Chapter 46 Elle #2
— His screams of agony are unbearable. Even more so than the wailing from the sacrifice. They’ve claimed him and now take turns brutalizing the rest of his body, purifying it to appease their god. He’s unconscious. Bound. Incarnate without his Maiden.
— They’ve moved him outside the cave, close to the lake. They toss him in—a test. Lake Lerna never releases its offerings.
— Shadows dance across the waters, and somehow, his body is returned to the embankment. He is violated further, a testament to their pick. They think they’ve made Death proud.
I press my hand to my mouth, bile teasing the back of my throat.
— A figure moves in the distance, obscured. Is this who fished him out?
— Intruder approached by sacrifice, who has somehow escaped the Elders’ restraint. Sacrifice attacks, trips—or is pushed? Hard to tell.
— Sacrifice tumbles into Lake Lerna and does not resurface.
Does not resurface.
A pair of wide, terrified eyes flashes across my vision like a lightning strike. Eyes that kept me up for weeks after they sank into Lake Lerna.
Eyes that, upon reflection…
Look a lot like Sutton’s.
I’d begun to suspect after he relayed his experience in the observatory, but I didn’t want to pry. Didn’t want to confirm the terrible, horrible truth.
That was why he’d seemed so familiar that day in the gas station. I’d already met him before—sort of.
And I’d caused the death of his sister.
“I need to go,” I announce, my lips barely forming the words while my brain struggles to process this information.
His sister.
My fault.
“All right,” Lexington says, closing his computer. “I’ll walk you out if—”
As soon as he moves to get up, the lights on this floor go out.
My heart hammers inside my chest, panic seizing my throat, making me feel like my organs are suddenly too heavy and large to exist within my skin.
I grip the edge of the table, trying to steady myself when no emergency floodlights come on either.
“Shit,” Lexington grunts, turning the flashlight on his phone toward me.
Jeez, why didn’t I think of that?
With trembling fingers, I fish my phone from my pocket, fear coating every nerve ending in my body. I send Quincy a text, asking if there’s a power outage we should be aware of, but she doesn’t reply.
“Come on,” Lexington says, grabbing my hand. He drags me to the stairwell, shoving open the heavy metal door and pushing me inside. “The automatic locks time out a few minutes after an outage. If we aren’t careful, we’ll get stuck in here.”
Swallowing, I grip the journal tight to my chest and follow him down the thirteen flights. Our phones at least provide enough light for it to not feel quite as suffocating.
Sacrifice tumbles into Lake Lerna and does not resurface.
I can’t get that line out of my head, even with the darkness pressing in around me.
“Elle.”
Lexington’s voice pulls me out of the spiraling thoughts, and I realize we’re standing at the front entrance. He grabs my shoulders, shaking me.
“The doors are already locked.”
I blink at him, the words not fully registering in my Jell-O brain. “Locked?”
“We’re trapped in here.”
Shaking my head, I glance around the lobby quickly. Where is everyone? The Obeliskos hadn’t closed for the night yet, but I don’t see anyone hanging around or panicking to find an available exit.
Did they leave as soon as the lights went out?
Or before that?
Anxiety swells in my chest, like a cloud of air pressing on my lungs and closing off my esophagus. I unlock my phone to call one of my siblings and see my service is nonexistent.
Clutching the journal, I grit my teeth, spinning around in a circle and taking in the various tall, pointed windows.
“We can’t be trapped,” I tell him, even though my tongue is so dry it feels like it’s cracking when I speak. “Building fire codes require manual exit doors. We just have to find one.”
Lexington points to the faint red sign above the rotating doors. “This is the fire exit. Normally, the push bar works, but…” He reaches forward, trying to shove the glass barrier with no luck. “It’s jammed or something.”
Heavy footsteps thud on the floor above us.
We glance at each other. Are we alone or not?
“Something feels off about this,” he whispers.
I nod. No shit.
At that moment, a text comes through my phone, and a little spark of hope flares in my stomach. Except it’s not Quincy.
Unknown: Stop snooping.
Unknown: Whatever you’re doing at Avernia ends now.
I reach for Lexington’s forearm, dragging him toward a flashing light at the back of the building. We weave through rows of bookshelves and oversize leather couches, passing the glass study rooms and club meeting areas until we get to an alcove around the corner from the elevators.
