Chapter 19
The elevator opens to the familiar gloom of the underground castle. Gage dropped me off, helping me to the ground just outside the garden, then taking off without a word. He watched me, though, his eyes on me as he retreated into the sunrise.
I hurry through the hallway and into the wide staircase landing. “Valen?” I call.
“You’re back?” Druin lands beside me so quickly I jump. He must’ve already been tracking me. “Why are you back? You’re supposed to be at some human fort.”
“Where’s Valen?”
“Gone. He left for the Black Cavern about an hour ago.”
“No.” I sink onto the stairs, my legs going weak. “No.”
“What are you doing here?” He drops a few steps in front of me, concern in his eyes. “It’s not safe.”
“Valen’s not safe. Gregor knows.”
“Knows what?”
“That I’m alive. That Valen’s been lying to him. I don’t know how much deeper it goes, but that’s enough for him t-to—” I shake, my vision going black.
Come to me NOW.
The command floods through me, tearing apart my mind. Agony blooms inside my skull, and for long, excruciating moments, I don’t know anything. I’m not me at all, only a command, only an instruction that must be followed.
“Georgia!” Druin’s voice comes at me from a great distance, like he’s shouting down an overgrown train tunnel.
I gasp, my vision returning in a blast of sensation. But it’s dark here.
“Where am I?” I reach out.
“I’ve got you.” Druin takes my hand.
“What happened?” My head burns, and I feel wetness on my cheek. I taste blood.
“I don’t know. Maybe a seizure? You were shaking, eyes rolled back, and you kept walking. When I tried to stop you, you started hitting your head on the wall. You only stopped when I let go.”
“Gregor. His compulsion.” I keep moving inexorably toward the tracks, toward the Black Cavern.
“Georgia?” Juno’s voice slices through the dark. “What’s going on? Where have you been? You’re bleeding.”
“I have to go.” I can’t stop, can’t disobey.
“Wait.” She steps in front of me. I can’t see anything in the pitch black, only sense her presence.
“He’ll kill Valen. I won’t let him. I can’t let him.
” The bridge of my nose burns, tears rolling down my cheeks.
“I have to go.” The truth is, Valen may already be dead, but I can’t think about that now.
I can’t let it be real. I won’t. And despite our bond being broken, I still believe I can feel him.
Somewhere deep inside where even Gregor can’t reach, Valen is there.
“You can’t!” Juno grabs my arms.
“She can’t resist the compulsion,” Druin says quietly. “Gregor’s hold will eventually kill her if she disobeys. She’s already suffering from it.”
“No.” Juno’s voice is quieter, breaking. “Not you. Not you.” She wraps me in her arms, my skin itching to move, to get to Gregor. “Please, no.”
Sparks and rumbling along the track announce the arrival of the empty train carriage. It stops beside me.
“I have to go.” I try to disentangle myself from Juno, but she clings to me.
“No!” She hangs on, her strength crushing me to her. “I won’t let you.”
NOW. The command is acid filling my veins and pumping through my heart. I black out again, my world shattering into a wasteland of pain. There is nothing. Nothing except Gregor’s voice. I must obey it.
When I come to, I’m slumped over in the train car, the side-to-side motion rocking me like a mother with a newborn. I sit up, again tasting blood. I wipe my nose, my fingers coming away wet. Bloody.
I have no idea where I am, how close to the Black Cavern. My skin is clammy, cold sweat soaking through my clothes. I wrap my arms around myself, the too-big jacket giving slight comfort.
“Valen?” I whisper the thought of him, hoping to feel him somewhere out in the dark, hoping he’s still alive.
But there is nothing. Just the creaking of the train carriage and the whine of metal on metal.
The carriage begins to slow, and I peer into the dark looking for some sign of the vampires, of Gregor.
It jolts to a hard stop.
I wait.
Silence.
But my need to complete my task gets me on my feet. I step out of the carriage though I can’t see the ground. My feet aren’t concerned. They keep me moving.
I walk up a flight of stairs, my heart pumping like I’ve run a mile, and then another. Two more and I’m on level ground. A thin shaft of light shines far ahead, and I realize I’m in another tunnel, this one with no tracks.
The light reveals more black stone, the way ahead fading into pitch again. When I pass through the ray, I realize it’s sun. I must be closer to the surface here, wherever here is. But I can’t stop to figure it out. My head throbs at the thought of delaying.
So I continue into the dark until I come to some sort of obstruction.
