It reminded her of the tunnels beneath Ghadra. The mayor’s mansion, to be precise. All that needed to be traded was stone for brick and random screams of terror for weighted silence.
She’d not gone more than a few steps when this door, too, swung closed. It groaned rather than creaked, and when the latch clicked, Lux’s heartbeat threatened to overwhelm her ears.
She stared after it.
At the silver image depicted upon it.
A robed figure, palms out and head wrapped in a tragic crown of thorns. Another faceless saint.
She’d never stepped foot in a church in all her life, but she swore walking by their steps hadn’t felt so sinister as this.It’s only because you’re down here alone in the dark,she told herself.
Lux crept steadily away, not daring to turn until the light grew significantly brighter at her back. She glanced quickly at the torch and then to the tunnel that now forked. Both right and left were lit the same, with torches down their lengths until they curved out of sight.
She’d once come upon a fork similar to this one. That day, she’d chosen to run left because the right had frightened her. She’d learned later she’d been correct to be. A monster had lived there.
“This will not be all for nothing,” Lux murmured into the heavy quiet.
Today, she must choose the wretched right.
Thewidearchwayatthe passage’s end rose tall, steeped in dense shadow. It was a dark unmoved by the twin torches perched on either side. The sight reminded Lux of another tortuous chamber. Immediately, she did not want to go farther. Her palms slicked with sweat.
“You’re alone, you ninny. There’s no one to strap your wrists and shove a needle in your neck.”
There’s no one here to save me, either.
No Riselda.
No Shaw.
The hollow pit in her chest pulsed. She shrugged it off. There wasn’t any room for that here. Nor fear for that matter. Nevertheless, the latter made itself fit, and Lux practically shook in her boots when reading the inscription above the archway.
The Greatest Destination Is Beyond
She had no choice. No option but to push through her fright, ignore the pair of saints standing sentry, and pass into the gloom. For being sightless, the dreaded feel of watchful eyes pressed upon her, and she cursed herself for leaving the candlestick behind at the bottom of the stairs. If anything lurked in this dark with her—
Lux marched in before her mind could finish the thought.
If she didn’t, she’d never go.
The archway—unnervingly—spat her out at its opposite side after only a few strides. The room flared to light; a pop and fizzle marked torch after torch leaping aflame. They lit a high-ceilinged room, shining onyx, circular and domed.
Lux teetered back on her heels.
“What in the saintforsakenhell…” she breathed.
There stood the most gargantuan statue she’d ever seen.
Ivory-pale, it stretched to the ceiling, and same as its smaller counterparts, this statue was robed and crowned and entirely without features. Its arms hung straight, its hands hidden, and at its feet rose a black throne set on a dais.
She could focus on none of it any further than that. Being as a body lay before her.
Lux’s brow knit. She thought her heart slowed then halted entirely. Because this body was not lying upon a worktable or on a bed or within a box—but entombed in a grave of ice. She shivered at the frigid temperature of the chamber. Her fingers retreated beneath her arms.
Lux could feel her mind itching to work through the reasonings, but she couldn’t gather a coherent thought. Someone had made agraveofice.
Her legs began functioning again, and she moved toward the large encasement. Now that she could see beneath it, she saw it rested on a wooden beam, polished and thick and adorned with similar faces to the pillars outside. She straightened.
“Who is this?” A thin cloud left her mouth along with the question. The suspended body was unclothed, the opaqueness of the ice obscuring all fine details. Male, she guessed.
