The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(111)

“What is she doing here?” someone—Nok couldn’t see who exactly in the press—demanded. Prince Jin held up his other hand.

“Please, we must have calm.”

But Nok saw amid the concerned, fearful faces more than a few hostile ones. Of course. These were people like him. People who had lost everything at the hands of the empire. He saw that Prince Jin realized it, too—or, perhaps he had been mindful of this all along.

“Your Triarch will protect you,” the prince said, stepping between Lu and the encroaching Yunians.

Nok glanced over his shoulder. Lu was watching the crowd, calculating and doubtful and proud, without the sense to be afraid yet. He moved closer to her.

“She’s the one they want,” a man snapped, and there was no question of whom he spoke. “Send her out there. Don’t leave her here with us!”

“You’re afraid, but losing our heads will make matters worse,” Prince Jin said sternly. Some of the angry faces looked shamed by his words, but more than a few scowled deeper. “Stay calm. I must leave to join Vrea and Shen. We need you to keep the peace in here while we maintain the gate. Any able-bodied adults who wish to help protect our people can join me—the soldiers will provide you with arms. Decide among yourselves; I will return.”

He steered Lu and the others toward a massive brass-plated door at the rear of the temple.

“Quickly,” he said under his breath as he unlocked the door and ushered them through it. “You’ll be safer here, in the sanctum.”

Nasan went in, but Lu stopped, clutching the edge of the door in one hand. “Your people—they’re right,” she said. “It’s me my cousin wants. Let me face him.”

“No,” Prince Jin said, holding up a placating hand as Lu flared. “Whoever broke the gate must wield terrible power. You cannot fight it with a sword. It is better for you to stay here.”

“But he’ll come looking for me.”

“We will stop him before it comes to that,” the prince said grimly. “Stay and protect your friends. Let us do our work.”

“Come on,” Nasan said, reemerging to tug Lu by the arm. “The prince is right. You don’t know what’s out there.” The princess favored her with a withering glare.

“Lu, let’s just do as he says,” Nok said quickly. “The people out there are ready to skin you alive.”

She frowned but finally nodded. Nok slipped in after her, and the door slammed, heavy and sullen at his back.

The sanctum was dark, lit only by a series of small windows near the high ceiling. The walls were so tall as to make the windows little more than pinpricks from where they stood. As his eyes adjusted, Nok saw they were in an expansive cavern, nearly as large as the main room of the temple had been, but completely empty. He recalled that from the outside, the temple had been a massive square building butting up against the mountain. The main room of the temple had been square; this sanctum must be carved into the mountain itself.

Nok took a step forward and the sound of his footsteps echoed through the still. The silence that followed was so complete as to feel like an absence.

Lu paced along the perimeter of the cavern like a caged animal. “This isn’t right,” she said irritably. “I should be out there to meet Set.”

“You don’t know it’s him,” Nasan countered.

“Who else would it be?” Lu snapped. “It’s him. Him and his cursed monk . . . magician. Creature.”

Nok slumped against the wall, his weakness catching hold now that they were safe. The wall was warm as skin against his back. Warmer, even. Where was that heat coming from?

“The Triarch will know better than us how to defend their own borders,” Nasan was saying. “Magic, gates between realms—this is outside of our purview, Princess.”

“Nothing’s outside my purview,” Lu shot back, but Nasan just snorted.

Pain swept over Nok, so great and whole he could scarcely tell it had radiated from his side. He lifted his shirt to check the wound for fresh bleeding, but his bandages remained clean and dry. Whatever the Yunians had given him to dull his senses was beginning to wear off. He turned against the wall, tried to focus on the stone against his cheek, the warm pressure an anchor holding him fast against the waves of pain and nausea.

Nokhai.

He started, the sound jarring his concentration. He looked around but found no source for the voice.

“I’m counting to a hundred, and then I’m leaving,” Lu said.

Nokhai.

Nasan snapped a retort back at Lu, but he didn’t hear it; he was too focused on locating the voice. This time he realized: it was coming from behind the wall.

Only, the wall wasn’t a wall. It was the mountain. The voice was coming from somewhere inside that dense, ancient stone.

Nokhai, the voice repeated, and it sounded farther away—like it was moving. The strident tones of Nasan and Lu’s arguments dampened, as though they were the ones he was hearing through a wall.

Nokhai, the voice insisted.

Unbidden, he followed it, an ear pressed to the stone, to the rearmost wall of the sanctum. The light from the windows did not reach here, and he sank into shadow.

Nokhai, the voice said, and this time he thought he knew it—but only for an instant, more as the physical sensation of recognition than comprehension.