Chapter 12
Ellis
We seemed to walk forever. Down in the darkness of the tunnel, it felt like time wasn’t moving at all. Our phones didn’t work so far underground, and only Brody’s wristwatch let us track the passing hours.
Nothing in the tunnel changed. No matter how far we traveled, the tunnel just kept stretching forward in a straight, never-ending line.
As evening rolled around, unseen above our heads, my strength began to wane.
We had neither food nor water, and although we weren’t traveling quickly, the endless walking still took a toll on me.
I didn’t say a word about my exhaustion and was determined to keep going, even as I dragged my feet. We must have covered miles without an end in sight, and Brody didn’t look tired at all. The man probably could have carried on at the same steady pace all night, and I refused to drag him down.
I would just have to find a way to keep up.
Another hour passed, and night must have settled in properly by then. Each step felt a little harder than the last, and I clung to the back of Brody’s shirt like it was a lifeline.
The man never faltered. He’d hardly lowered his gun all day.
Didn’t his arms hurt?
I knew he was strong, but this seemed ridiculous.
I suddenly tripped over some loose stones on the floor and fell against Brody’s back. My weight would have flattened a weaker man, but Brody barely flinched. He stopped in the middle of the tunnel and lowered his gun for the first time that day to wrap an arm around me.
“Sorry. We should have taken a break sooner. You must be exhausted. Here. Sit down.”
He tried to lead me over to a spot where I could sit and lean against the wall, but I refused.
“No, its fine,” I insisted. “I can keep going.”
Grabbing onto my arm, Brody forcefully dragged me over to the wall. “Ellis. You’ve been walking all day without any breaks. You need to rest.”
“So have you.”
“Well, I should rest, too.”
To prove his point, Brody sat down on the side of the tunnel, leaned against the wall, and patted the floor beside him in invitation.
I would have kept arguing, but I really was tired. So, with a huff, I sat down beside him and automatically leaned against his shoulder.
We turned off our flashlights to preserve the batteries, relying only on Brody’s little keychain light to see.
The weak little glow barely let me see his face, but even that was enough to show that Brody was still on guard.
His eyes never stopped scanning the darkness around us, and his gun remained firmly in his hand and at the ready.
“I don’t know how you do it,” I mumbled as my eyelids drifted closed without my permission. “All I’ve been doing is following you, and I’m tired. How do you still have the energy to say alert?”
Beside me, Brody shifted for a moment before I felt his lips pressed against my forehead.
“Practice,” he said, his breath ruffling my bangs. “I spent years training for these kinds of situations. So don’t feel bad. Okay? Rest when you need to rest. I’ll be right here.”
I mumbled something that was meant to be a protest, but exhaustion slurred my words into a garbled mess. Before I knew it, I drifted off to sleep using his shoulder as a pillow.
When I woke up, it was so dark that I couldn’t immediately tell if my eyes were open or not. It seemed like no time at all had passed since I fell asleep, but the grogginess that clouded my brain and clung to the corners of my consciousness said that I’d probably slept for a while.
“Brody?” I said, barely managing to get my lips around that single word. Every part of my body ached, and moving even a single muscle took a ridiculous amount of effort.
That’s what I got for falling asleep sitting up at my age. I should have known better. Sleeping against a wall wasn’t even comfortable when I was twenty. At the age of forty-five, I’d probably be feeling the effects of the stone against my back for weeks.
“Ellis,” Brody’s deep voice greeted me from the dark. “I’m here.”
Something shifted under my head, reminding me that I was lying on his shoulder, and he turned his keychain light on so I could see him.
After getting used to the dark of the cave, even that small glow felt too bright, and I had to squint.
Brody was in almost the exact same position as he’d been when I fell asleep. The only difference was that he’d raised one knee to casually support his hand that was holding the gun. He would have seemed relaxed, if not for the stiff set to his shoulders and the sharp look in his eyes.
“Have you been sitting here in the dark this whole time?” I asked. There was no point in asking if he’d guarded me the whole time I slept. That answer was obvious.
