Chapter 20 #2
I lean back, scrutinizing her. A frown etches itself onto her brow as her eyes dart between my face and the book.
Her movements are stiff, almost hesitant, as though she’s measuring every reaction.
I can see the storm of thoughts racing through her mind, but they’re still guarded, as if she’s trapped within them.
There’s something in the way she spoke, a weight behind her words, that makes me wonder if Sphinx is not the only prisoner here—if she, too, is bound to this place against her will.
“Titaia.” I draw out her name, trepidation twining through my mind. “Will you show me where she is?”
Aside from before the trials, I’ve never seen Titaia act any other way than cynical or mischievous. Now her body radiates tension, her features solemn. The change in her usual demeanor—the seriousness of it—plucks at the strings of my heart.
“I may have only known you for a short time, Aella.” She looks me in the eye as she says the words.
In them I see a song of pain that harmonizes with my own.
Yet, as I watch, that pain shifts—softening into steadfast resolve.
“But I have known my cousin all my life. I trust your intentions are kinder.”
A surge of triumph courses through me, only to be tempered by the weight of Titaia’s next words.
“But there’s a condition,” she says, her voice steady. “I want you to help me set her free.”
Her words pierce through, resonating deeper than I expect. “If everything you said about Keres is true,” I murmur, careful to neutralize my tone, “then why take the risk when it’s so dangerous?”
Titaia meets my gaze, her red-brown eyes gleaming with something sharper than grief.
Fury. “Because, once, I thought I could save him. I was mistaken. If I can’t save what he’s destroyed, perhaps…
perhaps I can save someone else instead.
” Her hand brushes my sleeve. Whether for emphasis or comfort, I can’t tell.
I shouldn’t even be considering this. I’m no hero, no fabled heroine from some ancient tale.
I’m a Songbird, and I have a mission to complete.
But cursed Anemoi…it’s easier said than done with the memory of Sphinx seared into my mind.
Blood trickling from the wounds beneath the collar at her throat, her voice—tortured and raw—singing, whispering, screaming.
And I can’t shake the nagging suspicion that all of this—every piece—is connected, the threads concealed just out of reach.
I nod, the words spilling from my lips before I have a chance to fully consider them.
“Take me to her.”
It’s a miracle that I keep my expression neutral as Titaia guides me to the servants’ quarters and the very hall my Flight has been monitoring. I search the shadows, making no effort to conceal it from her. She will likely assume my unease is tied to what we’re about to do.
But the shadows reveal nothing.
Gods damn it, where are they?
Titaia moves toward the section of the wall where Nyssa and I saw Keres vanish—where the strange marks are carved. My eyes follow her as she draws a small knife from her pocket and presses the blade to the tip of her finger, drawing blood.
I step closer but stop in my tracks as she presses her bleeding finger to one symbol—an inverted triangle divided by a horizontal line, with a teardrop hanging from its lowest point.
A faint crimson light glows. My breath catches as the smooth stone morphs into the coarse texture of a wooden door.
Handleless yet responsive, it swings open at her touch, revealing a concealed passage beyond.
Titaia fidgets before turning to face me. “Are you ready?”
I can only nod, still trying to process what I’ve just witnessed.
Titaia has just revealed and opened a hidden door with her own blood.
I’ve never heard of goiteía capable of producing either of these phenomena.
Could the markings carved into the locked door in Keres’s room be activated in the same manner?
Is any blood enough, or is it the bloodline itself that serves as the key?
The questions rush through my mind as I step into the passageway behind her, and as soon as we cross the threshold, the door swings shut. Darkness swallows us, and I reach out, my hand colliding with the cool metal of a door handle on this side.
“The outside will appear as marble again,” Titaia explains as she pulls an aura from her pocket and a cool glow of light surrounds us. “We don’t need blood to leave, only to enter.”
“That’s a neat trick,” I murmur, turning to face her and the passage beyond. The tunnel is a yawning black abyss that stretches before us like the throat of a great beast.
My skin pebbles, either from the dampness in the air or from the faint scent of copper and decay. But as Titaia offers me a small smile, I follow her, my heart beating a staccato rhythm that surges with each looming shadow as we venture deeper into the mountain’s belly.
