I grab his hand, jerking his face back to me. “Every step is progress, even if we can’t see it in the moment.”
He sighs, face relaxing. Ruvan reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “You wouldn’t understand what it’s like to go to sleep with hope and wake up to find your world in shambles.”
“I know what it’s like to be born into a hopeless situation though,” I counter. “And I know what it’s like to work on something, to dedicate your life to it, and know it might never be enough. To be all right with merely being a vessel for generations of knowledge—one link in the chain. Nothing more.”
His fingers linger on the swell of my cheek before his hand falls back to his side. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Of course I am.” I nudge him.
He dares a smile. It’s small. But I think it’s the sincerest thing I’ve seen from him. There’s no pretense, no hate, none of the mess that brought us together and still lies around us, piled like twisted steel of false starts and half-hearted attempts.
“I think we’re ready to go,” Winny calls over.
Ruvan angles himself away from me to ask, “Do we have everything we might need?”
“Hopefully. We have as much as we can carry,” Lavenzia answers.
“I can carry more.” Ventos seems offended at the implication otherwise.
“As much as we can carry without beingtooencumbered.” Lavenzia rolls her eyes. “So, will it be the trapdoor? Or the way we came?”
“My vote is for the trapdoor.” Winny raises her hand.
“I’m not sure if I can fit.” Ventos adjusts his pack on his back. There are a few rations—obsidian blood vials—left behind on the tables to make room for even more notebooks.
“Suck it in, big guy.” Lavenzia pats his belly.
“You’re lucky I like you.” Ventos shoots her a glare.
“What does our illustrious lord, and hunter but not a hunter, think?” Winny asks us.
To my surprise, Ruvan turns to me. I quickly weigh the options and decide on, “The trapdoor.”
“Really? We don’t have a clear path forward that way,” Ruvan cautions. “It’s uncharted territory.”
“We’ve made up half of all this as we went.” I shrug. “Perhaps, if this room is so abandoned and so hard to get to, we won’t find any more who have Succumbed to the curse.”
“You’re too optimistic.” Lavenzia adjusts the blade on her hip.
“At least someone else is.” Winny opens the trapdoor. “I’ll be everyone’s meat shield again and scout ahead. If I come back, everything’s fine. If you hear screaming, assume it’s not.” She grins slightly and slips into the darkness, disappearing.
I continue turning over the disk in my pocket as we wait in tense silence. It’s such a unique metal. I’m trying to guess what it might be made from by weight and feel alone. I scratch it lightly. I need to be back in the smithy again to make any headway on discerning it.
“It’s clear.” Winny reemerges. “I’ve no idea where it goes yet, but it’s clear.”
“In that case, we move quickly and silently,” Ruvan decrees.
A ladder descends into the darkness of the trapdoor, bringing us to a narrow hallway. Ventos has to take off his pack and sword to sidestep through. Lavenzia carries the box for him. The passageway opens to a spiral staircase.
My enhanced vision cuts through the inkiness enough to make out the shapes of the others. But I follow more on sounds than sight. Ventos is hardly silent with his massive sword clanging against the wall periodically. Winny’s short breaths huff ahead as she bounces forward and back.
But my focus is on Ruvan, how he’s moving behind me, every step closer to me than the last. His hands glide over the stone walls on either side of me for support until I’m positioned between them, my back nearly brushing against his chest.
Without warning, his lips graze the shell of my ear. “Don’t be afraid. I’ll keep you safe,” he whispers so softly that I think I’ve imagined it.
I’m instantly transported back to last night. To the feeling of him grabbing me. Pulling me closer. His fangs as they penetrated me.
My breath hitches and I miss a step. Ruvan is there in an instant. His arm glides around my middle. My back is flush against his front and I can’t find my breath.
