I turn in a slow circle, dread crawling up my spine. Have I doomed myself to a dead world where I’m the only living thing? What if time passes differently here than in the Human world? What if the few days I spent back home have been centuries here?
What if all my dreams were of the past and Lucian is already dead and gone?
Fear claws at my throat, sharp and sudden—I can’t stop it anymore.
I stand in the middle of the foyer and scream his name.
“Lucian! If you can hear me, I’m looking for you! Help me find you! Use your blood magic.”
The words tear out of me—raw and desperate. They echo in the vast space over and over, growing fainter every time.
As the echoes die, I strain my ears listening. The silence presses in harder— thick and suffocating. I can hear my own breathing now—too fast, too loud.
Then—a sound. It’s not a voice…not quite.
It sounds like a faint groan of stone shifting somewhere deep within the Spires.
I freeze as the air shivers, just barely, like a breath passing over my skin. I don’t see magic—but I feel it—a distant tug low in my chest, like a thread pulling taut.
This way, I think and I’m not sure where the thought came from. I can feel it now—the connection between me and Lucian. It’s so faint it’s barely there, but when I concentrate, I can sense it pulling me.
I follow the sensation down a side corridor I don’t remember ever taking before. The walls here are narrower, the ceiling lower. The dust is thicker—my shoes scuff through it with every step.
At the end of the corridor, half-hidden behind a fallen tapestry, I find a door.
It’s not grand like all the other doors in the Spires. It’s old and wooden and reinforced with iron bands rusted nearly black.
I push it open—it creaks like a door in a haunted house. Inside it, a stairwell yawns upward.
My stomach drops as I look up…and up and up.
The stairs spiral endlessly above me, disappearing into darkness so thick it swallows the light spilling in from the corridor. The stone steps are uneven, worn down by countless feet over what must be centuries.
I don’t know what this passage is, but I can tell that it’s ancient…and that no one has used it in a long, long time.
I crane my neck. How many stories is it to the penthouse?
I don’t know. But I do know one thing—I won’t stop until I find Lucian.
I hitch my skirt up, grip the railing, and take the first step…then the next, and the next.
My calf muscles start to burn almost immediately. My breath comes faster. The stairwell is cold—the air thin and stale, but beneath it all I can feel something else—him.
Lucian is waiting for me. Faint and fading but still there.
I hope.
“I’m coming,” I whisper fiercely into the dark. “Just hold on.”
And I keep climbing.
73
Jules
I lose track of time.
The stairs stretch on and on, curling upward like some cruel joke, but I don’t stop. I don’t let myself think about how my legs shake or how my lungs burn. I climb and climb and climb, driven by one terrible certainty?—
