These aren’t even servant passageways any longer. They look like they’re from another age entirely.
Spiderwebs cling to corners. The walls are exposed stone, unadorned and with a patina that speaks of centuries of no upkeep. There’s nothing down here but more tunnels, each just as dark and punishingly narrow as the last. It’s suffocating.
I start to sweat despite the rapidly cooling temperature.
Venna pauses at a fork and touches my arm briefly. Her eyes meet mine to ensure I’m watching, then she flickers her hands. I stare, trying to recall the signs I’ve managed to learn, but her meaning evades me. I huff in frustration and she presses her finger to her lips again.
I nod. I need to be quiet.
Venna’s lips turn upward, and she points at me, then two fingers at both her eyes, then at herself. Watch her. I nod, and she takes my wrist, pulling me along into the dark.
I watch her closely, as instructed. Soon, I realize that her movements are intentional. It’s her Kryptos training, I suspect, guiding her through the shadows like she was born of them.
Her feet test each step cautiously before she rests her weight. She walks on her toes, mostly, carefully sidestepping anything that could create even the slightest sound. When the ground beneath us starts to show its age further, smooth stone turningto uneven, cracked rock, she follows a very specific path like she can somehow anticipate which rocks are loose.
A few times, she touches my wrist and gestures. Two fingers from each hand, positioned in V, with wrists touching.Careful, that means.
I do my best to pay attention to her instructions, but my mind wanders. Maybe it’s the instincts Strategos training has taught me, but I can’t stop wanting to ask questions. What’s buried down here? Who or what is it that demands utter silence of us, for fear of discovery?
We descend past multiple levels of the castle this way, but the claustrophobic feeling never lets up. At one point, we hurry down a narrow hallway with windows cut from the stone. On the other side, I swear I catch a glimpse of the dungeon I saw with Killian when we tortured the Nabber. We’re deep, then. But wekeepdescending, creeping down stairs and hurrying down long, anxiety-inducing slopes of earth, or more loose rock.
Eventually, the walls change again. Everything changes.
The air turns freezing and heavy, the cold stinging my lungs and the lack of airflow starving me of oxygen. There’s an odd metallic taste on my tongue, growing stronger with every breath. The walls weep moisture through cracks caused by the immense weight of the earth bearing down on these passages.
My breath turns to vapor in front of my eyes, and goosebumps start to shiver over my skin.
All of this is unnerving, but it’s Anassa’s emotions that truly start to scare me. She’s uneasy. If I didn’t know her better, I’d think she was afraid.
The thought of Anassa afraid is like imagining a mountain trembling. It just isn’t right.
And it’s that sense of wrongness that lingers like a thick fog in these tunnels. There’s something wrong about the air here—notjust the cold and the dark, but a tangible weight that presses in on me from every direction.
I try to convince myself that it’s just the claustrophobia of being so far underground, but logic doesn’t work. Anassa’s projected unease fuels mine, and I’m horribly on edge.
The descent is endless. Venna leads us through a labyrinth. That’s the only word for it, like someone’s carved a maze to deliberately confuse anyone trying to reach deeper. Venna takes three rights in a row, and my struggling logical mind tells me that should bring us back to the starting point. But instead, we end up even deeper, new twisting passageways revealing themselves.
We pass multiple doors and adjoining tunnels, which Venna ignores. I touch her arm and point to one of the doors, raising a brow. She shakes her head. Then she points down one of the adjoining tunnels and lifts one hand, guiding the other to her palm and stopping abruptly when her fingertips touch skin.
I have to assume she means it’s a dead end. It confirms my theory. This is a true maze with twistsmeantto disorient anyone who might accidentally find these passages.
Eventually, once I’m practically crawling out of my skin, we reach what looks like the bottom. At the end of the tunnel, there’s a single door with a faint light emanating from behind it. When Venna leads me to it, I can’t help it, I gasp. A slight breeze stirs my hair in front of my eyes.
There’s airflow on the other side.
She turns to me. “There are guards,” she says, so quietly it’s almost inaudible. “They’re on rotation right now, but we only have a few minutes.”
I nod to confirm that I understand, and Venna pushes the door open, revealing a narrow corridor.
The sight disarms me. It’s nothing like the rest of the tunnels we’ve traveled through. For one thing, it’s clean and well-kept, lit with steadily burning oil lamps.
But it’s also carved from smooth, white marble veined withgold. The air is fresh, hinting at some sort of ventilation system. There’s a lingering heat here, too, emanating from the stone to stave off the cold of the depths.
Venna and I walk quietly down the long hallway, towards another interior door. More light shines from beyond.
Then, the sound of children’s voices.
It stops me short. I freeze up, heart pounding. Venna looks back at me, wearing an expression of understanding. She nods, once. And I know.
