Love in the Darkness (Tam Song x oc)

Chapter 11

Cinnia's POV
“Take a minute—but only a minute,” Alvar told her. “From here on out it’s going to be a lot trickier, especially if we make it across the playa. Biana—make sure you stay vanished. Tam and Cinnia—do your best to shade the rest. Hoods up. No talking. Walk with purpose. The more you look like you belong, the more likely someone is to believe you if they spot you. And if our cover is blown—run. Use your abilities. Do whatever you have to do. If they capture you, there will be no getting out of here. Everyone clear?” He waited for each of us to nod. “Oh, and here,” he said, returning the Markchain to Sophie. “Stay in the center of the group, so the scent is the most evenly dispersed.” Sophie clasped it around her neck as Alvar vanished, whispering for everyone to follow him. The path out of the canyon was steep and narrow, and they were out of breath when they reached the top. None looked shakier than Linh. “Are you sure you can handle this?” Tam asked his sister as she reached toward the sky. “The falling water has not been tainted.” Linh closed her eyes, her brows pressing together. Mist curled off the waterfalls and gathered into two thick gray clouds, blocking the sun and casting shadows across the playa. “You’re pushing yourself too hard,” I said, as Tam caught her when she collapsed. “I know my limits,” Linh promised, but her voice sounded ragged. And when she tried to stand, she fell over. “We need to keep moving,” Alvar said. “The ogres could find those clouds suspicious.”

“I’ll carry her,” Fitz told Tam. “You need to concentrate on the shadows.”

Tam reluctantly handed his sister over, and Alvar and Biana vanished again as everyone headed into the playa. We walked with slow, deliberate steps to avoid kicking up dust. I kept my eyes trained on the mountain as the city came into better focus. Metal pillars capped by green glowing fireballs illuminated the paths through the city, which were all zigzagging and narrow and treacherous. There would be no quick climb to the top, nor any way to avoid the busier parts of the city.

“That’s the Triad,” Alvar whispered, his arm blinking into sight long enough to point to the center of the mountain. A ledge jutted farther than all the others, stretching to a sharp point between two wide waterfalls.

We were too far away to see the throne or guards, but I knew they were up there. “You sure you want to do this?” Alvar asked.

Sophie swallowed and nodded. The more I thought about it, the more I had to accept that there was no way we could get the cure without being seen—and King Dimitar had to be counting on that. So if we could turn his expectation on its head with a trick, it might buy us enough time to get what we needed and get out alive.

“Okay,” Alvar said, letting out a breath. “Now we head into the city.”

He led us to a stairway on the far side of the mountain, and we climbed to the lowest level of Ravagog. Alvar had us pause at the top, pressing our backs against the rockface. I couldn’t tell if we were hiding or resting.

This level was a curved platform, about as wide as the bottom floor of the glass pyramid at Foxfire, and it was crammed with booths selling all kinds of foul-smelling things. Ogres bartered for better prices as the shopkeepers shouted to get their attention, the ogre language sounding blunt and clipped.

I had never seen an ogre before, and the females were very hard to look at. They wore only two narrow tubes of leather, one around their chest, the other their hips, leaving most of their warty skin on display. Brittle white hair grew from a single patch in their lumpy foreheads and stuck out like wild feathers, and their eyes had a strange milkiness to them. There were children too, playing with strange metal toys. They chased each other through the markets, laughing as they scurried around their mother’s legs. The scene felt unnerving, but also incredibly normal. Families going about their daily lives. I wondered if they even knew what terrible threats their king had made. It was comforting to feel Tam's presence next to me.

Fitz set Linh down and she called mist around them, thickening our shadows before we tiptoed into the crowd. Our snail’s pace went against all of my instincts, but it gave Tam and I time to adjust the shadows with every movement, and Alvar time to select the best path through the ever-moving ogres. Everytime we moved too near to an ogre, my breath caught in my throat, and Tam squeezed my hand reassuringly. I was soaked with cold sweat when we reached the end of the market and started up another flight of stairs. But we made it. One down—many more to go.

The second level was narrower and blissfully ogre-free making me breath easy, though I was sure there were plenty of ogres behind the massive barred doors heading into the mountain. We sprinted the whole way across, to yet another stairway, wider than the others, with jagged carvings on each step.

As we climbed, Sophie transmitted a crazy plan of hers. She started with me, Tam and Linh. Naturally, Tam shadow-whispered that he thought she’d lost her mind. I tried to convince her out of it but failed. In the end, both twins and Ipromised we’d help however she needed.

 "What do you think of the plan?" I whispered to Tam. "I think it's stupid but... I'll help." He replied. We’d crossed another entire level—some sort of construction zone that time, filled with ogres in chains hammering at the mountain—before he asked "What about you?"

"The same." I shrugged.

 Alvar appeared at Sophie's side, meaning I could hear what they were talking about. “I don’t like people in my head,” he whispered. “Hazard of growing up with a telepathic father.”

 “Okay,” she said, stumbling back a step. “I just wanted to tell you the plan.”

 “I thought the plan was to grab the cure and run.”

 “That’ll be part of it,” Sophie said. “We’re also going to create a distraction—”

 “Bad idea,” Alvar interrupted.

 “I know it’s dangerous, but we need something to keep King Dimitar busy, so Fitz and I have a chance to probe his mind.”

 “WHAT?” Alvar’s whisper was so loud it sounded screechy. “Are you crazy?” I winced at how loud it was.

 “We have to try,” Sophie insisted. “There might be more to the Neverseen’s plan than we realize, and this is our chance to find out.”

Alvar shook his head so hard his hood slipped off. “You’re changing too many things.”

“No we’re not. We’re just taking every opportunity we get,” Fitz whispered.

“Um, guys,” I interrupted. “We’re in the middle of Ravagog. All this debating is going to get us killed.”

Alvar swore under his breath and pulled his hood back over his head. “Fine. Let’s keep moving. Transmit the plan to me and I’ll do whatever you want.”