Page 74 of The Broken Elf King
I knew he was dead serious, so I didn’t laugh.
“I highly doubt that the queen would have a secret access unguarded like this.” I felt around the outside of the hole and my fingers caught the edge of cold steel. I gasped. “Itisa storm drain!”
He looked impressed for a moment, and then stuck his head into the hole before coming back up. “I hear slow trickling water,” he confirmed.
It was dry season, so hopefully that meant we weren’t about to go swimming.
“Do you mind jumping into the dark scary hole first?” I asked with a nervous laugh.
Raife gave me a winning smile that made my stomach flip over. “Always,” he said, and there was something about that word and the way he said it that melted my heart.
With a fearless wink, he leapt into the dark abyss and I immediately heard the splashing of water as he landed. “Jump down, I’ll catch you!”
I swallowed hard, closing my eyes, and then jumped up into the air, and down. His arms came around me, hooking under my knees and back, holding me to his chest. I was plunged into complete darkness, only the beating of Raife’s heart and his strong arms to keep me sane. A purple light then illuminated the space and I looked up to see that it was coming from him. He was staring down at me with a serious look on his face.
“Being close to you like this… it’s the best feeling in the world,” he breathed.
I forgot where we were then. Who I was. What was up or down. I was just lost in his eyes, which were glowing light purple with elvin magic. What was he talking about? It came out of nowhere but I didn’t care. I just smiled.
“You take the pain away. I forget what it’s like not to be consumed by grief and revenge all the time,” he clarified, and it was like I’d been plunged into ice cold water.
Oh.
He wanted to be close to me because I was an empath, not because I was… me.
“Glad to help,” I said with a wan smile. Was this what it was like for his mother too? Always having people want her for her power? I wished she were still alive so that I could ask. It would be nice to know another empath.
I noticed a metal ladder behind him. “Ladder for the way back,” I pointed out, hoping to cut this tension. In this moment, I wasn’t sure I could stay fake-married to him for the next five years. It would be painful for me.
He started to walk to the castle and I tapped his chest. “You can put me down now.”
He shook his head. “You’ll ruin your dress. And your shoes aren’t right for this.”
I wasn’t going to argue with that, so I allowed him to carry me the next hundred or so feet under the castle wall, all the while absorbing the emotions coming off of him as if it were second nature.
Guilt. Sadness. Fear. Lust.
I used to think that the lust was for me, but now I wondered if he was just thinking of one of the previous girls he’d bedded. This whole empath thing was new, and picking up on emotions in real time was hard to discern.
I sighed, wishing someone would come along and take away my heartache and rejection as easily as I could take his.
Raife stopped beneath a big metal storm drain with another ladder hanging from it and looked down at me. “You think this is it?”
I nodded; I’d been tracking how deep in we’d gone. “One of many, but this is closer to the west wall, which is where I lived. It’s pretty quiet at night since it’s full of neighborhoods.”
Raife heaved me onto the ladder. I clung to it as he then reached up and pushed the steel drain up and over with a grunt.
“Shhh,” I told him.
He paused, and then pushed again. It wasn’t scraping, so I was guessing this was in the grasses by the community garden. I didn’t know where every storm drain was, but I knew generally where we were, and that was the only grassy area near the west wall. When the drain cap was completely off, I climbed up the ladder and peeked my head out a few inches.
I didn’t expect my heart to ache when I looked upon the sleepy street of my old neighborhood, but it did. We were in the gardens, one of my favorite places, and I could see the university off in the distance, and the queen’s palace. Autumn’s cottage was within stone’s throw, and so was my aunt’s. Tears welled in my eyes. I wasn’t prepared for the emotions of it all.
“All clear?” Raife asked below.
I wiped at my eyes and nodded, hoisting myself up out of the drain. I stood and Raife popped up out of the hole in the ground too and stood beside me, looking around wildly with his bow drawn.
“Put that in your cloak,” I told him. “They will assume you are human if you are with me.”