I clamber over it, the sharp rocks cutting my hands and tearing at my clothes.
It must’ve been some sort of cave-in. Then I remember what Whitbine said: the tracks no longer reach the Black Cavern.
Gregor didn’t want anyone to have easy access to him.
This must be the workaround for it, the only way to get there without meeting daylight.
My foot catches on something, and I tumble forward. I try to catch myself, but I cut myself on a rock, my head knocking against a larger boulder as I slide to a halt. My skin burns, my body aching, but I get up. I must get up.
Again, I call out for Valen. For some sign that he’s alive.
I stumble onward, the path slanting downward, the air growing steadily colder.
I hear water in the distance, first a dripping and then more.
An underground torrent, fresh water in the dark.
I want to put my burning hands into it. Wash away the blood, ease the pain.
But it’s farther away now, my feet dedicated to my death march.
Is this how it was always going to end? I don’t know.
But I can go to my death with the knowledge that I did everything I could to find a cure, to ensure humanity survives despite the plague, despite the war.
Now I know it was the only possible way I could’ve begun to balance the scales.
Because I created Death. I created a plague for the vampires, a compound that is 100 percent fatal, and I gave it to the humans.
It was the price. It was what I had to pay for a chance to show them that they don’t need to use it.
Stopping Gregor. I have to try. Even if it’s impossible.
Even if it means the end. I still have to try.
For me. For Valen. For Melody. For Coal and Druin and Evie and Wyatt—for all the ones I love and the ones who could be worthy of love.
“Georgia,” a shape in the dark whispers.
I turn toward the sound, but I can’t stop.
“Take this.” I feel something cold and metallic slide up the sleeve of my jacket. “It’s your only chance.”
“Fatima?”
“Don’t miss,” she hisses. “He’ll let you get close. He isn’t afraid of you. Use it to your advantage.” She’s gone in the same breath, her presence dissipating as I continue my pace on the downward slope.
I clutch the hilt of the blade she slipped me.
I’m no fighter. She knows that. But I’ll take whatever help I can get at this point, even if I don’t know why she’s offering it.
I don’t even know why she left that note in my room, telling me to go outside.
She’s working with Gage, but why? She was always three steps ahead, maybe even more in her current form.
The terrain changes, my foot slipping on loose gravel before I get my balance.
A familiar scent wafts through the chilly air. Rot. I’m closer now. So close that the pull I feel is drawing my gaze upward. Gregor. He’s above me somewhere.
Mechanically, I trudge along, the floor leveling out, the smell of decay growing and overwhelming me. Lights appear along the corridor ahead of me, the same kind that were in my cell of the Black Cavern’s dungeons.
My stomach sinks. I’m here. I’m back where I started.
I turn and climb a staircase hewn into the black stone. It spirals at first, around and around I go for so many steps that my legs and lungs burn as I struggle. The pull is like thorns under my skin, barbed wire embedded in my dermis.
The climb becomes more punishing as the stairs change from a stone spiral to a concrete shaft. Back and forth. Burning and heaving, my muscles pushed to the breaking point.
I reach another landing, barely able to breathe, sweat stinging in my eyes.
More. Up and up. Something tears at the back of my thigh, my hamstring.
I fall, but still I climb on my hands and knees.
Step after step. Fatima’s blade still clutched in my hand such that my knuckles grow bloody from scraping along the concrete.
After I’ve climbed for longer than I can remember, black boots appear on the steps right in front of me.
I’m snatched up, dangling as a vampire snarls in my face.
“You’ve kept him waiting.” He shakes me, my body flailing as I gasp for breath.
With a heave, he throws me to the next landing. I hit hard, my head bouncing against the wall as my open hand catches on the lip of the top stair. Pain rips along my arm, and I know my fingers are broken. The bones in my hand, too.
“Up.” He grabs me again and drags me down a dank corridor, the scent of death pressing on me like a weight, the barbs beneath my skin multiplying until I’m on fire all over. I retch, the small contents of my stomach splashing onto the blood-blackened floor. He doesn’t stop.
When he drops me in a heap, I’m grateful that the motion has stopped. That I can just lie here.
“My lord.” The vampire kicks me so I roll onto my back.
The Black Cavern. The same steps I was brought to when Gregor gave me to Valen. The steps where countless humans have died at the mad vampire’s hands. I stare up at him. He’s sitting on his black throne, the back of it decorated with dozens of heads on pikes.