Steady. Calm. As if she knew he needed to watch her, as if she knew it pleased the beast inside him. And she allowed it.
Balanced. The stray thought came to him. And suddenly, he knew why the Fates had chosen her for him. Because she would be sane when the madness overtook him. And when that temporary madness overtook her, like last night when she pressed the blade to his throat and cut him, he could challenge her.
He brought a shaking hand to run over his right horn and then he forced himself to turn away, forced himself to refocus his scattered thoughts on the furnace. What had he been doing?
Hinges, he remembered.
He wrapped his hand in a protective hide, took up his tongs, and thrust one of the hinges into the flames, watching the metal brighten and loosen.
Jaxor’s gaze went back to her. She was still watching him, but when he caught her looking, she jerked her head away, as if surprised, as if embarrassed.
His jaw ticked. Relief filled him. Perhaps this obsession was not only his own. Did she feel the depths of it too? Did humans feel the Instinct’s pull too?
When he managed to refocus his attention on the furnace, he cursed and realized his mistake. He’d left the metal too long. It sat in a melted, unusable pool at the bottom. He’d have to start again.
As he looked up at the sky to gauge the time, Jaxor knew there would be a storm soon. He felt it in the air. How violent it would be was unknown, but he would open more drainage lines as a precaution. At the very least, he could prop the door against the cave wall as protection from the storm if he couldn’t finish the hinges in time.
The sky was darkening quickly. Nightfall approached rapidly during that season.
Just then, he heard the kekevir begin to rouse. Small chirring sounds echoed down the tunnels, spreading into the base. They knew night came too. They could also sense the storm.
Jaxor looked at the furnace. The hinges could wait, he decided. But he’d left the kekevir too long. They bred and grew rapidly and needed to be culled on a regular basis, especially with the storm approaching. It would be a long night otherwise.
Chapter Ten
Jaxor had been gone a long time.
Erin sat in front of the fire, facing the main tunnel. He’d gone down it without a word after picking up a long blade from where he stored his weapons—a sword, really, though it’d been curved.
Her tunic and her hair had long dried. The fire Jaxor made that morning still burned bright and it burned hot. Even the fires back in the Golden City hadn’t been this hot and she wondered if it was because of the type of fuel he used.
She rubbed her hands down her legs, a little uneasy. She wished that he would stop doing that…going off on his own without an explanation. Especially since the kekevir seemed to be going crazy. Every second, she heard echoing hisses and shrieks.
Is he in there with them? she wondered, shuddering at the thought, wondering what would have possessed him to do such a thing if he was.
The air felt sticky that night. Cold, yet sticky. Glancing above her, at the brief sliver in the fog bank, she saw the sky had changed to a deep indigo. Then the wind shifted and covered the gap. When she looked around the base, the darkness combined with the intense firelight cast deep, menacing shadows.
A part of her was tempted to hide in the little sleeping cave again, but there was no door to protect her now and she didn’t want to get trapped if one of those creatures managed to find her there. She’d even plucked a knife from Jaxor’s weapon stores, though she knew he’d probably be angry once he found out. Still, having it at her side made her feel slightly protected, even though she hadn’t the faintest clue how to use it to protect herself.
Another eerie cry emerged from the tunnel, though it sounded closer than the others. Erin straightened, peering at the entrance, her heart picking up in her chest. Her hand closed around the handle of the knife at her side.
Then she heard other sounds. Different ones. Scraping. Metal. Something wet dragging across stone.
She saw his eyes glowing from the darkness before he fully came into view. And when he did, she almost gasped. Streaks