Capture the Crown (Gargoyle Queen #1) -Jennifer Estep Page 0,14

skim their thoughts, but I didn’t hear anything suspicious. Some people’s inner musings were easier to sense than others, but if anyone here was involved in Clarissa’s death, then they were hiding it well, and their malevolence was buried deep in their minds.

When the day’s gossip had been exhausted, some folks started singing Andvarian songs about love, loss, and, of course, mining. Reiko, the dragon morph, had a particularly lovely singing voice, and soon the other miners were swinging their axes and tapping their hammers into the wall in time to her songs.

“Do you know ‘The Bluest Crown’?” someone asked during a water break.

“Doesn’t everyone in Andvari know that song?” Reiko replied, a mocking tone in her voice.

Everyone laughed, except for me.

Reiko must have noticed my lack of merriment because her gaze locked with mine. I started to skim her thoughts, but her steady stare, along with that of the dragon on her hand, made me stop. Morph musings were often difficult to hear, perhaps because there were two beings in every morph’s body, and the person’s thoughts often mixed with those of the creature hidden inside them.

Either way, I didn’t want Reiko to suspect that I was anything more than a miner, so I calmly stared back at her, as though her song choice didn’t matter to me.

Amusement flickered across Reiko’s face, and the green dragon on her hand opened its mouth in a wide, silent chuckle, as though it were laughing at some joke at my expense. Suspicion filled me.

“‘The Bluest Crown’ it is,” Reiko announced.

She launched into the song. All the other miners joined in, including Penelope, and their cheery chorus rang throughout the chamber, punctuated by the tink-tink-tinks of the tools digging into the rocks. I swung my pickaxe even harder at the wall. I might be a mind magier, but even I couldn’t block out that bloody catchy melody.

Despite the torturous song, and the two boisterous encores that followed, the morning passed by quickly. There were no clocks, and the lanterns’ steady, unwavering glow made it difficult to determine the time. If the mine steward and his men hadn’t come by to collect the buckets every hour, I would have thought we had been down here for only a few minutes.

Eventually, a small silver bell tied to a bright blue string at the front of the chamber started jingling. Each chamber featured a similar bell, and they were all threaded together, like an elaborate underground spiderweb. Soon, other bells joined in, until they were clanging throughout the entire mine, and the sounds rippled through the thick walls and echoed back on themselves in light, pealing waves.

Lunchtime.

We set our tools down, trudged out of the chamber, and climbed back into the cart at the front of the shaft. This time, instead of depending on the driver to steer us down into the dark, everyone grabbed hold of a thick rope that was part of a pulley system attached to the wall. Together, we hauled ourselves and the cart back up the steep incline. The mutts with strength magic did most of the work, along with Reiko.

Many morphs were strong, but Reiko seemed to have more power than most, despite her short, slender frame. Even though I couldn’t see her in the blackness, I could still sense her magic. The dragon morph was sitting in front of me, and my fingertips tingled every time she yanked on the rope.

As soon as we reached the top of the shaft, the miners relaxed, and their collective relief swept over me like a cool, refreshing breeze. Penelope and I grabbed our lunch boxes from our lockers, walked back through Basecamp, and headed outside into the plaza.

The other miners flocked to the merchants’ carts, purchasing kebabs of grilled beef, chicken, and spicy vegetables, bread bowls brimming with hot broccoli-cheese soup, and thick slices of cranberry-apple pie, my favorite. Penelope and I bought mugs of pear lemonade, then sat down on a bench close to the low wall that separated the plaza from the mine. In the distance, the fountain bubbled merrily, as though the stone gargoyle were playfully splashing around in the water-filled basin.

Penelope opened her lunch box and pulled out a roast-beef sandwich, along with a bloodcrisp apple and sweet-and-sour carrot sticks. I opened up my own lunch box, which also contained a bloodcrisp apple, along with a paper bag filled with fried sweet-potato chips sprinkled with cinnamon. I grabbed the sandwich I had made this morning—hearty sourdough bread stuffed

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