The walls are jagged and uneven down here, with small trickles of water running down them like sweat on a feverish face. Our footsteps echo in the darkness, along with the occasional drip from somewhere up above.
It’s hard to tell how deep we have gone, even now that my eyesight has adjusted to the dark.
All I know is that every turn brings us farther and farther away from any sign of life or civilization.
While that should probably put me on edge, there is something about Titaia that tells me I can trust her.
Raven would surely tell me I’m foolish for believing so, but it’s not like I’m about to tell her I’m a foreign spy here to steal a weapon.
I simply don’t think she’s about to bludgeon me in the head and lock me in a cell.
We pause when the tunnel splits in two. Titaia points to the left. “This way leads to Keres’s workrooms.”
The disgust coloring her voice leaves no doubt in my mind that whatever takes place down here repulses her. “And the other?”
“A tunnel that lets out at the eastern base of the mountain.”
I keep my face impassive as I store the knowledge away.
Titaia turns to face me, slipping a second aura from the pocket of her gown into my hand. “Are you sure you want to do this, Aella?”
“I think you already know the answer to that question.”
She nods, a grim set to her features. “I can’t go in there with you.”
“Why not?”
“She asks all those who try to walk past her a riddle—exactly like your first trial.” A frown lines her forehead, and she hesitates before she speaks. “If you get it wrong, you die.”
My heartbeat stutters. “Even outside of the trials?”
“It’s not her fault. It’s part of her binding.”
“The collar,” I guess, disgust rippling through me. The trial compelled Sphinx to kill Dehlia, and I imagine her death would have been gruesome. What else did they force her to endure during captivity?
Titaia nods. “I don’t know what Keres and my uncle have her guarding, but it can’t be good.”
Guarding.
My heart rate picks up at the word.
“You don’t have to wait for me.” I grip her hands in mine, giving them a slight squeeze. “I have a feeling it wouldn’t end well for you. I’ll find my way back, and if I bump into anyone, I can just say I got lost.”
She hesitates, looking torn between doing as I say or damning the consequences and following me anyway. The former wins. “Be careful, Princess. It will be rather dull around here if you die on me.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want you to get bored.”
Titaia flashes me a reluctant smile and takes a few steps backward.
“Go,” I encourage. “I’ll let you know if I can figure out a way to help her.”
She gives me a grateful smile and starts down the tunnel. I watch the glow of her aura disappear with the sound of her fading footsteps before I finally turn. Pushing my shoulders back and steeling my spine, I head into the darkness.
I’ve barely taken a hundred paces before the light from my aura illuminates a heavy wooden door.
I test the handle, but of course, it’s locked.
Kneeling, I place the aura on the rough stone floor and push aside the skirt of my dress, flicking open the lockpick satchel strapped to my thigh holster.
I pull out two of the picks and slide them into the keyhole.
It doesn’t take long before I’m rewarded with the sound of a sharp click, the lock snapping open.
Returning my picks, I swipe up the aura, stand, and push the door open. The same unease I felt during my first trial creeps up my spine as I step into the room, my senses warning me of a predator lying in wait.
“Sphinx?” The whispered word echoes in the space, followed by the scrape of a claw on stone.
“Daughter of the Tempest.” Her voice comes before she appears from the shadows. “I did say we would meet again. Although this is sooner than even I foresaw.”
I step farther into the room as my eyes lock on to the collar at her neck. “You are not here of your own will.”
“I am rarely anywhere of my own will.”
My gaze flicks back up to hers, the golden catlike eyes luminous in the dark. “I was hoping we could help one another.”
“And what is it you seek?”
“What is it you guard?” I fire back.
A slow, predatory smile curls her lips.
“To some I bring death; to others I bring safety.
If it weren’t for me, many would die,
But because of me, many will.
Tell me, Daughter, what am I?”
An answering smile blooms across my face. “A weapon.”
Sphinx purrs, her eyes glimmering with approval.
“If I can remove the collar, will you be free?”
