Chapter 41 Down, Down, Down
Down, Down, Down
Stone steps curved steeply downward, vanishing into a shadowed throat of earth. Corey led the way without hesitation, her hair bouncing lightly between her shoulder blades. Luna followed close behind, with Damien’s quiet presence a steady pressure at her back.
The air cooled with every step as the warmth of the upper floor slipped away. Luna dragged her fingers along the stone wall, rough and slightly damp beneath her touch.
But after the second landing, the chill was noticeably less.
By the time they passed the next landing—one of several narrow levels marked by iron-banded doors—the air had become a rising heat. Not comforting warmth. No. It was stagnant and cloying, the kind that made her skin itch and her scalp dampen.
They passed a third level, then a fourth.
At last, Corey stopped before a blistered ochre door, its paint warped from heat. A single rune was carved above the handle—nothing Luna recognized. She pushed it open.
A wave of heat hit Luna square in the face, curling through her hair and down her neck like breath from an open oven. She wiped the sweat from her brow and stepped inside.
The space was sparse: a crooked table littered with old cups and rusted tools, a lopsided cabinet slumped against the far wall.
As Luna took in the red light glowing from narrow bars of metal fixed like sconces, she couldn’t help but feel as though hope had long since died here, and wasn’t welcome back.
And there, lounging on a stone bench, was Marion idly swinging a set of keys around one finger.
“You made it!” she squealed, a smile spreading across her face. “We’ve been suffering without you.” She placed her hand on her forehead, feigning exhaustion. “Counting down the days until you arrived to save us from our misery.”
Marion had none of the telltale unicorn features—no horn, no equine ears.
Instead, her skin looked as soft as moonlight, smooth and unblemished, with intricate dark purple lines tracing up from her fingertips to her forearms like hidden pathways of magic.
A quartz crystal necklace rested at her collarbone, catching glimmers of light as she moved, and just behind her ear was a tattoo of half circles woven together.
It reminded Luna of something Damien had said ages ago, that Marion was something else entirely.
What that something else was, Luna had no idea, and she wasn’t about to ask.
“Is the misery named Nina, or is it simply the lack of Gregory?” Damien asked.
Marion laughed a little too loudly, giving him a firm pat on his shoulder. “Oh, Gregory. I hardly thought about him at all.” She winked, but then her smile slipped into something more serious. “It was definitely Nina.”
“Well, she won’t be our problem for much longer,” Corey added.
“Thank the skies above. For someone who has barely said two words since leaving the human side, she gave me the worst head pains.”
Damien chuckled and Luna shot him a sharp look.
Nothing about this was funny—not Marion’s smugness, not the necklace she’d stolen, and definitely not the way she spoke of Nina, like she was a burden.
His smile faded. Eyes shifting, like he realized too late how Luna was feeling. A muscle ticked in his jaw, but he didn’t defend himself. Didn’t meet her gaze, either. Just cleared his throat and moved on. “Speaking of, we are here to see her. As good as it is to see you—”
“Speak for yourself,” Luna cut in, tail whipping behind her.
Marion raised her brows, all innocence. “What crawled under your skin?”
Of course they could joke. Of course they were fine. Like Nina wasn’t imprisoned down here. Like Luna’s life hadn’t fractured into something unrecognizable.
She was supposed to keep it together, to be smart, quiet, and strategic, but she didn’t want to be any of those things right now.
Her voice came quieter than expected, and sharper too. “A thief.”
Apparently, all the etiquette Luna had been raised with had flown out the window—or maybe she had left it behind in Ghelvina . . . Either way, she no longer cared if she was being rude.
The room quieted.
“What are you talking about . . .” Marion’s eyes widened, and she brushed a hand through her hair. “Oh, that! You should be thanking me—I saved you from the humans’ hold.”
“Thanking you?” Luna snorted. “You blindsided me. Left me with a man I barely knew and forced me to undergo my first transformation.”
“This really isn’t the place to talk about this,” Corey mumbled quietly.
Oh sure, now Corey cared about what was said in front of others. Too bad she hadn’t thought of that when she made Luna feel like shit earlier.
“I did what a true friend would do,” Marion continued as if Corey hadn’t said a word.
“I saw your magic was being suppressed, so I freed you. And I didn’t leave you with a stranger, I left you with Damien, someone safe.
Then I destroyed that hunk of junk so no one else could use it against our kind.
