“You do come in quite handy now and then, Birdman.” The dancing candlelight set her cheeks aglow.
Despite the teasing, he caught a sharp whiff of her fear. He clasped her hand, heartened that the scent dulled at his touch.
The alcoves lining the damp walls inside the Church were also filled with offerings to the Chronicler. Nemosyna’s marble statue sat atop a dais at the far end of an expanse of bare stone floor. Cassandra and Tristan took opposite walls to see if the necklace was hidden among the haphazard knick-knacks, to no avail.
Cassandra circled Nemosyna, the candlelight swallowed by shadows as she rounded the statue. “Nothing,” she shrugged. “Maybe I was wrong and this isn’t where Cora hid the necklace after all?”
An echo of grim energy slithered up Tristan’s spine. Something filled with torment and savagery.
Somethingfresh.
He joined Cassandra at the statue, unnerved by Nemosyna’s placid eyes tracking his progress. The pristine, pearly white marble suggested someone maintained this shrine. The caretaker’s absence increased his unease.
As he studied the statue, a cool breeze ruffled the underside of his feathers. He crouched down and ran his hand along the statue’s base.
“Do you feel that?” he asked Cassandra, grabbing her hand and placing it along the seam.
Her eyebrows tipped up. “There’s something underneath.”
He stood, gesturing for Cassandra to back up a step. He placed his hands on the statue and pushed, but the stone didn’t budge. He tried again from the front, the other side, and the back, with no luck.
Cassandra pressed on Nemosyna’s various limbs and protrusions, then set the candle down and climbed into the Goddess’s lap, scrutinizing Nemosyna’s face for a button or trigger.
“Hang on,” she murmured. “I have an idea.” She trailed her hand down the statue’s arm. “That frieze on the Artisan’s door showed Nemosyna holding a candle in her right hand. Hand it to me.”
Tristan picked it up, cursing softly when a rogue bead of wax burnt his hand. A soft push of his wind coaxed the excess wax onto the floor. He didn’t want Cassandra to burn herself as well.
She offered him a grateful smile as she touched the candle’s flame against the statue’s right hand, then yelped as the thrumming grind of stone on stone broke the chamber’s eerie silence.
Tristan helped her down as the statue slowly shifted to the left, then halted with a reverberating boom, revealing a set of stairs plummeting into a lightless abyss.
Cassandra gazed up at him with a self-satisfied smile. “Good thing you keep me around, Birdman.”
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Daredevil.” He wondered if she could sense the truth buried in his tease.
“You go first into the creepy death hole though.”
“Good thing you keepmearound,” he shot back, before tucking his wings and brandishing the candle as he descended the stairs.
They arrived at a hexagonal chamber surrounded by three arched openings, each leading down a different dark path.
“Should we split up?” he asked, grinning.
“Absolutely fudging not.” Cassandra pressed herself into him, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “It’s darker than Stygios’s realm down here. If that candle goes out, I won’t be able to see a thing. I may be brave, but I’m not suicidal.”
“If that candle goes out,Iwon’t be able to see a thing either.” The faint trickle of light leaking in from the chamber above would fade soon. And he doubted the moonlight would be strong enough to travel down into these underground paths.
“Well,” Cassandra whispered. “Which way?”
Tristan closed his eyes, trying to sense the remnants of pain and violence he’d felt in the upper chamber. They wafted from the center path.
“This way.” He stepped through the archway, keeping Cassandra nestled in next to him.
A raw, meaty smell of violent death invaded his nostrils as they pressed onward, the candlelight bobbing with each step and throwing menacing shadows onto the damp stone walls. The tips of his feathers brushed against a rough ceiling that ducked ever closer. As if the rocky throat wanted to swallow them whole.
“Do you smell—” Cassandra whispered before Tristan shushed her. A faint wailing echoed from up ahead.
They glanced at each other then took off running down the claustrophobic hallway, finally met with the coppery aroma of blood mingled with pungent, acrid scents of fear and excrement. Tristan breathed through his mouth to keep from gagging. They careened through a bend in the path, then he stopped abruptly.