Brody just shrugged, moving one shoulder more than the other to avoid jostling me. “No point in having the light on when we’re not moving. This tunnel is so quiet, I’d hear anyone approaching long before I could see them, even with the light on.”
That may be true, but I couldn’t imagine keeping my cool while staring off into the dark for hours, just waiting for the slightest sound of danger. My nerves would probably be shredded after just half an hour.
“How long has it been?” I asked as I sat up.
Brody checked his watch.
“A few hours. It’s the middle of the night right now. You can sleep a little more, if you want.”
“No. We should keep going. The sooner we get moving, the sooner we get out of here.”
Despite the pain in my joints and the ache in my back, sleeping had at least refreshed my energy. I kept up with Brody much more easily as we continued our journey down the tunnel, thankfully, with both of our flashlights turned on.
More hours passed, and I no longer bothered to ask about the time. I didn’t want to know if morning had rolled around or if it was still night outside. The thought of spending an entire day trapped down in this tunnel was too depressing to contemplate, and I preferred to ignore it.
I was so focused on the little circle of light made by my flashlight, and my efforts not to trip over my own feet in the dark, that I didn’t notice that Brody had stopped walking until I ran right into him. Luckily, he seemed to expect it and used the arm holding his own flashlight to brace me.
“Hold on,” he said, pointing his flashlight forward once again. “There’s something up ahead.”
It was faint at first, but as we cautiously crept closer, I could eventually see that the tunnel opened into a larger space. At first, I feared we’d come to another split in the tunnel, like the one that had separated us from Magnus and Trent.
Instead, what we found was a single, large door.
An opening in the ceiling above let in a thin stream of sunlight, letting me know that night had passed, and it was now the next day.
Based on the height of the ceiling, and how weak the sunlight was, we were much farther underground than I wanted to think about.
To distract myself from the weight of the earth and stone above our heads, I focused on the door in front of us, precisely illuminated by the ray of sunlight.
It was the size of a bank vault, covered in intricate carvings of flowers and vines all around.
There was no obvious handle or way through the door.
Not even a keyhole that would let us peer through to the other side.
“This is a door, right?” I asked, approaching the door when Brody didn’t stop me. “I don’t see any way in.”
The carvings on the door were even more intricate than I first thought.
I could feel individual veins on the stone leaves, and every petal on every flower was unique.
I didn’t know much about flowers, but even I could pick out the three distinct types woven together as they climbed up the surface of the door.
Brody also inspected the door, but rather than use his eyes, he leaned his ear against the stone and tapped at it with the handle of his flashlight.
I couldn’t hear any difference as he tapped at different spots, but Brody must have picked up something, because his tapping led him to a spot in the middle of the door, just below waist height.
One of the carved leaves, which looked no different than any other spot on the design, slid aside to reveal a keyhole.
I stepped up beside Brody, staring at this small anomaly in the otherwise seamless door. “Can you open it?”
It wouldn’t surprise me if lockpicking was also one of his skills. The man was the human equivalent of a Swiss army knife. Every time I thought I found the extent of his abilities; he pulled out something new.
“Maybe,” Brody hummed as he examined the keyhole, giving credence to my thought that he really could pick the lock if he wanted.
“Although, we may not have to. The leaf this keyhole was hidden under specifically belongs to the poppy plant on this design. Everything else the Mothers of the Mountain made has been so specific with their details. The fact that the keyhole was hidden under a poppy leaf must mean the door belongs to Poppy Milford.”
Letting the leaf swing back into place and cover the hole, Brody turned to me with an expectant look.
“Do you still have that key your brother gave you?”
Ever since the discovery of this tunnel, I hadn’t even thought about the key that sat in my pocket. Now, it suddenly felt as though it weighed ten pounds, and I could swear the metal grew warm under my hand when I pulled it out.
The key that had been my brother’s last act of defiance in his life.
The key that I’d nearly lost my life in order to keep hidden.
The key that was engraved with poppy flowers.
Silently, with trembling fingers, I handed the key to Brody.
“You do it. I don’t… I don’t think I can.”
Brody just nodded and turned back to the door. He didn’t demand any further explanation. He didn’t need one. He already understood how many different emotions I had tied up in that key.