I’m only airborne for a split second before my feet hit the solid stone. At times like these, I’m grateful for my father’s height and that he passed it on to me. The top of the platform now sits roughly an arm’s length above my head.
Odi paces at the lip. “It’s farther than it looks.”
I reach up towards her. “I’ve got you.”
She hesitates, but only for a moment. As she sits on the edge ready to push off, I reach up and slip my hands around her waist. I feel the catch of her breath the moment I take hold of her before she bites the sound off with gritted teeth.
“I’ve got you,” I softly remind her.
She nods once, her face hard, and then she leaps.
In one smooth movement, I swing her down from the ledge and place her feet gently on the ground. I keep my hold on her for just a second longer than necessary. Her hands grip my forearms, but she lingers too, her eyes skirting over my face. She still faintly smells of pears and honey, the scent batting away any other thought in my head.
Then she’s gone, taking her warmth with her.
Good. I don’t need the distraction.
The space opens up as we move deeper. The ceiling stretches higher, walls breathing wider. The stale air grows cooler, tinged with wet stone and something older—somethingfaintly sweet, like rotting fruit.
Torchlight flickers across carvings etched into the walls. Some half-faded. Others are barely even visible. For once, not even I can make out what the markings might be.
We walk for a short amount of time before the pathway opens up. The crew comes to a stop behind me. No one dares to say a word.
Tunnels.
Dozens of them, branching out from a single chamber like ribs from a spine—jagged mouths leading in every direction, each one swallowed in darkness. No markings. No signs. Just cold, crumbling stone and choices we don’t know how to make.
“Shit,” Elio mutters. “Which way?”
No one answers.
Odelia stands beside me, arms crossed tight over her chest. I don’t need to look at her to know her mind’s already running through every path, every riddle, every lie this place might throw at us.
I scan the tunnels, one by one.
It’s a gamble. But so is standing still.
And this place . . . it doesn’t feel like the kind that rewards hesitation.
TWO DIFFERENT BEASTS
18
ODELIA
“Everyone pair off.”
Rune’s voice is carefully neutral, but the fact that he wants us to split up at all makes my stomach flip. Tavi moves to Elio, and it’s just Rune and me left when the others settle, passing torches to ensure each group has at least one. On the far side, someone coughs, wet and hacking, and I wince as the sound echoes off the jagged walls.
“Each group takes a section,” Rune calls. “Don’t go too far in at first. We scout and return with any information that might hint at where we’re supposed to go.” He gestures, sending them fanning across the chamber. Soon they’re only visible in stark bits of torchlight across a lake of shadow.
When he turns to me, his smile is strained. “Looks like we’re up.”
Every tunnel in the section we take looks identical. I run the torch along the outside of the door, passing it silently to Rune so he can lift it over the archway. We fall into the routine of the movements, fingers brushing at every pass of the light, not daring to speak. The quiet here feels sacred.Even whispers are punished, multiplied as they spirit off the walls like ghosts. Silence has always been a sanctuary for me, a hiding place. Here it’s alive.
Waiting.
When we find nothing at the opening, we start with the first tunnel on one side. I count fifty paces till we turn back again, then we enter the next. And the next. It feels like hours in the dark, the flame reflecting off the runes in the walls, its smoke sitting low, clinging to my face and constricting my throat.
