Then he’s straightening. “If this is what you must do, then go, Veda. We’ll be right behind you.”
I catch the clench of his jaw as he spins to face another one of Taiven’s men—a supernatural with a wolf shifter aura. Hequickly knocks the man down. If he could use his magic, he’d annihilate them all within seconds, but my father was clever to use humans as guards.
Racing away through the ornate room—a nave, I think it’s called—with all the long chairs and the carved and painted ceiling, I head toward the altar on the dais. Lucian described a concealed door behind it, and it matches the layout Sosia made me memorize.
Carefully pushing aside the elaborate tapestry that conceals the door, I focus on everything I can feel and hear, expecting to sense guards on the other side or find some sort of magical shield at least.
I’m surprised when there isn’t.
In fact, I’m surprised I haven’t encountered more resistance within the church already.
I should probably be worried about that, but it doesn’t change my goal.
I’ll fight whatever threats I encounter when I encounter them.
Hunching to step through the small door, I find myself in a tight hallway, only wide enough for one person.
Halle said that the book is being kept in the deepest tomb on the northern side of the catacombs. Sosia’s knowledge of this place stopped at the concealed door, so I follow the way that Lucian described, taking the turns left and right, heading along corridors that are thankfully wider than the first one.
I pass by stone chambers with carved walls and containing ledges filled with skulls. Sometimes, I have to stoop where the stone ceiling sits uncomfortably low. Other times, I’m squeezing through a narrow passage again.
It’s completely dark, but that doesn’t bother me, my sensitive eyesight proving to be an asset for once.
I stop at the point where Lucian’s directions end, perplexed to find myself facing a fork in the path.
One passage veers left and the other veers right, and I can’t be sure which one will take me north since either could curve back around at some point.
I close my eyes, trying to sense any kind of sound or smell that might give me a clue, only to be hit by the awareness of immense power.
It rushes across me in a wave that makes me gasp.
I’m suddenly drawn back to the moments before I looked up at the vast, night sky for the very first time.
The keeper had asked me to close my eyes while he led me down to the very first beach I ever stood on. With my eyes closed, his presence had been like a dark void next to me, a power beyond measure. It had felt to me as if his energy had been held together only by his will and the force of his crown.
What I sense now feels the same.
It can only beTheBook of Dark Magic, drawing me toward the left-hand passageway.
Before I start down it, I extend my claws and drag them lightly along the beige stone, creating marks deep enough that my family will know which way I went.
When the corridor curves northward—at least, I hope it’s northward because I can’t be sure I haven’t gotten turned around in this maze of corridors—the sense of power grows stronger.
Finally, a long corridor stretches ahead of me. At the end is a single, wooden door, curved in an arch at the top. The placement of the hinges tells me it opens outward.
Reaching it, I press my palms to its surface, smothering another gasp at the intensity of what I feel behind it.
It’s very much like the keeper’s energy, although… now that I’m closer to it… it feels different, somehow. Sharper, maybe.
I consider the possibility that there could be an army of dark creatures waiting behind this door. The power I’m detecting is obliterating my senses and I’m struggling to identify anything else.
But I reason that if this is truly where the book is being kept, then my father wouldn’t allow other beings near it.
No.It’s his obsession. A precious object he keeps to himself. He forces others, like Lucian, to read it only when it suits his purposes.
Taking a deep breath to calm my thudding heart, I pull open the door, bracing for what I might find.
The stone room ahead of me is circular and far larger than I was expecting. Much bigger than any of the chambers I passed along the way. At least seventy paces in each direction. In contrast to its size, the ceiling sits not far above me, certainly not high enough to fly around.
