Chapter 18
Chapter eighteen
Her knees cracked against stone, her body tumbling down several stairs before stopping. Lux lay draped backwards on the staircase, gasping for air.
Devil take me.
Everything hurt, but her palms screeched loudest. She rolled off them, cradling her hands to her chest and biting her lip against a sob. Pained tears puddled in her eyes.
She’d tripped on her saintforsaken dress. “What sort of torturous climb is this for the help?” she cried. Because not only were the stairs sharply spiraled, but the steps were too narrow; she’d stepped down like they were normal, not deadly.
Lux climbed to her feet. Still cradling her hands, she looked toward the door to a seam hardly visible. Really, she could see nothing much in the scant light.
Her knees ached terribly. When she glanced at her palms, she found while they weren’t bleeding, they were fiery red. “Devil’s tits,” she seethed.
Should she go down? The pain had bled the worst of her interest from her.
She doubted the stairway led to the vault anyway.
Probably only to a kitchen, as she’d been told.
She sniffed away the remainder of her tears.
The passage smelled the same as most dark, enclosed spaces: a musty mixture of dust and stone.
She’d never liked such things and positively hated them now.
But you only have two days, the matter-of-fact side of her demanded she remember. Two days and only herself to count on.
She stepped forward and winced at the painful flare in her knees. Maybe it did only go to the kitchen—but it was better than obeying Corvin’s direction to do nothing. She moved farther down the staircase.
“You’re going the wrong way, Lucena.”
Lux flattened herself against the wall. That voice… She waited, crouched like a thief, and didn’t so much as breathe.
But no one appeared; the voice said nothing else. And as time ticked on, she wondered…there had been a voice. Hadn’t there?
Her muscles protested loudly now. Lux tentatively peeled herself from the wall.
It was nothing. No one here knows my given name.
No one here knows… She pushed away until she stood in the center of the stairs, trembling as if she’d caught a terrible fever.
Because while the trees had spoken to her, too, it had never sounded like this.
Like her nightmares. Like the words had come from her very own mind.
She had no courage left for this. Goosebumps lifted along her skin.
“You’re only having a conversation with your own head. You’ve done it all the time.” It had been a habit since losing her parents young. With neither family nor friends, who else did she have to speak to other than herself?
Lux continued on her way. She rounded the next curve faster than the one before and nearly toppled down the stairs a second time. She caught herself on the stones—only to stumble backward.
Someone stood at the bottom.
Lux hurtled back around the corner and pressed herself against the wall, trying as best she could to quiet her breaths. Who the devil was down there? It couldn’t be a collector.
Whomever it was dressed all in white.
“A buried girl. Let her out.”
Be quiet! she snarled at the voice. The girl might be real. For all Lux knew, she might be an attendant.
Dressed entirely different from any of the others…
Lux edged along the wall. She would look again. If this was like the bathwater and thus a figment of her mind, the person would be gone. Or at least standing the same as she had been before. And if she were real, she must have moved by now.
Lux breathed a deep breath at the corner’s curve before peering around—
Right into another’s eyes.
She screamed.
The figure had come partway up the stairs, and though she’d moved as Lux had hoped she would, it was in the worst possible way. The steps were solidly beneath her; the girl’s feet did not touch them. They somehow suspended above.
It can’t be. Ghosts are not real.
But why wasn’t the figure fading?
Why did it look just like Lux herself?
Lux’s heart racketed against her ribs. Because—saints above—maybe ghosts were real. Maybe madness took over families and elixirs could make the dead speak and if her forgery of an aunt had to cough up her appendix for a seed what else could happen?
Really, what did Lux even know of the world?
She stared into the apparition’s empty eyes. When it moved closer, she backed away. “If you can’t even stand on the stairs, then you cannot hurt me.”
Maybe that would be true too.
“Tell me who you are,” she ordered when the figure floated only several stairs down.
The apparition’s dark tresses hung curled but limp, wet over a nightgown, and its feet were bare and dirty. Aside from the soulless stare, Lux would have been positive it was human. But then the figure opened its mouth and revealed rows of pointed and blackened teeth.
Lux’s head lightened. “Nevermind. I don’t wish to know.”
“Lucena Thorn. Necromancer. Thief. Murderer.”
Lux would go back. This instant. She’d obey Corvin and return to her room; she’d even lock herself inside.
“Shine bright, little Lux. And do not forget your dreams.”
“Enough,” she hissed.
“So hateful. So lonely.”
Lux stepped up sideways, keeping the curved wall at her back. The apparition didn’t move, but its stare followed her. “Leave me alone!”
“Never alone. Not anymore.”
“What in the devil’s own hell are you?”
“I am you.”
Lux had taken two steps more before the apparition began to follow again. “You are nothing like me.”
“I am your darkness. I am your talent. Look at what you have made.”
Lux was sure she would be sick. She turned to face the figure fully, her steps moving steadily backward. Meanwhile, the creature stalked her the same. Its lips pulled back into a menacing sort of smile, and she could see then its gums were rotted alongside its teeth.
This is a nightmare…
But aren’t I awake?
She thought she was, but who knew for certain?
She had seen this face while asleep. Perhaps this was a dream within a dream, and maybe—if she pinched herself—she would wake up.
Lux did so, her nails nearly puncturing her skin, but other than gritting her teeth, nothing changed.
She was still walking backward up the passageway.
The apparition still mimicked her movements.
If she ran, would this creature run too?
She found she didn’t want to test the theory.
“If that’s true, then I regret it. Tell me how to be rid of you.”
The figure’s smile morphed. Lux thought it looked terrifyingly pleased. “Rid of me? I am innate. Your other half. Carve me out or keep me. Either way, I am yours.”
“I don’t want to do either of those things.”
The blackened mouth bared into a snarl and shrieked, “CHOOSE!”
The creature’s scream outpitched her own. Lux leapt backward before she sprinted.
Around and around, she ran.
She saw the door. It wasn’t close enough. Her hand stretched before she even reached it. Until—finally—her fingers met stone. She spun for one last glance.
The apparition stood behind her. It smiled.
“You’re. Not. Real.” Lux whipped back and pushed. She jolted when the figure morphed beside her. When it bent to her ear.
“You’re not real,” she whimpered at the same time the creature murmured, “We’re a monster.”
And stepped into her skin.