26
Dante dropped down from the vent shaft and into a cold, dimly lit room. It smelled dank, as if it were underground, and judging by how far they’d gone down the shaft, that made sense. As far as Dante was concerned, even a dungeon-like room was still a significant improvement from the vents. A Lorr warrior his size wasn’t usually at home in confined spaces, and as his family well knew, ventilation ducts were a particular hardship for them.
“Give me your hand,” he called quietly back up the shaft, reaching up to help Tinsley down behind him.
Using his hand for stability, she dropped soundlessly down to the floor and looked around her.
“Looks like the basement,” she whispered into the quiet, but it became quickly apparent that whispering wasn’t necessary. No one else was there.
“Then we work our way up,” he said, scanning the place for any information that might be useful.
The logs they’d found on the pirate ship had mentioned holding cells, and he figured they couldn’t be far. Underground was the most secure place to hold prisoners, and he had to assume the Jorvlens knew that. He’d heard of other Jorvlen facilities that were built in this way. In fact, his own sister-in-law, Layla, had once been held in such a place.
This room, though, was clearly just a maintenance room. As Dante’s eyes adjusted to the dark, they alighted upon a door.
“There,” he said, pointing at the panel.
He strode over, Tinsley right behind him, and pulled the door open ever so slightly. It led toward a wide empty hallway, and Dante stepped out, peering around for any signs of life. He saw none, though, and as he and Tinsley made their way along the hall, they began opening other doors.
Dante found a few empty rooms, what looked like a small kitchen, and then a communal shower block. The floor was still wet, and Dante felt a shiver run up his spine. He didn’t know what it was at first, but something felt wrong. When he opened the next door, he understood why.
It was a small room, but the entire space was filled with clothes. At first, Dante didn’t get what he was looking at. But when Tinsley came up beside him, she gasped.
“Oh my god,” she uttered, staring at the clothes.
Then he made sense of the mess of fabrics. They were all women’s clothes. And they were all in different sizes and styles. Some, he noted with disgust, had been cut or ripped off, thrown in here as refuse—a byproduct of the pirates’ business.
Dante shuddered again, and he felt Tinsley’s warm hand come to rest gently on his arm.
“We’ll find her,” she whispered, and Dante nodded.
They had to.
“Let’s keep looking,” he told her, meeting her gaze for just a moment. It contained multitudes.
She nodded, and the two left the room of clothes behind, making their way to the next door. This one opened up into another hallway—small and cramped this time—and Dante stopped in his tracks at what he saw once he stepped inside.
The hall was lined on one side with holding cells. Peering into the first one, Dante saw a woman.
She was stretched across a bed, her thin dress hitched up to her thighs. At first he thought she hadn’t seen them enter, and he took a step toward the cell’s bars, hoping to get her attention. She looked like a Noxxan woman, though he couldn’t see her face to be sure.
“Hello?” he called softly, trying not to startle her, but she made no indication of having heard him.
Dante looked back at Tinsley behind him, and he saw the horror in her eyes. She wasn’t looking at the Noxxan woman, though. She was staring beyond him into the other cells ahead. As Dante raised his head, he understood the look in Tinsley’s eyes.
Every cell held a woman, and all of them appeared to be sleeping, but it didn’t seem like normal sleep.
Dante gave one last glance to the Noxxan woman before stepping forward to the next cell, and the next, and the next. And finally, he understood what was wrong. They weren’t sleeping. They were drugged.
It made Dante sick to his stomach, but his mind was still focused on one thing—finding Maraliza. Each new cell was a new chance to find her, but as he made his way down the hall, his heart began to beat faster. There were Noxxan women, human women, Xoyosan women—women, it seemed, from every corner of the star system. Except Lorr.
