They Drugged Me Into Darkness, Now I Am Its King novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: What the Forge Keeps

Lucien carries the unconscious Aquas to Captain Durn's forge-hall, where Durn declares Pluto's claim on him before the crew and spreads sealed war maps; Aquas wakes and, pretending to seek a path back to the moon court for vengeance, extracts the markings that point toward the lost sun temple until Lucien publicly asks what he is really looking for.

Captain Durn slammed the war map flat on the iron table.

The sound rang off the forge walls like a hammer strike.

Aquas flinched awake in Lucien's arms.

His body still felt hollow. Burnt out. The gold fracture under his eye pulsed once, warm, then settled.

'Forgive the noise, little sun,' Durn said. 'But there is work, and you are the center of it.'

Lucien did not set him down. His arms stayed locked under Aquas's knees and shoulders, and his voice came from just above Aquas's head.

'He needs rest.'

'He needs to see this.' Durn's broad hand flattened over the map. 'The whole forge crew has been waiting.'

Aquas turned his head.

The forge-hall was full.

Dwarves stood at every worktable, hammers down, faces turned toward him. The heat of the fires pressed against his skin. Sparks still drifted from a dozen cooling blades.

They had all stopped working to look at him.

'Put me down,' Aquas whispered.

Lucien's grip tightened.

'Please.'

Slowly, carefully, Lucien lowered him until his boots touched the stone floor. One hand stayed at Aquas's elbow, steadying him.

Durn watched the two of them with her warm, steady hazel eyes.

'You hit harder than your moon court gave you credit for,' she said.

Her voice carried to every corner of the hall.

'The underworld keeps what it claims. And we have claimed you, consort of our prince. That is not a courtesy. That is law.'

A murmur rolled through the forge crew. Not words exactly. Something lower. Approving.

Aquas's chest ached.

Not from the light. From the sound of it.

They were all looking at him like he was something worth keeping.

'What are the maps for?' he asked.

Durn grinned. It was the first time he had seen her smile with teeth.

'Every sealed war map in the succession vault. I pulled them myself. Routes through the deep earth, old roads, borders that have not been opened since the sun ruins fell.'

She tapped the map with one thick finger.

'If the moon court sends more monsters, we will know every road they could take. And if you want a road back to them, we will know that too.'

A road back.

Aquas looked at the map. The lines were old, drawn in ink that had gone brown with age. Some of them led up. Toward the surface. Toward the moon court.

Others led down.

Into the deep earth. Into places that had no names.

He thought of Aerial. Of the monsters she had sent. Of the drugging, the marriage, the title stripped from him while he was too weak to stand.

'Show me the routes to the moon court,' he said.

His voice came out soft. Measured. Exactly as he meant it to.

'All of them.'

Durn's eyes sharpened.

'You mean to go back.'

'I mean to understand what is between us now.'

It was not a lie. He did want to understand.

He also wanted the map.

Not the moon court roads. Those were the decoy. The thing he let them believe he was chasing.

What he wanted was underneath them.

The old lines that curved away from the moon court and into the ruined solar wastes. The ones Durn had not mentioned. The ones that pointed toward the place the oracle had whispered about before she collapsed at Pluto's threshold.

The sun temple.

He let his eyes drift over the map, unhurried, as if he were only a grieving prince studying the shape of his own betrayal.

'Here,' Durn said, jabbing a route. 'This one passes under the moon court's eastern gate. It has been sealed since your father's grandfather sat the throne.'

Aquas nodded.

'And this one?'

He pointed to a thin line that branched away from the main road. It ran south, through the ash roads, and then stopped at a place where the map was worn blank.

Durn hesitated.

'That one is not a road to the moon court.'

'Then what is it?'

'A dead line. It leads into the solar wastes. Nothing lives there now.'

Nothing lives there.

Which was exactly why it mattered.

The oracle had said the temple was hidden. That only the dying could find it. That the road to it was not on any map the living courts still used.

But it was on this one.

Faded. Almost erased. But there.

'Show me anyway,' Aquas said.

He kept his voice light. Almost careless.

'I want to understand everything my family took from me. Even the dead roads.'

Durn looked at him for a long moment.

Then she nodded.

'You have the right, little sun. More right than most.'

She turned the map toward him and began to explain the terrain. The ash roads. The old watchtowers. The places where the ground had turned to glass during the fall of the sun kingdom.

Aquas listened.

He asked precise, careful questions. About the width of the passes. About the depth of the old tunnels. About the places where the map's ink had gone faint.

And with every answer, he banked the details away.

The route south. The seven watchtowers. The river of black sand that marked the boundary of the solar wastes.

The temple was beyond it.

He could feel it.

The gold fracture under his eye pulsed again.

'You are very interested in the dead roads,' Lucien said.

His voice was low. Quiet. But it cut through the noise of the forge like a blade through silk.

Aquas went still.

'I am interested in everything,' he said.

'No.' Lucien stepped closer. The shadow-dark around him shifted, just slightly, like something waking. 'You are not.'

The forge crew had gone silent.

Durn's hand stopped on the map.

Lucien looked at Aquas with those dark, knowing eyes.

'Tell me what you are really looking for.'

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