“As free as any of us can be,” she replies, her layered voice echoing through the chamber.
“And if you are freed, will you stand in the way of any looking to pass through the door behind you?”
“I do not willingly stand in the way of fate.”
I frown at the words but approach her and reach toward her throat.
She hisses as I spin the collar, committing the goiteía marks to memory.
Fortunately, they’re ones I recognize—marks for obedience and the like.
Sphinx’s golden gaze sharpens as my fingers brush against her skin.
Her sharp exhale ripples through the chamber, low and layered.
“You see it now, don’t you?” she murmurs, her lips curling into a razor-edged smile.
I pull back, eyes narrowing as her meaning skirts just out of reach. “See what?”
“You’re like him,” she replies, her words dripping with amusement.
“Not the prince, no. Farther back. Even the gods themselves. Their essence is buried in you—a tempest chained as they were, a songbird with clipped wings and sharp claws. They bound me to this place, Daughter. And they bound you, too, when they gave you breath.”
Her gaze flickers down, and a clawed hand flies toward me.
I barely process her words before a sting of pain makes me stumble away.
When I look down, I freeze. The mark she leaves on my sternum doesn’t bleed.
It glows and instantly heals over, leaving a silvered symbol shimmering before my eyes.
Tendrils twist and curl, creating an impression that feels both hauntingly familiar and strangely foreign.
I watch with a mixture of shock and awe as the mark fades into my skin until it vanishes. As though my body itself absorbed the magic.
“What have you done?” I whisper.
Sphinx leans back, her wings folding as she prowls forward, golden eyes flashing with something far too knowing. “It is not a curse—it is an anchor. And you, unyielding and untamed as you are, can shatter its chains for both of us. Perhaps all of us.”
Her words hold weight, but her gaze pierces through me as if she already sees my answer.
“Free me, Princess,” she purrs, her voice almost soft, “and none shall stop you. Not the prince. Not the court. Not the ones who swarm your thoughts each time you breathe within these walls.”
And there it is—the end of my choice before it’s even begun. The question isn’t whether I will act. It’s how much I’ll lose along the way.
“A bargain is struck,” Sphinx says, her ominous tone igniting shivers along my skin. “You must go now.”
Burning questions linger on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow them as the sharp hiss of metal scraping against stone fills the air.
The sound is both near and far, accompanied by the faint, haunting clink of chains.
My eyes dart toward the source of the sound, settling on another sealed door.
There’s an inexplicable pull, a force tugging at the core of my being, drawing me closer.
I take a step, but Sphinx blocks my way, her golden eyes flaring.
“He comes,” she growls.
I don’t need to ask who she means. Without another moment’s hesitation, I turn away, leaving Sphinx and her guarded secrets behind.
The echo of angry voices doesn’t reach me until I step back into the main tunnel.
My heart leaps to my throat and I dart to the opposite side, retreating into the shadows of the exit passage Titaia showed me earlier.
I press my body into the curve of the wall, shoving the aura deep inside the folds of my gown to smother the glow.
As my eyes adjust to the dark, I press my mouth into the crook of my arm, muffling the telltale sound of my breath in the otherwise silent space.
“What do you mean ‘it failed’?” a familiar voice carries to my hiding spot, the fury in the words making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Keres. I know his voice well enough by now, but I’ve never heard him so angry. Not even the night he forced Helen to drink the nightshade.
“The subject died, my prince,” another voice replies, and I stiffen at the same raspy voice of the hooded man. “He was not a strong enough vessel to hold the power.”
A growl of frustration echoes down the tunnel.
“You will try again,” Keres demands. “I don’t care how many vessels you have to go through.”
“Of course, Your Highness.”
I remain frozen in place as the voices fade and a door slams in the distance.
Once I’m sure enough time has passed, I creep out of the opening. I glance to my right, cocking my head to listen for any signs of movement in the tunnel.
An icy breeze claws its way out of the dark, like a cold hand sliding against the surface of my skin, causing the ever-present warmth of my soul magic to shiver within my chest.
And with deep certainty, I know.
I’ve found what we’ve been searching for.