Pushing past the pain and nausea, Kiva struggled to her feet, seeking to get her bearings. Wherever she was, it was pitch-black, and after shutting down her immediate panic that the head trauma had turned her blind, her next fear was that she’d been sent back to her isolation cell. But when she expanded her senses, she realized that it smelled different, felt different. The air wasn’t fresh, but it wasn’t foul like in the Abyss. It was . . . wet. Musty. Earthy. And while it wasn’t warm, it also wasn’t as cold as where she’d been for a fortnight; there was a humidity to it, a dampness.

Kiva’s skin began to crawl as she reached out her hands, feeling for anything that might tell her where she was or ease her dread about where she was beginning to think she was. Waving her arms, she shuffled carefully forward, but before she could make it two steps, her foot caught on something, and she tripped, falling blindly.

She didn’t land on solid ground.

She landed on something hard, but also soft.

Something that groaned when her weight landed on it; something that moved.

There was only one thing it could be.

Only one person it could be.

Kiva hurried to untangle herself from Jaren in the darkness, accidentally elbowing him as she scrambled backwards, eliciting another moan of pain.

“Sorry!” she rasped out. The last thing she wanted was to apologize to him, of all people, but it was an automatic response.

“Kiva?” Jaren rasped back, his voice equally hoarse with lack of use. “Is that you?”

She wanted to snap out a barbed reply asking who else would it be, but she held her tongue, only saying, “Yes, it’s me.”

Another low moan, followed by the rustling sound of Jaren sitting up.

“My head feels like it’s been split in two,” he said.

Kiva didn’t confirm that she felt the same. She didn’t know what to say to him at all.

“Hang on,” Jaren said. “Just let me—”

Kiva recoiled and shielded her face as fire burst into being, like a floating ball of flames lighting the space around them. Her eyes watered as they adjusted, but then she was able to take in where they were, her fears confirmed.

“We’re in the tunnels,” Jaren said, realizing it as well, his tone almost puzzled.

Kiva looked at him, seeing him for what felt like the first time. A prince, disguised as a prisoner, still wearing the same clothes she’d seen him in two weeks ago, but now stained with blood. His blood. If she didn’t know who he really was, if she didn’t have the evidence of it floating in the air before her, she never would have believed it possible.

“Kiva, did you hear me?” Jaren asked, looking from the tunnel back to her. What he saw on her face caused him to still.