Forbidden Honor (Dragon Royals #1)(102)

We gathered the others, then walked the ground that had split in two as the villager showed it to us. It had closed back up, which seemed strange, but the wound through the woods was still visible from the broken trees.

Lynx paused, kneeling and pressing the ground patiently with his palms while the rest of us stood around much less patiently. “The ground is soft here. It would be a good place to burrow down and see what we can find.”

Jaik glanced around, but the villagers had disappeared, perhaps not wanting to be put to work.

“I’m surprised that the villagers didn’t want to hang around to watch the dragon royals do manual labor for one of the few times in their lives.” In fact, I greatly enjoyed having the opportunity to watch them strip off their shirts and set to work.

Sweat rolled down their bronze muscular bodies, and it made me feel a little bit better about the fact I was sweating quite a bit myself.

There was a clang as metal struck metal and Jaik let out a curse as the shock of the impact traveled up through the shovel.

But he looked as pleased as Jaik ever managed the next moment. “Looks like I hit something.”

We all got to work, digging out the rest of it. I scraped the tip of my shovel along, pushing aside red earth to reveal a gleaming strip of metal. Jaik and I exchanged a look.

Branok dug diligently, but his frown deepened even faster than our hole.

“I’m not going to say I told you so,” I promised him, but for some reason that didn’t seem to make him feel any better.

“Now, how do we get in?” Lynx mused.

“Brute force,” Talisyn said, “That’s always Arren’s vote.”

Arren gave him one of those looks as if he didn’t know why he was being dragged into things, as always. He was so endlessly unresponsive, it was fun to put words in his mouth.

Jaik formed a breath of fire. The light reflected off his face and danced in his eyes, making him look like a fallen angel, something straight out of hell, but with a face so beautifully distracting.

No wonder all the other shifters were terrified of us.

His firebreath came out in a long, thin line and cut away at the metal, until finally he reared back, having made a circular hole through the tunnel and kicked it with his feet. There was an even louder clang as the metal hit the bottom of the tunnel floor.

“Well this is getting very interesting,” Talisyn said. “And I for one am not creeped out at all.”

Jaik dusted his hands against his trousers, staring into the darkness. “We’re going in.”

“Of course we are,” Talisyn said with false brightness. “What else would we do with ourselves? You can’t pass up an opportunity like this to go into the creepy tunnel full of death monsters.”

Although no one else bothered to argue with Jaik, Talisyn seemed to say what everyone else was thinking. He certainly said what I was thinking.

“I don’t suppose we’d want to let the dragon elders know about this?” I was no fan of theirs, but it seems like they’d be pretty curious about the tunnels leading through their kingdom.

“Not a chance,” Jaik said. “If this isn’t Caldren’s work, this is their work.”

“Caldren’s work?” How did he get dragged into this?”

But no one answered me. My friends were slithering through the hole and dropping into the tunnel below. Light glowed from inside the tunnel, as they lit balls of fire in their hands.

I certainly wasn’t going to be left out. I sat on the edge of the sheared-away metal hole, let my legs dangle, then pushed off.

I landed lightly on my feet in their midst.

We were in a long, winding tunnel that stretched as far as the eye could see. The flames flickering in their hands lit the dragon royals’ handsome faces with an ever-changing mix of light and shadow.

I looked past them down the tunnel, which stretched away until it faded into darkness. Anything could be lurking in the dark, more blinded shifters with weeping eyes. A powerful sense of loneliness clutched my stomach with its talons—what if they left me behind down here again?

Jaik was already starting down the tunnel with his usual confidence. “Hold on,” Lynx grumbled, digging in his bag. “Unless you want to get lost down here.”

“We’ve all got quite the sense of direction,” Jaik answered impatiently, but waited for his friend, crossing his arms over his chest.

“In the air,” Lynx corrected, dragging a pad of paper and a pencil out of his bag, then letting the leather satchel thump back against his side. “We’re not at our best advantage grunting around under the earth like orcs.”

“This seems like a very big security risk,” I muttered. “Who would want monsters roaming around under the kingdom? And how could this have happened under the dragon elders’ noses, if they weren’t the ones who were responsible? And if they were, why?”

“Lucien.” Branok’s voice was harsh. Shit, I was once again talking out loud. “Nothing that you have to say is that interesting to the rest of us. We’ve all thought through those same questions already.”

“I’m interested,” Talisyn said mildly.

He was definitely my favorite.

Lynx began to sketch a rudimentary map as Jaik led the way into the tunnels. I followed behind Jaik, determined not to put myself in any position to be abandoned. That meant I was close enough to breathe in the dark, heady scent of his aftershave and to notice the way his tunic clung to his spreading shoulders.