13. Ruen
Chapter 13
Ruen
K iera is the first to move now that the wall has been revealed and opened. I watch her carefully. She stands at the top of the staircase, facing away from me enough that I can't actually see her expression, but it's no hardship to make out the rigid lines of her body beneath her cloak. Her shoulders are squared, her spine stiff.
I can't help but recall how she'd looked upon the ships that carried us over the black waves to this damnable place. Much like a criminal to the gallows, she'd faced the mountain of brimstone that is Ortus Island with a faraway gaze that seemed to catch everything in its path and, in the same instance, release them all.
"Kiera?"
She doesn't speak, doesn't even acknowledge me as she moves forward. One step down and then another. I follow her into the damp cold place below the hidden doorway. Perhaps it had been too soon to try and convince her that her dreams had been just that—dreams—but I'd hated how desperately she'd clawed at the stones in the wall, practically begging the inanimate object for answers.
My gaze strays upward, to the flame that hovers above the hooded head of the woman striding down the staircase in front of me. That flame had said differently. As I'd told Kiera, my illusions are from the power of a mind. I will all of my illusions to act as they would as if they were real. It was part of the reason I'd stopped her from touching it. Had I allowed it, she would have found herself burned. The flame had acted as if there were more pathways beyond the wall, insistently swaying as if air was catching upon it and trying to drag it through the stones.
Now, I'm wondering if I made the right decision.
Kiera's footsteps increase and mine do as well, until we're both racing, practically leaping down the staircase to get to the bottom. Icy wafts of wind rush up from the bottom, flinging Kiera's hood from her head. The spill of her silver hair flies into my face, the scent of her wafting into my nostrils and invading my every pore.
I reach out and grab her arm. "Slow down." Her head is turned away from me, fixated on something below. "Kiera?"
"We're almost there," she says, sounding as if she's speaking from some far-off, distant place. "It's around the next curve."
I don't know how she knows—it could be due to whatever was shared between her and her spider familiar—but the conviction in her tone has me easing my hold on her arm and releasing her. A moment passes and this time, when she moves down the stairs, it's at a more sedate pace, as if she's forcing herself to go slower than before.
I follow without comment, finding her assertion correct when after the next turn of the stairs, we find ourselves on solid flat ground. Catching sight of a torch on the wall, I send my flame forward to light it. Spiderwebs cling to the handle, but I pat them away, lifting the torch up and twisting it up and down the long corridor we've found.
The place we've found down here appears forgotten in more ways than the cracked and web-coated torch in my hand. The walls are dripping with globs of sticky green and black substances and there are no footprints set into the dust-laden floor to speak of any recent visitors.
"This way." Kiera starts walking, and wielding the only source of light, I follow.
The further we walk, the colder the place becomes until the puffs of my own breath form into clouds of actual fog on each exhalation. Kiera never lapses, her footsteps remain sure and unwavering as she strides down the hallway. I allow myself a brief moment to examine our new surroundings. On one side is nothing but a flat, slightly curved wall, and to the other...
"By the Gods..." Disgust roils in my gut. Rows upon rows of cells made of brimstone. Black bars jutting up from the floors and down from the ceilings to close like teeth over rooms empty of all life. In a few, there are remains of past prisoners, decomposed into little more than dust and bone. Claw marks, blade marks, and even teeth marks line the walls and bars of each cell as if its inhabitants weren't always quite human.
A clicking sound, like stone scraping stone, brings me back around to find that Kiera is more than several paces away, her steps eating up the distance as rustling towards the next aisle of cells can be heard.
"Kiera, don't?—"
She stops abruptly, whirling towards one of the cells, and I nearly drop the damn torch at the man that appears beyond the bars.
Sunken eyes that appear almost black in the lack of light peer out from a face so devoid of life that the skin has withered to a gray. The flesh pulled taut over bone and marks and scars slashed across his cheek, brow, and throat. Blood stains the dirty tunic he's wearing, but even beneath the foul odor that emanates from him, I can identify him.
I come to a stop alongside Kiera as the two of us stare back at the man and he does the same to us. When he smiles, his teeth appear to gleam in the darkness.
"You found me," he murmurs casually, his voice gruff and hoarse as if it's healing after screams stole it away.
"I dreamed of you," Kiera replies. Then her gaze turns to the cell adjoining Caedmon's. Yet another wall of brimstone bars separate the God of Prophecy from the woman in the cell next to his. "And of you."
Caedmon looks back at the woman hidden in the shadows. The only reason I even know she's there is the way the torch light I'm holding flickers and steals over bone-white flesh and threadbare garments that are held too stiffly to be anything but a living body. Even corpses cannot remain that rigid.
It's Caedmon who speaks first, turning to the woman and holding out a hand as if she can pass through the bars and join him at his side. "Come, Ari." His hand falters as a hacking cough overtakes him and he doubles over, blood dribbling from his dry, cracked lips. When he finishes and rights himself, he passes the back of one hand over his mouth, ignoring the stain of red on his skin.
The figure in the corner finally moves, turning their head and shifting an inch or two closer just enough that I catch sight of her features. Familiar features. I go still where I stand, my eyes narrowing.
"It's time to meet her," Caedmon continues, gesturing once more with his hand.
Kiera is just as transfixed by the woman as I am. She isn't merely watching the other woman, she's staring at her as if she can peel back the layers of her flesh and examine her insides. Storm cloud gray eyes are fixed, the color disappearing rapidly as the pupil expands. I return my attention to the stranger as she unfolds herself from the corner and steps forward.
The torch does drop from my hands then, the illusion of flame going out in an instant as the wood crashes into the stone floor and splinters apart. Even as the light disappears, though, the damage has already been done.
I see the woman and I recognize her from the glass painting in Caedmon's office.
The woman who looks like Kiera.