Thousands of them.
“Keep your secrets,” I say, gaze bouncing from cross to cross. To the map’s left, a blade’s been stabbed into the stone, and from the constellation of indents surrounding it, I garner it’s not the first time it’s wound up there.
“Believe me,” Kaan mutters, gathering some bits of clothing he’d left lumped on the seater. “I’m under no false assumption that you’re even the slightest bit interested in my secrets.”
“Realistic expectations are healthy.”
He grunts, carrying the clothes through a wide doorway to the right, disappearing into the darkness within while I do another visual sweep of the space, noticing a fine sheen of dust on his shelves. Actually, pretty much upon everything except his instrument, the seaters, that bottle of spirits, and the dagger stabbed in the wall.
Huh.
“Guessing you don’t … entertain much?”
Or even let somebody in to clean.
“The bolted door puts most folk off,” he says from somewhere within the adjacent room. “Suits me just fine.”
Right.
Likes his privacy.
Got it.
I look to the lofty domed ceiling adorned with overlapping dragonscales I suspect are Rygun’s based on their burnt-blood tone. A huge chandelier hangs from the peak, pieced together with more Sabersythe tusks than I’ve ever seen in one place, all of varying shapes and sizes.
“Wouldn’t want to be standing here if the mountain shook,” I murmur, gaze shifting to my right as Kaan emerges from the shadowed doorway with two towels—tossing one at me.
“Thanks,” I say, using it to sponge some of the water clinging to every inch of me like the remnants of a slumber-terror, drying off my garments while he does the same. I drape my towel across the back of a seater, along with my satchel.
“This way,” he rumbles, tossing his towel next to mine, then moves toward the twin doors ahead. They look out onto what appears to be an overgrown private garden doused in so much shade I’m surprised anything grows out there at all.
He unlocks the doors and steps through, and I follow into the humid midst, down an unkept path that often requires me to duck—insects creaking, water beading off the faces of round velvety leaves the color of clay.
A ruffle of wind offers me a glimpse through the dense foliage to the sandy view beyond, and I realize this garden looks south toward The Fade.
Away from the sun.
“It’s just down here,” Kaan says, moving toward a fall of coppery vines that clothe segments of the steep, uneven wall surrounding this garden. He parts the natural drape, cleaving an opening through to a hidden tunnel beyond, then ducks and shoves in ahead of me.
I frown. “I’m not following you down there.”
He pauses, looking at me over his shoulder. “Why not?”
“Because that’s how folk die, Kaan. I know because that’s how I—”
His brow bumps up.
I pause, reconsider divulging my trade secrets with a king I only decided to semi-trust two seconds ago, then figure it’s best he knows I’m a bloodstain on his pretty paradise.
“Assassinate. This right here”—I gesture to the tunnel he’s leading me down—“is a prime location for you to slit my throat, then carve some letters on my chest.”
Wonder what he’d give me. Probably:
R E T U R N S P R E C I O U S G I F T S
He turns to fully face me, eyes beseeching as he says, “Listen, Raeve.”
“I am. Obviously.”
“No,” he growls, placing his hand on the smooth, rounded wall. “Listen.”
I open my mouth, close it when his meaning sinks in. “But he’s so—”
“What?”
Stable.
Sturdy.
The absolute opposite of me.
Crossing my arms, I shake my head and sigh, loosening my internal sound snare almost wide enough to let him in …
Bulder.
I hold Kaan’s stifling gaze a moment, then loosen the snare that little bit more, slapping a wide-holed sieve atop the opening and bracing myself for Bulder’s grinding vibrato that … doesn’t come.
Because he’s not singing—not at all.
He’s humming.
A deep, droning roll … almost like a baritone coo.
My brow buckles, my own hand coming out to flatten on the burnished stone. “It’s—”
“This is a place of nurture, Raeve. Of love and worship. If I wanted to harm you, I certainly wouldn’t do it within this cavern,” he says, holding my stare with chest-crushing intensity.