Page 109 of The City Of Fractured Memory

I decide not to tell him about how I nearly fell to my death in the process. He doesn’t need that sort of motivation.

“That does not help,” he snaps. “Stryx can fly. You are not a dragon. I am not a dragon.”

“I wouldn’t let her hear you calling her a dragon, she might turn you into a tree spirit,” I warn him, and he rolls his eyes dramatically.

“What the fuck is a tree spirit?”

“You don’t want to know,” I say with raised eyebrows, repeating the words Stryx said to me.

The wind picks up, making the drop seem to breathe beneath us. My stomach flips, but I refuse to show it. “If you want to get into the catacombs undetected, this is the only way, apparently.”

Riven glares. “The only way to what? Early burial?”

I roll my eyes this time, gripping the handholds someone long ago carved into the stone. “Stop being dramatic and climb.”

“Oh, I’m dramatic?” he mutters, but he swings over after me, boots scraping the wall, knuckles white against the stone. “If I fall, I’m haunting you.”

“We both know you already haunt me,” I fire back.

“Not in the literal sense!”

“Debatable. If I didn’t know better, I would say you’re afraid of heights,” I joke, slowly making my descent.

When he remains silent I stop and look up, finding him still, glaring at me.

“Voyd take me, you are aren’t you?”

“This is hardly the time or place…”

I zone out of what he’s saying, my thoughts returning to Stryx. She’s in danger, she could even be dead already, and here we are bantering like we are off to lunch. My breath gets caught in my chest and a tear slides down my cheek as I hold on to the wall, my limbs suddenly frozen. A thumb comes out of nowhere to brush away the tear, and I look up to find Riven clinging to the wall next to me.

“Hey,” he says softly. “She’s going to be okay. We’ll find her. Don’t feel guilty for mucking around, everyone deals with stressful situations differently.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “You were goading me on purpose, weren’t you? To distract me?”

He nods with an apologetic smile.

“Let me guess, you’re not actually afraid of heights either?”

“Nope!” he yells down to the lake. “This is exhilarating!”

I stare at him deadpan and he has the decency to look chagrined. I shake my head, trying to hide my returning smile at his antics, and continue to descend slowly, the tunnel entrance a distant, dark mouth beneath us. I try not to imagine my hands slipping. A loose pebble skitters from Riven’s boot past my shoulder and drops into oblivion. I stupidly watch it, counting the seconds until I hear the distant splash of it hitting the surface of the lake.

Gods, that really is a long drop.

Fortunately, though, we finally reach the tunnel lip unscathed, Riven pulling himself inside with a muttered curse behind me while I wait, breathless.

He looks at me, hair disheveled, chest heaving. “You’re absolutely insane,” he mutters with a lopsided smile.

“Maybe,” I answer, stepping past him into the dark, “but you followed me.”

“That I did,” he mutters, mostly to himself, before gazing at the route ahead with a grim look. His silence says everything. I follow his stare into the inky blackness of the damp, musty tunnel, trying to swallow, but my throat has gone as dry as sawdust.

“So, Stryx said this tunnel leads to the catacombs?” he says finally.

I turn to him with a grimace, and he tilts his head, his jaw tensing angrily. “I’m guessing from the look on your face that there’s also something you forgot to mention?”

I run my hands through my windswept hair. “She may have also mentioned that it’s essentially a labyrinth that no one’s escaped from.”