Chapter 13 #2
His fingers slip into my hair, threading gently at first, then firmer, guiding me down. The space between us collapses into a single suspended heartbeat. The pause—the breathless sliver right before—feels impossibly intimate, more than any kiss I’ve ever had.
I want to fall into it.
I want to run from it.
I want to burn alive inside it.
The realization sears through me, a match dropped into oil. I shiver, and my thighs tighten around him as goosebumps race down my arms.
A cool breeze ghosts the sweat at my nape, and I shiver again.
Wait. Cool breeze? Ten minutes ago, the sun was set to broil, and now the space around us is cold as steel.
My head snaps up. “Declan.”
“Yeah?” His voice is thick, gravelly, lost in the moment.
“Do you feel that?”
“Oh yeah.” His gaze dips to my mouth again. His hand flexes at my waist as he starts to lift up, eyelids lowering.
“The air, Declan.” The words tumble out. “It’s cold.”
I scramble off him, legs shaky, pulse still galloping.
We’re not in a silk tent like the others that make up this firelit kingdom. We’re inside four stone walls and the shattered remains of a door—not a flap of fabric but a wooden door.
“It’s cold.” I rub warmth into my skin, breath fogging faintly in the quiet, subterranean chill.
Dust hangs in the air, turning to gold flecks in the soft flicker of torchlight.
Shelves line the walls, bowing beneath the weight of ancient scrolls and brittle, yellowed pages.
A heavy trunk squats in the center of the room, brass edges scorched, leather straps curled with age.
Next to it, a narrow desk lists under documents and wax-sealed envelopes.
Declan brushes sand from his pants, his narrowed gaze sweeping the room like he’s scanning for other exits. Or threats. “What is this place?”
I turn in a slow circle, attention catching on the soot-streaked torches smoldering in their brackets, strange runes carved into the stone walls, piles of parchment scattered across the floor as if someone left in a hurry. This doesn’t feel random. It’s a place someone wanted hidden.
“Fortune wasn’t leading me out there,” I say slowly, tasting the truth of it as I speak. “She was leading me here.”
Pressure tightens beneath my sternum, a string pulled taut. A quiet, insistent tug.
I drift forward, feet carrying me toward the trunk like it’s magnetized and I’m nothing but a scatter of iron filings. The closer I get, the stronger the pull—the knowing in my bones that I’m meant to be here. Fortune didn’t abandon me to the sand. She pointed me toward this. Toward answers.
“There’s a lot in here,” Declan says behind me. “What is it she wants you find?”
I hear him, but it’s distant, muffled, like his voice is coming from underwater. The rest of the room blurs at the edges as I wade through it to the trunk.
And then I hear it.
No, not hear. Feel.
The faintest tick of unseen gears. A mechanical beat that rises from the earth.
Click.
Click.
Click.
A slow, certain progression.
The wheel is turning.
Declan is talking again. I think he’s saying my name, but the world is thick and syrupy around me. My body moves without my direction, drawn forward in a steady, inevitable glide. Spellbound, I kneel in front of it.
The trunk is massive, its dark wood swollen and warped with age, banded in copper that glows dully in the dim light. Intricate flame etchings curl along the edges. At the center of the lid, a copper wheel is mounted and quartered, each wedge branded with an elemental rune.
“Amanda.” Declan’s voice cracks through the spell like a whip.
I blink, shoulders jerking, hands frozen above the trunk. Awareness slams back into me all at once. My vision spins before it steadies, the pull receding just enough to let me fully come to inside my body.
Declan crouches beside me, worry furrowing his brow. “Where did you go? I was talking to you, and it was like you couldn’t even hear me.”
I shake my head and rub my temples. “I don’t know. This trunk—”
“You want to go back to the tent? See the healer?”
A hollow laugh breaks out of me. “A plank of burnt wood isn’t going to fix whatever’s going on here. I need to open it.”
His jaw ticks. “Then take a second. Let me try first.”
He curls his fingers under the edge of the lid, muscles in his forearms flexing, shoulders braced. “I have a feeling this is going to get weirder.”
The hum inside me swells, vibrating against my ribs. And over it, a voice—clear, crisp, undeniably Fortune’s:
He can’t open that.
I draw in a breath. “You won’t be able to open it.”
He gives me a look. “Why not?”
I shrug. “It’s not meant for you.”
Declan grunts and strains anyway, teeth bared, but the lid doesn’t so much as creak. Finally, he exhales and leans back, shaking his head. “I defer to you, oh wise Story Witch.”
I roll my eyes, but a smile slips free anyway.
It’s getting harder to pretend he’s irritating.
Harder to pretend I don’t like the way he looks at me when he steps back, like he actually trusts me with this.
Harder to forget that real people, real relationships, are messy, complicated, doomed to fail no matter how many affirmations I arm myself with.
I step forward. The copper wheel glints, the scorched runes shifting under my gaze. A prickle rides my spine. My fingers tremble as I lift my hand and hover it above the wheel.
The second I do, the air thickens. Heat and static press in. The room itself seems to lean toward me, waiting.
A whisper of yes, Fortune’s whisper, rises from the center of my being and fills me with knowing. It’s a knowing that says I was always meant to find this place. To land in Towerfall. To change.
I splay my fingers wider, draw a breath deeper.
“I think you were right.” My voice is unsteady as I glance up at Declan. “This is going to get way weirder.”