” Marion ground her teeth loud enough for Luna to hear.
“It was vile, the way those humans thought they could control you.”
“You had no right.” Her voice came out thin. “You could’ve said something. Could’ve given me a choice, instead of taking without asking.”
“Would you have believed me?”
That gave Luna pause.
No. She wouldn’t have. Who would believe they were a unicorn until the proof was staring them in the face?
“I’m your friend, Luna,” Marion said softly. “I’d never do something that would hurt you.”
Good intentions didn’t undo the betrayal.
Marion turned and walked ahead, her hands lifted in surrender. “Come on,” she called over her shoulder, flippant as ever. “Nina’s this way.”
Luna hesitated. Her thoughts snagged on the word friend like a burr. If this was friendship—being tricked, stripped of choice, thrown into a life she hadn’t asked for—then she was better off without it.
They walked down the rows of cells, the clip-clop of their hooves echoing in the stale corridor.
In the last cell, a woman sat on the stone floor, dark blonde hair hanging limp over her shoulders like dead vines.
The last time Luna had seen Nina, she’d been cloaked in black at the protection ceremony.
Now she wore a simple white top with long sleeves, paired with dark green pants slit on one side exposing her pale skin.
Eyes the colour of grey storm clouds lifted to meet hers. “It’s you,” Nina breathed. Her voice was barely more than a whisper, but it was smooth and melodic, the kind of voice Luna could spend all day listening to and feel like time was well spent.
Far too graceful given her situation, Nina rose, standing as close as the cuffs wrapped around her wrists would allow. “You’re here . . .”
Luna stepped forward, fingers gripping the cold iron until her knuckles turned white. “You know who I am?”
Nina stared at her, disbelief softening into something warm, almost painful.
Then, like a door slammed shut, the warmth was gone from her face, as if she wouldn’t allow herself such an emotion.
Sharply, her gaze moved to Marion, then Corey, before settling on Damien.
“What kind of game are you playing at? Bringing her here . . .”
“No games,” Damien replied coolly. “She wanted answers before you leave.”
“You speak as if I have a choice in that matter.” Nina shook her now clenched hands, causing the chains to rattle.
Corey tittered behind Luna, while Marion gave Damien a knowing look, that said, See? She’s impossible. Damien ignored them, stepping closer to Luna and pressing a hand against her lower back. “Go on. Ask what you need.”
“Erm . . . This seems private. We’re gonna leave,” Corey said as she wrapped an arm around Marion’s waist. Marion nodded, and the two of them turned back down the hallway.
Nina paid them no mind as they vanished, glowering at Damien a heartbeat longer before swinging her attention back to Luna, ears tipping forward.
Luna’s heart hammered against her ribs. This was really happening. “Is it true?” Her muscles tightened, bracing for the rejection that was bound to come. “That you’re my mother?”
Silence stretched tautly between them, until Nina sighed, her shoulders sagging. “I gave birth to you. Yes.” She nodded, pausing momentarily, before adding, “But I’m not really your mother . . . Not truly.” Bitterness seemed to coat the notes in her voice.
Luna couldn’t help but think of Angie and her soft smile, all the lessons she’d tried to teach, now painfully irrelevant.
Something fragile cracked within her. If her mother could see her now, would she be proud or furious?
“I don’t—I don’t understand . . .” Questions scraped her throat like glass.
Dryly, she swallowed, forcing herself to vocalize the words she had wondered all her life.
“Did you lov—” Luna shook her head, embarrassed by her vulnerability. “Why didn’t you come for me?”
“I did . . . Once.” The tight lines around Nina’s eyes softened slightly. “When you were small, I managed to find you and I tried to take you away from that place . . . from those people, but you were so scared.”
A memory flashed through Luna’s mind. Terror of being carried through the dark on a unicorn’s back, certain the creature was taking her to her lair to eat her.
She remembered begging to go home. Praying she would wake up any second from the nightmare.
Her gaze lifted, meeting Nina’s through the bars. “I thought it was a dream.”
“You cried for your mother, and that’s when I realized I’d never be that to you.”
She remembered that white unicorn’s sad eyes when she had returned her to the window outside her room. They had haunted her for years. “I’m sorry.” Her lips trembled, thoughts of how different things would have been for them had she just been brave spiraled through her mind.
Nina’s voice broke. “Oh, my child . . . I just want to reach through these bars and hold you.”