Swallowing against her dry throat, she continued back along the corridor, but where the previous junction had been, there was now only a wall. That old, familiar fear prickled in her gut, but she refused to give it purchase. The intersection must just be farther back than she remembered, never mind that she hadn’t misjudged a layout since before she met Loraya.
When the hallway began to curve, she stopped. The part she had turned down had been straight all the way through. Had she missed the junction? It was oppressively dark down here. The shadows closed around her like hands holding her underwater, and her mind struggled to form coherent thoughts.
“Don’t be absurd,” she said aloud in hopes it would help her think. “Just backtrack.”
She retraced her steps to the dead end, ensuring she hadn’t passed the intersection, then placed her hand on the chilly wall as she startedback again. That way, if she didn’t see the opening, she would at least feel it. But as she walked and walked, long past the time the hallway should have parted, she felt nothing.
Panic began to thrum inside her, and this time she couldn’t contain it. The hallway wound deeper and deeper, the floor dipping below her feet, the air growing colder with each step. Her heart drummed in time with her hurried footsteps, driving her on, on, on, until the chill of the air began to permeate her clothes and skin. The realization that she was not only lost, but trapped, threatened to steal her breath.
Suddenly, all she could think of were those years of darkness. The memories and emotions pierced her, relentless as they were vivid. She had deserved it. The cold. The quiet. The unending solitude that had settled in her bones like rot and worn her away.
It should have been her who died that day.
The con that killed Loraya had been Kasira’s, as had its failure. It had been too rushed. She hadn’t fully understood their mark, but she had been so desperate to prove to Loraya they didn’t need Thane. Loraya had always thought that without his power, his influence, they would be dead by the year’s end. She had thought Kasira didn’t know the truth.
The first time Kasira saw the bruises, Loraya had laughed them off, said they were an accident. The second time, she didn’t even try to pretend. Still, she refused to leave, convinced they needed Thane to survive, no matter that he was slowly draining the life from her. It wasn’t until later that Kasira had come to understand the ways a prison could become a comfort.
Even now, there was a part of her that wanted to keep those memories locked away, but the dark had a way of bringing them to life. She had crafted them a con, telling Loraya that Thane had sanctioned it—when in truth he knew nothing—all to prove thatKasiracould be the one who picked their targets,Kasiracould be the one who planned everything to the last detail.
She had been so close.
Loraya was quick—in and out before a mark had time to register she had been there—but Kasira had lived for the moment when amark realized what was happening. That brief flash of understanding that sent her heart pumping with the knowledge that she danced on a knife’s edge, and one mistake, one slip, would see her dead. She had barely been nineteen, too young to consider that death came in many forms.
Except in the end, it had been Loraya who paid the price.
That day came back to her now with the stark clarity of her budding panic. A few well-placed roadblocks, and their nobleman target had left his quiet side street for the busy rush of the main thoroughfare. Kasira’s research had revealed three important things: The first was that he carried a large purse to the market once a month to purchase his wife a new trinket. The second, rather than take a guard, he carried his own sword, a ruby-hilted weapon that had glistened in the sun, and which led to the third: He fancied himself a champion of the holy Kalish laws.
Loraya had shoved off a fast-moving cart as if struck and fallen to the ground howling, while Kasira used the distraction to snick free his purse. It should have been so simple. A low-stakes trick they had run a hundred times. She should have bolted into the gathering crowd. Been gone before he had time to react.
Instead, she had turned back, just for a glimpse of his face—and found his sword drawn.
Before his blade could come down on her, something had slammed into her. She hit the cobblestones hard enough to bloody her palms, and when she looked up, Loraya was there. For an instant, she had thought the nobleman had stopped in time. But then she had seen the crimson leaking between Loraya’s fingers, seen the blade buried so deeply in her side that it exposed what little fat clung to her friend’s bones.
She should have run. It was what Loraya had taught her to do. But as the man had ripped his sword free with a sickening squelch, Kasira had scrambled to catch her partner’s body. She had clutched her close, her rasping apologies unfit for reknitting flesh.
Theft wasn’t a capital crime in Kalthos, but it was close enough. Theft from a noble was worse. She had been too distraught overLoraya’s death to flee, and they had thrown her in a cell without windows or light. A place so dark and quiet that sometimes she could forget she existed at all. She felt that way now, stumbling through the catacombs, the walls pressing closer and closer like the jaws of a beast.
“This isn’t real,” she whispered, the words faint against the dark. She sought the comfort they had once given her, the escape. This was only a moment in time. Another part of her pretend life she had only to make it through to reach the cottage by the lake. She could see it, the little house beside sapphire waters.
Her boot caught on a jutted-up stone, and she stumbled to her knees, the dream dispersing. The faint balelight faded and went out, leaving her with nothing but the heavy sound of her own breathing, ragged and breaking. She wanted so badly to let the darkness have her. To let it erase her and her mistakes.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into the silence, to the woman who was not there. For one endless moment, there was only the sound of her choked breathing, and in the next, she knew she was not alone. Her eyes met nothing but darkness, but she felt the other presence like a gaze on the back of her neck.
Scrambling to her feet and putting her back to a wall, she pulled free Revna’s knife from her boot, straining to hear over the beat of her own heart. The sound was like a breeze through a cracked stone—one long, endless exhale.
Then, a voice like nothing she had ever heard said, “You made me a promise.”
“Who’s there?” she called.
The whispering came again, a bottomless inhale. Then, just as suddenly as the presence had come, it was gone. A quiet trill echoed in its absence. Then another, and another, and in the distance beyond, tiny lights came to life, until the whole corridor was awash in the golden glow.
Kasira bolted back the way she had come. She had barely taken a few steps when the hallway she had been looking for came into view. But when she turned down it, it emptied not into the corridor of doors, but out into the common room near the arena.
She didn’t stop. She fled straight back to the barracks and up the ramp to her quarters, where she let the façade of Eirlana fade and collapsed into the plush armchair in the far corner. Her body was shaking, her jaw clenched so tightly the muscles ached in protest. Tears burned behind her eyes, a threat she hadn’t faced since the existential truth of what her life had become had hit her full force in Belvar, and she had realized she might never see sunlight again.
“This isn’t real,” she whispered, refusing to let the tears fall, to let the mess of swirling anxiety in her stomach rise up and consume her. She closed her eyes against it and sought the cottage once more, and the reminder that she need only succeed here to reach it.
Truth, she thought, seeking the comfort of the game that had kept her sane in her cell. In the darkness of Belvar, reality and falsehood became one, until prisoners lost themselves to solitude. She had taken to sorting her thoughts into truths and lies so she would not forget herself.
