“I don’t want it at all!”
“Well, maybe it knows that!” he snaps, then turns away, crawling again as though nothing happened. Once again, I wonder what kind of life he’s lived, what kind of child keeps his head through all this with no more than a few tears.
But I can’t keep up with him. The creature’s teeth must have clipped a nerve. My leg hardly responds. I drag it behind me, driven onward by a sort of determination only born from pain, from devastation. The fuck-you-world-I’ll-show-you kind.
The tunnel is infinite. The stench of meat strengthens. Putrid flesh and old blood. It furls in my lungs, choking the air from me.
“I don’t have light stones this far into the tunnels,” Atom says.
Even though my body wants to run in the opposite direction and tear up the newly constructed map in my head, my mind is drawn closer, like the gentle tug of a lullaby pulling me into sleep. Note after note. Around corner after corner.
Into pitch darkness.
“This is it,” he says when I’m sure my palms have worn down to the bones.
With pure adrenaline driving me forward, it takes a moment to tell my body to stop crawling. Too long of a moment. I plow straight into Atom.
He shoves back hard against me, scolding me in a whisper. “Careful. It’s a drop. It leads to Zandrite’s chamber.”
“Why does it smell like death-scented dirty laundry?”
“That’s just death.” He’s painfully serious.
And I realize it’s time. No more smiley face stones or distractions. No excuses about Kelter wanting nothing to do with me. If I can kill my mother and scare off a village, I can face Zandrite. I have to. “Swap with me. I’m going down there.”
Atom presses himself against the tunnel wall to let me crawl past. I grope around for his shoulder and give it a squeeze. I don’t have to see his face to know it’s somber. “It will be different this time,” he whispers. “It has to be.”
I don’t question what he means by ‘this time.’ I’m too busy wondering how far down a drop it is… and what’s at the bottom. Will I break my legs? Land on spikes? Become a ravenous creature’s dinner?
I sit on the edge, my feet dangling in the darkness, and scoot forward. Little by little until my bottom slips off the edge. I try to hold myself up by my elbows on the ledge, but my weight overpowers my arm strength. And I fall.
Chapter 54
EVER
The fall is over before I can properly panic.
The landing is soft and… fleshy. The smell makes my eyes water. I crouch, too weak to stand, my thigh and foot throbbing and wetting whatever’s beneath me with a layer of blood. But the pain is still dampened from the roots’ rush of magic. I wiggle my toes and feel around. Skin. Hair. Noses. Eyes. Lifeless bodies.
But the feel is all wrong, the size and shape. The faces are flat except for the tip of the nose. No teeth sit behind the lips, no skull behind the face. I trace my hand down, despising myself for not pulling it away. A woman’s bare chest, but no collar bones, no ribs. I lift an arm. It flops in half.
And I gag. It’s nothing but skin, maybe a thin layer of fat. A boneless, bloodless body.
I feel the walls next. Knots of twisted roots form three of them, the final a metal slab. Hopefully a way out. It’s dark all around except narrow lines of light entering where the metal meets the roots, not enough to see much in the tiny space, but it’s my only glimpse of what’s beyond these walls.
A deep voice rumbles. I peer through a gap. Cold metal squashes my nose flat.
I can’t take in the scene fast enough, can’t think and feel and plan at the same time. Zandrite’s chambers, no doubt. Huge. I can’t even see the whole thing. The black marble walls and floor contrast the dirt of the rest of the Underbroke, sleek and shiny. Light stones are embedded along the ceiling in an evenly spaced grid, each held in place by dried vines in an X over the stone. A god-sized bed occupies the center of one wall, a patchwork quilt made from the hides of creatures on top.
A throne even bigger than the one in the arena is plopped in the middle of the room, made with the same black marble as the walls. Small white pieces like bone chips jut out from the otherwise smooth material. Zandrite sits against the tall back, the tips of his fingers pressed together, elbows balanced on the wide armrests. As always, his chest is exposed. And still hairy. Roots thick enough to hold an entire house securely to the ground wreathe and twine around the throne like a living wall of protection.
Eli, Milo and Kaleida stand a few paces in front of Zandrite. Kaleida’s blue shirt is torn, exposing the dark skin of her side. Half-dried blood sticks to her cheek below a neat slash. She’s fierce and stubborn in her stance, chin up and hip popped at a sassy angle.
And Milo—this man has my heart in a way I never expected. He lost half his shirt somewhere along the journey, exposing a shoulder and part of his chest. His pale skin is streaked with dirt like a child’s fingerpaint masterpiece, but it doesn’t hide the almost gaunt frame of his body, as though he spent his life giving his bars away to someone else in need, his sisters, perhaps. Or maybe that’s how he’s built, wiry and strong. His hair is wild, sticking straight up in parts, matted in others. He stands one step closer to Zandrite than everyone else, brave and determined.
And once I’ve looked at everything and everyone except him, I can’t avoid it any longer. My gaze falls upon Eli. His loose curls have lost their shape on top, but the ones on his forehead hang in perfect ringlets. Somehow, that makes him feel far away, untouchable. My heart knocks around my ribcage.
Fury smolders in his eyes, visible from all the way over here. He’s still shirtless and barefoot and as beautiful as ever with this new untamed look he didn’t choose, though I never minded his rigidity—those tightly laced boots and packed pockets.
