Anika went next, and Erith followed her into the darkness marked by the diamond. Something moved next to me and a hand fell on my shoulder—Cook. He was white as a sheet, his eyes round and full of terror, possibly the same as mine. We would be going in there together.
I nodded, as if he’d asked me a question and I was responding. Behind him, Levana and March were in front of the doorway marked with the heart, March’s eyes on me.
Cook went ahead, slowly, dragging his feet, and March gave me a curt nod, too. As if to sayit’s okay.As if he really thought we were going to be fine.
I didn’t believe it for a second, but even so, I followed Cook with my breath held.
Darkness.
Our footsteps echoed, bounced off the walls. I was on the right, and Cook was on the left, and we were moving at asteady pace, hands ahead to make sure we didn’t slam onto a wall by accident.
The air became colder the farther we went.
“Do you see anything?” Cook asked a few seconds in, and he sounded even more terrified than he looked.
“No. Keep moving,” I said, just to make noise. Just to hear my own voice, to convince myself that I was still here, that I hadn’t disappeared. The darkness hadn’t erased me from this trial yet.
The sound of our footsteps was what kept us company, and we did keep moving. We never stopped, not to take a break, not to take a single deep breath.
It felt like hours passed and also only seconds. Like time here moved differently, too—not too slow or too fast, but something…else. Something in between.
And then there was light.
I noticed it flickering ahead and I stopped walking. The sound of footsteps I’d gotten so used to hearing stopped abruptly, too, and suddenly I felt like my mind was completely empty.
“Look,” I whispered, hoping once more that I wasn’t just seeing things, but that there really was light.
Except…
I turned. I looked around me at what little I could see. Strained my ears and held my breath.
I was alone.
“Cook?” I called, my heart crashing to my heels, the fear ready to devour me again.
Cook wasn’t there. I could barely make out the stone blocks of the wall, and the darkness I’d come from, nothing else.
“Cook—are you there?!”I called at the top of my lungs, even knowing I wasn’t going to get an answer. Cook was long gone.
I walked ahead on my own.
Not sure if it was the sight of that light, or if my body had already become immune to the fear, but I wasn’t shaking. My mind was quiet for once, my instincts numb. The light became brighter and brighter the farther I went until I found myself in another round room made of stone blocks, with not one portal in the middle but three.
Wait, no—notportals.
They were not the same as the holes made of tree roots. From afar, they looked like archways made of glass. From close up, they weren’t quite doors, either. Each structure was carved entirely from stone, tall and heavy, with rectangular bodies that curved into smooth, rounded tops. Their frames were thick, weathered at the edges but still precise. The two on my right stood intact, the glass in them shimmering faintly in the dim light cast by the three torches mounted on the walls. Almost like large mirrors, but not quite.
The glass of the one farthest to the left was broken, the pieces of it still on the floor, onthisside of the room, and…on the other.
Something like a cold wind came over me, from my toes up to my head. It emptied my lungs and it caused my heart to miss beats.
Something like a memory.
There was nothing behind the stone structures—I double-checked just to make sure. There was nothing behind any of them, yet when I stood in their front, I clearly saw the room behind the broken glass.
Curiouser and curiouser.
My legs carried me forward this time without my having to think. I stepped onto the broken glass, went right through the archway and to the other side, like I knew for a fact that that’s where I was headed all along.
