Page 23 of The Crowned Queen

Loren opened his eyes.

The shadows writhed around him, crawling across the damp walls. Searching for her. He pressed a hand against his chest, forcing himself to take a deep breath. The shadows came back to him willingly, consolidating and wrapping tightly around his legs. Except for one.

The smallest shadow lingered, hesitating at his feet before slithering up his body. For a moment, he thought it would stretch itself across his shoulders like it always had with her—but instead it slipped down across his chest, bleeding away at the edges until it was no bigger than a moth. The wisp slipped into the folds of his shirt, its slight weight resting right over his heart.

“Sorry,” he said. “She’s still inside.” He could answer that much at least.

“Good.” Finn blew out a slow breath. “Then nothing changes. Nyra will give us our way in by breaking through the blocked tunnel connecting to the dungeon under the house. Maerin has eight fighters in place already. They’ll go in first and draw the guards away. Loren, you and Nyra will go in after, heading straight for Araya and Kai. Get them, come out the way you came in, and Nyra will collapse the tunnel behind you to stop any pursuit. Easy.”

“What about the others?” Loren asked. “Maerin’s people?”

“Maerin handles things like this a little differently,” Serafina answered. “Each of her fighters carries a sachet of somra’mor—Night’s Rest. In normal use, it’s just a sleep aid. But dried and powdered—” she cleared her throat, not quite meeting Loren’s eyes. “They’ll die in minutes. The Arcanum won’t get the chance to torture them.”

Minutes—Goddess save him. Loren swallowed hard, his heart dropping into his stomach. It was one thing to sacrifice himself, but this…he couldn’t find the words.

“Thorne is already waiting here.” Finn tapped a spot on the map. “I’ll join him after I take Serafina back to the others.” He glanced up, meeting Loren’s gaze. “Are you ready to get her back?”

At the cost of eight lives? Araya would hate it. But these were Maerin’s people—not his. Her plan was their best chance at getting Araya out. So Loren choked back his objections, nodding sharply.

They split up after that, Serafina and Finn winding their way back the way they had come while Nyra led the way forward, pausing occasionally to consult a heavily creased hand-drawn map. Loren recognized the maze of tunnels, the shape of Aetheris and the contours of the Shadowed Sea—but the labels shifted in front of his eyes, blurring and changing when he tried to focus on them. Loren craned his neck, angling for a closer look⁠—

“They’re enchanted.” Nyra shifted the paper toward him, pressing two fingers to a rune in the corner. Loren blinked, watching as the words steadied and the writhing lines suddenly snapped into place.

“Anyone but me does that and it goes blank,” she said.

“Impressive,” Loren said, meaning it.

Nyra’s neat hand covered almost every inch of the map, tiny triangles marking the safe houses with circles for drop locations, all of it accompanied by cramped columns of figures that made his stomach twist.

“Is that really how many fae we have in the tunnels?”

“Sixty in the main safe house.” Nyra pulled a battered metal flask from her belt, uncapping it with her thumb and taking a long swig. “We used to get them out by sea before we got anywhere close to these numbers. But without the Shadowed Veil…” she shook her head, glancing at the shadows curled around his feet. “Never thought I’d miss it.”

She held the flask out. Loren took it, the liquor burning like fire all the way down his throat. But it wasn’t enough to settle the guilt churning in his stomach. Araya had lowered the Veil to save his life. They’d talked about Eluneth, what it would mean for the fae in exile. But neither one of them had considered what it would do to the fae here.

“I’m looking at land routes, but even those are risky.” Nyra stepped carefully around a puddle. “Papers, checkpoints, villagers who might report a sudden influx of strangers… No forged documents will survive an inquisitor’s scrutiny.” She sighed, her expression grim. “What we really need to do is stop pulling them off the street.”

“Stop?” Loren stared at her. “But⁠—”

“I know.” She sighed deeply, suddenly looking more exhausted than Loren had ever seen her. “It’s the same as leaving them to die. But the more we bring in the harder it is to stay one step ahead of the patrols.” She stopped walking, scrubbing a hand over her face. “We lose either way.”

Loren swallowed against the tightness in his throat, suddenly very aware of the slight weight of the little shadow over his heart. “I’m sorry.”

Nyra laughed humorlessly, snatching her flask back. “It’s not your fault, Loren.”

“Isn’t it?” Loren asked.

She had been the first to try and warn him what would happen if he took Araya from the Shaws without a plan. He hadn’t listened. He’d nearly let the shadows kill her, enraged by her insinuation that it would be better for all of them if Jaxon Shaw found Araya’s lifeless body. But everything she’d warned him about had come to pass. The crackdowns, the patrols—all of it.

“You’d still tell me, wouldn’t you?” Loren stared down at his boots, watching the shadows ripple across the stone instead of meeting her eyes. “If you thought I was doing the wrong thing?”

Nyra paused mid-swig. “What exactly are you talking about?”

“Eight people are going to die tonight.” Loren stared at the wall ahead of them, the rough stone slick with moisture. “Araya would never agree to something like this. I don’t—” His voice caught. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to live with it.”

Nyra stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language. “Do you actually think they volunteered for you?”

“I—yes?” Loren blinked at her, caught entirely off guard. Wasn’t that what everyone was tactfully avoiding saying out loud? That eight fae had stepped forward to die just so he would have a chance at rescuing his mate? And not just them. He was putting his friends at risk too, and the fae hiding down here in the tunnels—all without any sort of guarantee he’d succeed.