Eithan grimaced. “We’ll be light on elixirs for the next few months, I’m afraid, but I’ll come deliver you whatever we can spare. The Jai clan seized our last refinery in Serpent’s Grave.”

Yerin wasn’t about to let that pass. “Hope you don’t forget me, once you’ve got something to spare.”

“As I believe I mentioned before, I have something special in stock for you. You’ll simply have to wait and see.”

On the ground, Cassias stirred, his glassy eyes taking on a spark of awareness. He mumbled something through thick lips, trying to speak.

While Lindon and Yerin were both distracted by the fallen man, Eithan vanished again. Yerin jerked her eyes up, sweeping her spiritual sense out to catch the Underlord, but he was gone.

Eithan and Cassias had both vanished.

Lindon hitched his pack up onto his shoulders. “Does it worry you that he just left before explaining how this course works?”

“Not a special worry, no,” Yerin responded. She’d have been pleased with a few straight answers, but she was used to working without them. Her master treated explanations like they were made of wintersteel and crusted with diamonds.

“You get pushed into more than a few impossible challenges, and you start getting used to it,” she said. “What itches at me is that he’s keeping secrets.”

Lindon rubbed the back of his neck. “He can’t tell us everything, though, can he?”

She checked the leather-wrapped roll of swords under her arm and marched over to check out one of the caves. No sense wasting time. “When my master told me to do something cracked in the head, I marched in step because I knew he could be trusted. Eithan, though? I don’t even know what he wants us for. Won’t be much help in cleaning up the city, will we?”

Lindon followed her to the caves, frowning as he pondered. He looked so grim and serious when he was thinking.

The five caves were dug into the back of a little alcove in the shadow of the black cliff. Nearby, the waterfall streamed down into a crystalline pool, and a cluster of scraggly black bushes held berries nearby.

“I’ll take what I can get,” Lindon said at last. “If he’s willing to sponsor me on my Path, the rewards are worth the risk. I just have to hope he’s not looking for anything too terrible.”

“I’ve never liked betting on hope,” she muttered, but that wasn’t entirely true. When you got swept up in the nets of someone powerful, you didn’t have much left to your name but hope.

Hope that they were looking out for you, and not just using you as grain in a mill.

***

Cassias’ body had deserted him, and by the time he could move again, Eithan had snatched him away from Lindon and Yerin. They were deep in the caverns now, and Eithan wouldn’t let him crawl back.

But his bloodline powers were still working. He’d heard everything.

Eithan still stood there in his fine outer robe, hands tucked behind his back, smiling in self-satisfaction as he waited for Cassias to stir. It was black as tar in the tunnel, but he could still see well enough through his detection web. The Underlord, he was sure, could see perfectly.

“How did they offend you, for you to make them suffer so?” Cassias asked, his voice weak.

Eithan raised one eyebrow. “Offended me? Quite the opposite; they have impressed me again and again. I might actually have placed a winning bet this time.”

Cassias had heard Eithan talk about a bet before—one that had gone wrong. Which had resulted in the destruction of the Arelius family main branch, over six years ago.

“They won’t win anything in there,” Cassias said, struggling to his feet. “I can’t say why you directed Lindon to this Path at all, but there are safer ways to teach him.”

“You think safety is one of the values I hold most dear, do you?”

Cassias stabbed a finger in the direction of the exit, assuming Eithan could see it. “The Black Dragon Trials were designed for a team of five Lowgolds, all trained to work as a unit. They were supervised by the elders of the family, who would call off the Trials or order breaks for the participants, as necessary.”

“I seem to recall reading about that, yes.”

Cassias longed to break something in his frustration, but his training and upbringing only allowed him to grow more stiff. His back straightened, his jaw tightened, and the grip on his sword hilt whitened his knuckles. “The Jai are strangling us. We cannot throw away recruits when we’re short on manpower as it is. Not to mention the sheer time and expense it must have taken to open this place back up and power the Trials. Underlord, this is irresponsible to the point of negligence.”

It was the most openly he’d ever contradicted Eithan, but Cassias couldn’t say he was sorry. Eithan had finally cleared his way to marry Jing, and Cassias would always be grateful, but he couldn’t watch the man run his family off a cliff.

Eithan turned his head, looking into the darkness, and his whole demeanor seemed to shift.

Cassias knew that Eithan had grown up in Blackflame City, but they had never met. He’d never even heard of Eithan Arelius until six years ago, when the man stumbled through a portal to the other side of the world. Already an Underlord.

Life and blood artists beholden to the family had confirmed that he wasn’t far past thirty. That was partially what had created such an impact in the Blackflame Empire: Underlords so young were not unheard of, but they were rare as phoenix feathers. Eithan had the potential to advance to Overlord, a stage that only the Emperor, Naru Huan, had currently reached.

During the time Cassias had known him, Eithan had behaved like a child playing with toys, like a rich man indulging his idle whims, like a genius in the grip of his eccentricities, and—very occasionally—like a powerful and dignified Underlord.

But now Cassias found himself watching a new side of Eithan. He looked weary. Uncertain.

It shook Cassias more than he cared to admit.

“We settle for so little,” Eithan said at last. “We protect what we have instead of reaching for more. Even when the door is open, we refuse to walk through it.” He clenched a fist in front of him. “Cassias, I can take this family through that door. I can drag the rest of them, kicking and screaming, into a future better than you or I could ever imagine.”

He sighed, and his arm dropped back to his side. “But I can only see so far. I think these two could be the sails that carry us far beyond this empire…but what if I’m wrong? I could squeeze this family dry, betting on a glorious payout fifty years from now, and the Jai could devour us tomorrow.

“I feel blind.”

Speechless, Cassias sat with Eithan in the silence. And the endless dark.

Chapter 12

The five caves dug into the side of the black cliff were each identical. They were just deep enough to provide shelter from the rain—though not the wind—and they were stocked with a single reed mat and blanket each.

Yerin took the first one they came across, stabbing her row of swords into the soil outside the cave’s mouth so that they would start gathering aura. Lindon had no need to do anything of the sort—the vital aura was thick with the power of Blackflame here. He felt like he would harvest it if he took a deep enough breath.