“Goodnight, Seraphina.” Ciaran’s low voice followed me as I gently closed the door.
I slept very poorly,tossing and turning in the bed that smelled like Ciaran. I couldn’t stop picturing it. The chandelier crashing down. The blood. The bulbs popping and exploding at the edge of the stage. How the crowd had screamed. Carlotta looking up at me, horrified. The gendarme laughing about how they were going to burn me alive.
It was so dark down here that I didn’t have a clue what time it was. I was grateful to hear Ciaran stirring in the other room and took that to mean dawn had finally come.
By the time I made my way into the living room I could smell…
“Coffee!” I exclaimed.
“I figured you might need to come back to life. From the constant shuffling I heard last night, either you dance in your sleep or you didn’t get very much of it.” Ciaran had his muscled back turned to me, while he pressed a pot of the blessed liquid. I decided not to comment.
“I took a guess with the coffee. Hopefully you’re not a tea person. I don’t have any of the stuff.” Ciaran turned around, a steaming mug in his hands.
I wrinkled my nose. “Not a tea person. But I drink enough coffee to kill a horse. Sorry in advance.” I winced as I took the cup.
Ciaran flashed one of his signature half-grins. “Oh, you and I will get along just fine, then.” He picked up his own mug.
I savoured the first sip, moaning at the rich, toasty flavour. It was the best thing I had ever tasted. Ciaran motioned for me to sit at the little table. He passed me a plate of food and I could have wept. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d eaten.
“I’m afraid all I have is pastries and some fruit,” he apologized. “I wasn’t expecting company.” There was a roguish grin on his face as I gobbled up all the food he offered.
“Do you need more? I can scrounge something up if you’re still hungry.” Ciaran watched me devour the food he had given me as he picked at a bowl of fruit from across the small breakfast table. He was already on his second cup of coffee by the time I had finished my plate of food. I couldn’t help but think of how different he was from Seff—offering me more food, when Seff had tried to shame me for eating too much.
“I’m good, thank you. What now?” I drained the last of my coffee. “Will you show me ‘Beneath Lutesse’?” I folded my hands in my lap expectantly. I wasn’t going to sit around and sulk all day. That had never been my style. Maybe it meant I wasn’t processing what had happened… I didn’t care. I had no interest in sitting there thinking about the chandelier disaster. The ensuing consequences of running away from my life. I was here. I might as well keep putting one foot in front of the other.
“Now. If you want. Let’s go.” Ciaran stood, bringing his empty dishes over to the sink and washing them immediately.
As we prepared to leave, I was thankful that the pageboy costume had sensible character shoes. I shuddered, imagining making the journey all the way down here in pointe shoes. I would need to get some more practical footwear if possible, but I was at least covered for today.
Ciaran moved the round rug in front of the door, revealing a trapdoor. I didn’t know whether to be surprised or not. Nothing in the place beneath the opera house was as it seemed. He unlocked and lifted the trap door, gesturing toward it. “After you.”
I looked into the menacing darkness below. A long rickety ladder descended into the abyss. “Ohhhhh, no. You first.”
“Suit yourself. Close the door behind you, though.” He jumped through the trap door with agile grace. I reluctantly followed, much less gracefully, closing the swinging wooden door above me.
It wasn’t a very long descent—maybe twenty feet down. Ciaran jumped onto a packed dirt floor and I followed. We stood in a long, narrow tunnel that was completely dark until we touched down onto the earthen floor. As if sensing our presence, flickering torches burst to life, illuminating the walls. The walls which were completely covered in…
“Are those… human bones?” I blurted, mouth agape as I took in my surroundings.
“Oh. Yes. I guess I forgot how strange that is to other people. I’m just used to it now.” Ciaran walked down the tunnel. “Lutesse is a sprawling, ancient city,” he mused as he strolled ahead, “and building it required material. And it just so happened that the city was located right on top of the perfect building block: limestone. As they quarried the rock block by block to build the city up above, they left a mirror image: an invisible city beneath.” Ciaran slowed, stopping to look at a particularly intricate pattern of bones in the wall.
I stopped beside him. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of bones piled, jammed in from floor to ceiling. Skulls, femurs, hips, all manner of human bones, just stacked one on top of another. It was eerie and also strangely beautiful.
“They were running out of room to bury people in cemeteries as Lutesse expanded. Maybe two hundred years ago? They emptied most of the graveyards and put the bodies down here in the catacombs. This was before Scion had full control, of course. But don’t worry… our city is not all skulls and bones.”
City? I was barely listening, just taking in the strange patterns of human bones, stacks and stacks and stacks in the walls. The skulls leered at us as we passed, as if daring us to go further.
We came upon a stone archway after a short walk through the catacombs. The bone walls gave way to the smooth limestone that defined the faces of most buildings above. Beneath, in the light of those flickering torches, it was awash in yellowish hues. Those torches, I realized, were flickering bundles of tiny lights like the one Ciaran had conjured on our first journey together, not flames at all. On this side of the stone archway, it was silent; we were alone in the tunnel. On the other side, I could hardly believe what I saw and heard.
We stepped into a vibrant marketplace. I gasped. Vendor stalls, shops, cafes with bistro tables and colourful awnings lined each side of the tunnel as it widened and opened to about twenty feet in height. There was a jazz quartet playing down the end of the tunnel by a small fountain. It was exactly like the city above, except that it was also different. Darker, edgier, more alive, despite the bones that had adorned the passageways here. I felt a chill skitter up my spine.
People of all races, ages and genders milled around—shopping, chatting and going about their day, as if there was nothing unusual about this place. There were people sitting atbistro tables sipping coffee, elderly women gossiping, children running around their parents’ legs. It was remarkable. I would never have guessed that there werepeopleliving down here when Ciaran brought me through the mirror the first time. It all seemed so… normal.
As we continued walking, the yellowish limestone gave way to intricately painted murals. The walls had all been adorned with loud colour, sprawling frescos and scrolling text—runic symbols that I didn’t recognize. I turned toward the archway where we had come through, trying to take in the entire space. Above the archway were painted the wordsCrossroads of the Dead.I presumed it was the name of this section of the City Beneath.
“This has been down here. The whole time.” I exhaled in wonder.
“Our people have been gathering here for about seventy years,” Ciaran clarified, “give or take. But the population actuallylivingdown here exploded after the war. When Scion seized government control. Our people needed to find a way not to be persecuted.”
