Heartless Villains (Ruthless Villains Book 3)

Heat finally returned to my body as I laced up my boots after putting on dry clothes as well as my leather armor. Water dripped from my pack as I slung it over my shoulders again. The outside was naturally soaked, but by some miracle, those oilskin wraps had kept the rest of our belongings more or less completely dry. While I adjusted the straps, I cast a quick look at the rippling pool behind us.

That cavern we had been stuck in had been the final one before we reached the end of the underwater tunnel, so once the stone had slid back from the opening, we had been able to swim straight here. However, it had taken a while before that happened. Since there was no way to tell time in here, I didn’t know for certain, but it felt as though we had lost hours in that cavern.

My gaze drifted from the clear pool of water and to the poison mage next to me.

Well, maybe I wouldn’t necessarily classify the hours as entirely lost.

As I watched her lift her arms and tie her wet hair back, I was once again reminded of how it felt to have her body pressed against mine. To share her breath. Her heartbeats. To listen to that sharp tongue of hers spit wickedly clever insults at me one minute and then moan my name the other. In those moments, this strange thing between us felt so… real.

“Enjoying the view?”

I started slightly as I realized that I had been staring at the curve of her neck as she looked down while tying back her hair. Now, there was a smirk playing over her lips as she looked back at me with raised eyebrows.

Pulling myself together, I let an equally sly smile slide across my own mouth. “I was just checking if I left any marks on your pretty little neck when I choked you.”

She snorted. “As if.”

“You’re right. I’m way too skilled for that.”

A huff of amusement slipped from her lips, but she didn’t argue the point. Instead, she jerked her chin and started towards the tunnel ahead. “Let’s go.”

“Giving me orders now, are you?” I said as I fell in beside her.

“Yes.” Cocking her head, she looked up at me as we entered the tunnel. “Have you forgotten that outside the bedroom, that is the natural order of things?”

“The natural order?”

“Yes.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because I’m more powerful than you.”

I chuckled and cast her a sideways glance. “Whatever you need to tell yourself, sweetheart.”

“It was difficult before because I only had limited knowledge to go on. But now, after spending all this time and going on all these missions with you, I know what your strengths and your weaknesses are. And I know exactly how to beat you.”

A sudden flash of worry shot up my spine. What had she been able to figure out? What weakness had she seen? And was she going to use it against me before or after we had gotten to the Enhancer?

She let out a dark laugh and gave me a quick rise and fall of her eyebrows. “Oh I’ve got you worried now, haven’t I?”

“Worried?” I scoffed. “Don’t flatter yourself. If you haven’t been able to kill me in the past five years, I doubt this will make much difference.”

“After we’ve dealt with the insufferable heroes of Eldar, I guess you’ll find out.”

“Hmm.”

Silence descended over the tunnel. For a while, we just continued walking side by side as we made our way deeper into the mountain. Light from the ever-present crystals illuminated the path, but there were no more holes in the walls or floor that held wooden spikes or other traps.

Our footsteps echoed faintly against the dark stone. They were joined only by the muted dripping of water from our soaked packs. Other than that, the mountain was dead quiet.

“Once we get the Enhancer and make Lance dismantle it,” Audrey began after a while, “we still have Chancellor Quill and Eldar’s entire constable force to deal with.”

I heaved a deep sigh. “Yeah.”

“If they ever figure out that there are only six of us left, we’re screwed.”

“I know.” Raking a hand through my hair, I looked up at the glowing ceiling for a few seconds. “But Malcolm and the others are setting up a strategy for how to handle that right now. And as much as that damn suit-wearing asshole pisses me off, there’s no denying that Malcolm is incredibly good at what he does.”

“True. And Sienna has the raw firepower of at least ten dark mages, so we have that going for us too.”

“Not to mention Grant and all his secrets. I still don’t know exactly what his magic does, or what happened to all of those people who went into his gardens. We barely went inside the very edge of it, and we almost got stuck in there. He’s never been a battle mage, but I’m pretty sure that he’s incredibly dangerous when he wants to be.”

“And we have Sam.”

A smile pulled at my lips. “Yeah, we have Sam. With a healer that good, those constables will have a really hard time taking us down.”

