And then I see it. The flash of a gray cloak disappearing around a corner.
“Come on,” I whisper to the others.
Emmy looks at me like I’m half-crazed as I take off running, but then I hear Faith gasp and I know she’s seen her too.
We track Olive for a few blocks, staying far enough back that she doesn’t see us through the throngs of people on the high street.
She ducks around another corner, but by the time we follow, she’s disappeared completely.
This street is quieter, dimmer. There’s nothing but a dusty, unfashionable haberdashery and a boarded-up print shop. Olive is nowhere to be found.
I swear under my breath.
“She didn’t just vanish into thin air,” Marion offers unhelpfully.
With what I’ve witnessed of magic, I’m not so convinced.
I drag my hand along the stone wall, searching for a seam, when suddenly, I feel nothing. I stumble and look up. Where my hand is, I visibly see a wall, but I wave my hand back and forth through it like it’s made of air.
A faerie trick. A secret door.
My heart pounds in my chest. Is it possible I’ve found the entrance to the Otherworld by sheer luck?
I feel around the edges and identify the bounds of a door just large enough for a human to step through.
“Come on.” I gesture to the others, and to their eternal credit, they follow without hesitation.
We enter into a dark stone corridor. In the distance, a flickering wall-mounted torch lights the way like a beacon.
Faith stumbles and Marion catches her by the elbow. The floor is an overlapping mess of shattered tiles, half-rotted wood, and crumbled mosaics.
We follow the torch around the corner, then down a sloping walkway. The air turns thick and humid.
Faith sniffs. “Ew.”
“I didn’t even do anything!” Emmy replies.
Marion tilts her nose up. “It’s sulfur.”
“Well, it smells like rotten eggs,” I say.
We turn another corner, and it goes dark. There are no more torches to light our way as we travel into the underground labyrinth.
The four of us link hands and step over the treacherous floor as carefully as we’re able. I trip and Faith catches me by the arm.
“Are you all right?”
“What could Olive possibly be doing down here?” I answer.
Maybe it wasn’t Olive at all. Maybe this is just some faerie trick and we’re all about to be hunted for sport or boiled alive in the hot springs.
Just as my fear reaches a fever pitch, I spot a single pinprick of light in the distance.
We follow it until we enter an antechamber. It’s lit up with torches on every wall, illuminating the strange room in firelight. The stone walls are weathered with time, and the floor is dirt except for thesymmetrically spaced stacks of bricks every few feet. On the far wall, above an arched doorway, is a massive carving of a gorgon, his eyes wide, his beard and hair fanning out in all directions like a sunburst.
But that’s not the strangest thing in the room. The sulfuric fog parts and we see her. Sitting on the floor, directly in the middle of a cage, is Queen Mor.
Her long dark hair hangs in a single braid down her back. She wears a simple white gown, stark against the dark bars of her cell.