“I’m not rotting in here, waiting for someone to notice we’re missing,” I say, handing him the journal. I search the staircase, looking for something large enough to bust us out, finally finding a hammer in a custodial cart tucked in the corner.
With both arms, I pull the hammer above my head.
“Are you sure you want to destroy Avernia property?” Lexington asks.
“Would you rather wait for someone to come rescue us? Or for whoever’s upstairs to find us?”
“What if the people upstairs are harmless?”
“And what if they aren’t?”
Waiting around for people to save me is what got me into this whole mess in the first place. The more I do it, the more my life just wastes away, and I spend it living in fear that I’m not actually capable of anything.
I don’t want to be a slave to the terror in my bones. I want to conquer it.
Lexington sighs.
Swinging my arms forward, I drive the hammer into the surface of the glass. It cracks a little but does not break.
Sweat slicks down my neck. The footsteps upstairs sound like they’re getting louder, a stampede threatening us from above.
I swing again, causing more of the glass to shatter. Fractured spiderwebs obscure the tempered, frosted material.
“Do you want me—”
Ignoring him, I study the cracks, trying to make sense of how best to get it to break completely. The quicker, the better.
Distantly, the sound of a fire alarm begins blaring, but when I shake myself a little, it becomes nearly inaudible. My thoughts are loud, white noise humming between my ears and drowning everything else out.
I turn the hammer in my hands, staring at the claw on the back. Squinting at the door, I raise my arms again and aim for the center fracture. The moment the edge of the claw connects with the stressed glass, the entire door shatters, revealing the outdoors and freeing us from inside.
Several people mill about on the Obeliskos lawn, staring up at the building. Lexington and I file out quickly, breathing like we just ran a marathon unprepared.
Otherwise, everything outside seems normal. The air is cool beneath the night sky, but I still feel flushed from the trepidation of getting stuck inside.
“What the hell was that?” Lexington pants, turning back to look at the library. The lights flicker and then come back on completely, illuminating all the windows. “Are we being pranked or something?”
The fire alarm inside still blares, and glass still covers the ground where I busted the door open, so I know we didn’t imagine what just happened. Somehow, that makes everything feel worse.
“Elle?”
A sigh of relief tumbles past my lips at the sound of Sutton’s voice. My body hitches toward him the moment I turn and see him approaching, but I catch myself at the last second, remembering we’re not supposed to be seen together.
Hugging him is definitely out of the question.
“I heard the fire alarm was going off at the Obeliskos, so I came to check it out…” He trails off, glancing at Lexington beside me. His jaw clenches, and he swallows, swinging his jade gaze back to mine. “Is everything okay?”
“We just got locked in the library,” I say, breathless still, the aftershocks of fear coursing through me. “The power went out, and then the automatic locks latched, and we had to break out.”
Sutton looks past us at the broken door, sliding his hands into the pockets of his long overcoat. “I see. And did you pull the fire alarm?”
“I did,” Lexington answers. “I figured it might draw attention were we unable to escape.”
Frowning, I shoot him a confused look. When did he do that?
“So it was just the two of you…stuck in the dark.” Sutton sucks on the hollow of his cheek, suspicion lining his eyes. “Together.”
“Well, there wasn’t time to have my way with her if that’s what you’re getting at,” Lexington snaps. Clearing his throat, he shoves the journal into my chest; I slap my hand against it to keep it from falling.
“What a strange thing to suggest,” Sutton says. “Your mind certainly has no qualms going there.”
“At least I’m allowed to go there if I want,” Lexington replies coolly.
“Wouldn’t have to hide the fact that I’m in love with Elle if I wanted to pursue her or make things really fucking weird when she’s trying to tell me she was endangered because I’m an insecure piece of trash who lets his job dictate what he does. ”
Sutton’s expression darkens.
Cursing under his breath, Lexington scuffs his shoe on the ground and turns to me. “I’m gonna get back to my dorm before more weird shit happens. Try not to get picked up by Death’s Teeth again, all right?”
I nod, a strange pit opening up inside me as he walks away. Guilt? Shame? I can’t ascertain what it is exactly—just that his leaving unsettles me.