Even if I have to keep my magic blocked off forever.
Ryatt studies me for a moment and then gives me a single nod of acknowledgement before he looks at Slade. “How was Mother when you came in?”
“Fine. Happy,” he replies, still a little gruff.
Ryatt looks over his shoulder. “She misses you when you’re gone too long.”
Slade doesn’t reply, but his gaze is tracking his mother, a flicker of pain dug into the strained lines around his eyes. After a second, he notices me watching him, and just like that, the expression is gone.
“Why does your mother live separately from everyone else? And how is she…here?”
A condensed, heavy breath slips from his mouth and seems to burden his shoulders. “I suppose it’s time to show you the rest now. Though I’m sorry I can’t space out all of these revelations, but I don’t want you to think I’m keeping anything from you.”
Ryatt’s eyes go comically wide. “You’re going to show her…that? Right now?”
At his tone, I feel my body fill with uncertain tension. “What exactly are you going to show me?” I ask, wary of the resigned look on his face. I don’t know how it’s possible, but I’m even more nervous about this than I was about the existence of a possible lover.
He takes my hand, expression resigned. “I’m finally going to tell you why they really call me Rip.”
I leave Slade’s mother’s house feeling like I’m walking straight through the silk strands of a spiderweb. This uneasy, viscid feeling clings to me all over, no escape from their unsettling fibers.
“Do you have to have so many damn secrets?” I grumble into the dark.
Slade chuckles. “Sorry. I’ll do my best to tell you all of them.”
“So, just to be clear, there is definitely no favored saddle you have locked in a cage somewhere or an ex-lover that you keep in this village?”
He shoots me an unamused look. “No.”
“Good. Good.”
I’m trying to fill in the silence with nervous chatter, because I have no idea what to expect. Every single one of Slade’s secrets has always been pretty groundbreaking, and I don’t think this one will be any different.
Now that we’re back out in the heart of the cave, the buzzing sound has returned. Even pitched at its low hum, it sets my teeth on edge. Slade leads me around Elore’s house and then deeper into the cavern. The bright, cheerful blue glow soon dims, the huge rivers of fluorescence splitting off and becoming nothing but small rivulets in the stone. Without enough light from the mountain to counteract the size of the space, it feels as if the shadows close in on us, the massive space seeming smaller than it really is.
And still, there’s a constant hum that I can feel vibrating through my skin.
“You can hear that too, right?”
“I can.”
He doesn’t seem concerned, nor does he elaborate, so I have to believe that whatever the reason is for this hum isn’t dangerous. It also must have to do with whatever he wants to show me.
My nervous chatter returns. “In my head, I’d pretty much narrowed the reason for your nickname down to having ripped abs. Or making women want to rip their clothes off. Something like that.”
He laughs beside me, the sound counteracting the awful hum and making my anxiety subside just a bit.
“Very good to know where your head has been. But to be extra clear, I have no desire for anyone to rip their clothes off except for you.”
“Clarity is really good.” I nod firmly. “We should keep doing it.”
“We should keep doing it,” he replies with a wicked grin. I have a feeling he’s talking about something different.
Despite my attempt at some levity, my heart starts to pound in an anxious thrum. I try to squint ahead of us, but it’s getting darker, and aside from rock formations and stalagmites, I can’t see anything.
The hum is louder now. It pulls me forward, like a moth to a flame, the source of the sound sinking into my ears and calling to me. Goose bumps scatter down my arms because I know this reaction isn’t right, but I’m too drawn to do anything about it.
“It sounds like we’re getting closer…” I muse, voice dropping.
The cavern breaks off, and Slade leads me through the smaller tunnel, the walls dotted with condensation. There are milky beetles hanging from the stringy lines of blue glow overhead, and the further we go down this tunnel, the stronger the vibrations become. At first, it stays as low and steady as the hum, yet both of them seem to amplify a thousandfold within a matter of seconds until it’s so consuming that I want to shove my hands over my ears.