Chapter 78
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Emmeline
“What was that?” Myrella whispered on a gasp.
Emmeline and Desmond, leading the group based on what her Fate ties were telling her, paused, spinning toward Myrella. She was whipping around wildly, her head turning in every direction. At the rear of the train, Eston shrugged.
Desmond lifted the lantern he’d pulled from the wall higher, the mystlight glowing an eerie blue down here. He did a thorough sweep of the tunnel stretching behind them and in front.
“There’s nothing there, little dreamer,” he said softly.
“No,” Myrella said. “No, I heard something. It was like glass shattering and someone—”
She blinked again and again, frame trembling.
“Someone what?” Emmeline asked, taking a step closer. Her fingers curled around Roremar’s ring, Fate voices screaming warnings through her veins. “Was it Lola?”
Had Myrella heard something the rest of them hadn’t? How? She and Desmond were both on high alert.
“No,” Myrella exhaled, the word rough. Her palm pressed to her ear. “No, it was like someone whispered.”
She didn’t repeat what the person said, but fear rippled off her in choking waves.
Emmeline was nearly bowled over by the potency.
She stepped closer, wrapping her arm around Myrella and rubbing her shoulder.
Her skin was icy to the touch, but Emmeline tried to get some warmth into her, palm grazing a rough, raised scar along the back of Myrella’s arm.
They hadn’t been down here for long enough for her to be quite so chilled.
Sure, the sudden rain had dampened all their clothing, and it was colder below ground, but it seemed unnatural.
Especially given the pools of candlelight bathing the space every few feet, adding little pockets of warmth.
Maybe Myrella hadn’t been close enough to Desmond’s lantern to benefit from it.
“Did anyone else hear anything?” Emmeline asked, giving Desmond and Eston pointed looks. Concern ticked away at her. She hoped one of them had.
The two men exchanged hesitant glances, both shaking their heads.
Myrella trembled harder, her attention snapping up. “Again.” She pressed her palms to her ears as if she could smother the noise.
Emmeline scanned the tunnel, trying to find an explanation.
The walls were made of stone, coated with moss or different types of algae and fungi.
Between stretches of greenery, thin veins shimmered when the mystlight hit it at the right angle, giving spots of the tunnel a haloed, iridescent effect, some of the stones overlapping in a scale-like pattern she didn’t remember from before.
They were following a different path this time, though.
She didn’t see anything unusual.
Myrella shivered, and Emmeline’s heart beat faster, curiosity tangling with her worry as her friend blinked up at her and repeated, “Again.”
“Again,” Emmeline agreed, at a loss. “We need to keep walking, then we’ll figure out what the noises mean.”
Emmeline kept rubbing her palms down Myrella’s arms, trying to soothe the chills that had sprung up. When she grazed that scar again, Emmeline ducked to look at it. It was small, a rough jagged shape she couldn’t make out. And it was still red.
“Is this new?” Emmeline asked. It wasn’t the priority right now, but misgivings trickled ice behind her ribs.
Myrella only shook harder, not hearing or fully understanding Emmeline. Her fingers curled around her ears, eyes flickering between attentive and glassy. Myrella mouthed silent words, and Emmeline leaned closer to try to hear.
“Nico,” Myrella whispered, barely a breath, but Emmeline’s heart clenched.
She looked to Desmond at the front of the group. “Let’s keep going.”
“Want me to carry her?” Tension lined his frame, nightmares of what was happening to Lola plain in his expression.
“I’ve got her,” Emmeline said, still rubbing warmth into Myrella’s body, though it didn’t seem to be doing anything. “You lead the way, and I’ll tell you when to turn.”
They followed Desmond, and while her magic was insistent down here, the Fates said nothing of Myrella.