“So…” Audrey stretched out her arms before shooting me a sly look. “I guess I’ll be the one to kill you after all.”

I huffed out a laugh. “Likewise.”

Up ahead, the tunnel opened up into what looked like a bigger cavern. I scanned the area for any last traps, but nothing shot out to impale us, and we walked the final stretch to what indeed turned out to be a large cavern.

The ceiling looked like a pointed triangle rather than the dome that the other spaces had possessed. Crystals gleamed like stars in the slanted ceiling, but the walls around us were bare. I swept my gaze over the dark jagged rocks.

There were three openings set into the wall opposite us. I squinted towards them. The same glowing white light came from all of them, and the shape of all three doorways was identical.

“Let’s go with the one on the left,” Audrey said as she started towards it.

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

“Watch that tone,” I muttered, mostly out of force of habit.

But in the end, I followed her towards the doorway on the left.

Our footsteps echoed even louder as we crossed the cavernous space to stand in front of the opening Audrey had picked out. She didn’t even break stride as she just walked right in. I followed her.

There were fewer crystals in here, and the tunnel grew noticeably gloomier as we made our way farther in. When the white gems had become so few and far between that I was starting to have trouble seeing more than a handful of steps in front of us, I reached out and grabbed Audrey by the shoulder.

“Why did you pick this one?” I asked.

“Because they were identical, and we had to start somewhere.”

“So you didn’t…” I trailed off as a weird noise drifted towards us. “Can you hear that?”

She flicked her gaze up and down the tunnel. “Yes.”

“I think we should head back.”

“I ag—”

A screeching sound cleaved through the air. I whipped around as something huge lunged at us. Slamming my palms together, I blindly threw a force wall at it.

The shrieking noise intensified as the blast hit a long body that had been about to crash into us. I stared at it in disbelief.

It looked like a massive centipede. Except with gaping jaws. And fangs. The mass of legs clicked and rustled as the gigantic insect righted itself from the wall it had been flung into and scrambled towards us again.

Green mist flashed past me as Audrey shot a cloud of poison at it. It let out another shriek, but didn’t die.

More clicking sounded. I called up another force wall right as an entire cluster of those fanged monsters hurtled towards us. Throwing the wall at them, I tried to send them all flying back to where they had come from. But it only pushed them back a little before their rattling legs thudded against the stone again.

The one that Audrey had hit with her poison had scrambled back into the tunnel, but the rest of them were attacking once more. This time, they were coming from all sides. The floor. The walls. And the ceiling.

“Do you trust me?” Audrey asked as I threw another attack at them.

Yes. And no.

When I didn’t immediately answer, something flickered briefly across her face. But before I could figure out what it was, she touched her palms together.

A massive cloud of poison exploded down the whole tunnel.

Since I was standing next to her, it hit me too and I choked back a strangled breath as the poison swirled down into my throat. The strength of it was enough to send me crashing down to the ground.

Whining sounds came from the creatures that had been about to attack us. On my hands and knees, I looked up to find all of them crawling back into the darkness of the tunnel. I knew that Audrey could change the strength of the poison in different parts of her cloud, because I had seen her kill some people with it while others in the same mist only choked on it, so I knew that she probably kept the worst of it away from me. She had to be using enormous amounts of poison on those insects because just the collateral that I was hit with was enough to incapacitate me completely.

I focused on staying conscious while the smooth and cold feeling of her magic swirled inside my throat.

After about half a minute, those creatures had disappeared fully back to wherever they had come from. I choked and dry heaved on the ground.

The tunnel was empty, but her glittering green mist still remained. I didn’t look up to meet her gaze, but it struck me then that she could kill me right there and there was nothing I could do about it. For a few seconds, I wondered if she actually would.

Then the cloud evaporated.

I sucked in a deep breath as the poison disappeared from my lungs in a flash.

“Not this one,” Audrey said into the suddenly very thick silence.

Struggling back to my feet, I turned to meet her gaze and then opened my mouth to respond. But before I could, she spun around. Confusion flickered inside me, but she didn’t even look at me.

So in the end, I just watched as she walked back towards the cavern with an unreadable expression on her face.