When Ice Breaks, When Gold Cracks

The pool wouldn't allow him to overhear, so he shoved away from the pillar and raced out of the throne room. A little ways down the path to his quarters, a second hall opened up, one that held delicate flames in the sconces that lined the stone but no paintings and tapestries like the main halls of the temple. The windows were small, and little sunlight bled into the polished corridor. Servants and acolytes eyed him as he passed, quickly scooting out of his path, but their puzzled stares were nothing compared to the hot shame on the back of his neck—as if the goddess herself was glaring at him.

He bumped the shoulder of a young girl, her black hair matted and her green scales dim. She quickly dipped her head to him; he bit back the urge to apologize, knowing Stellae would chew him out if he caught word that Unda had been placing himself lower than the servants again. Instead, he kept running, ignoring the stitch in his side and the growing crystals of ice on his hands that had since reached his elbows.

He came to the end of the hall, where a small hidden door had been crafted into the stone wall. A large tapestry hung over it, concealing it beneath a skilled recreation of a dragonborn woman with cerulean scales and delicate white flowers in her raven curls. He pushed the heavy fabric aside to reveal the little wooden door that only came up to his chest. The latch came undone easily, and he slipped inside. As a child, he had stumbled upon it by accident and had crawled around inside the walls of the entire temple in tears, lost for hours until Aurum had come to get him out.

It was a maze to those who didn't know where they were going, but it was designed to help the servants quickly navigate the grounds, though it had gone unused for years after the temple staff increased. More servants meant each had a smaller area to work in, and the temple's unnecessary shortcuts soon became abandoned. But Unda hadn't forgotten, not when it was the perfect place to catch his breath when Ignis was nagging him or when he could sneak out of Selini's sight for a moment alone.

It would lead him right to the council room, and he could sit behind the walls where neither the goddess nor Aurum would see him.

Smiling to himself, he pulled the little door shut and threw the path into darkness. It pressed against him on all sides, thick and suffocating like the stale air between the walls. He crawled through the narrow space, suddenly thankful for his narrow shoulders. If he was any bigger like Aurum, he would never have been able to make it through. The passage did seem more cramped than it was in his childhood memories, though.

Dust and dirt clung to him, and the smell of must made him wrinkle his nose. Slowly, his eyes began to adjust to the dark, revealing his faint etchings in the stone. They glowed with a dim blue light and guided his path, marking certain rooms and exits with old runes. It wasn't long before the sound of muffled voices floated toward him.

"It is not a dangerous task unless you make it so," the goddess was saying, speaking alone and in a solid tongue rather than the powerful wave that came from her dragon form. From her brisk tone, he guessed it was the golden head Tomi, and she had appeared to Aurum alone in her dragonborn form.

Unda stopped and sat back on his heels. The dark remained, so he let his eyes slide closed and pricked his ears to better hear the goddess's voice.

"With all of you together, I have no doubt he will be fine," she continued.

"I'm worried about his safety, goddess. He's young and inexperienced," came Aurum's voice, twinged with a softness that twisted Unda's insides.

"You were younger than he is now when I found you in the desert, after you had tried to kill and rob my messenger."

Aurum scoffed. "He's softer than I was."

"We have made a decision," Tomi said. A chair scraped against the stone floor, and Unda guessed she had stood. She liked to pace as she spoke, and he could picture her flowing gold gown sweeping the ground as she walked. "Although it was his request to go, we believe he is valuable to this mission. While he is there, we are able to monitor your progress as well as the state of our territories claimed in the war."