Chapter 44
Forty-Four
“Has anyone told you to get a psychological evaluation? Because if not, I think now might be the time.”
We are both crouched in the shadows near the sky bridge to Lunoreth, Riven’s face completely drained of colour after hearing my plan.
“Says the man who’d rather kill first, ask questions later,” I mutter, giving him a pointed look.
He shrugs. “At least my methods are effective.”
“Yeah, effective at putting a target on our backs,” I scoff. “Now stop bickering and follow me.”
He stares at me deadpan. “There is no way you are climbing over that wall, Octavia.”
I stick up my middle finger and he gapes at me like I’ve offended him.
I try to hide the smile on my face at his reaction, ignoring him as I start to climb, more surefooted than I was when I previously attempted this with Stryx.
With a massive sigh he follows me, muttering something under his breath about ‘rude, stubborn women’.
My smile quickly drops when I make it to the top and look over the edge.
The drop is just as terrifying as before, even more so in the pitch black of midnight.
Faint reflections of the city lights glance off the water’s edge below, highlighting how far the drop is.
The wind howls up the side of the floating city, tugging my hair loose as I swing one leg over the parapet of the outer wall.
Below us yawns nothing, but two hundred feet of open air and the churning black mirror of Lake Voyd.
Riven stops dead. “Absolutely not.”
“Riven–”
He cuts me off, his voice echoing across the expanse. “This is your plan? Climb off the edge of a floating city and hope we don’t plummet to our deaths?”
I shoot him an exasperated look over my shoulder. “Oh, calm down. Stryx and I did it only days ago.”
I decide not to tell him about how I nearly fell to my death in the process. He doesn’t need that sort of motivation.
“That does not help,” he snaps. “Stryx can fly. You are not a dragon. I am not a dragon.”
“I wouldn’t let her hear you calling her a dragon, she might turn you into a tree spirit,” I warn him, and he rolls his eyes dramatically.
“What the fuck is a tree spirit?”
“You don’t want to know,” I say with raised eyebrows, repeating the words Stryx said to me.
The wind picks up, making the drop seem to breathe beneath us. My stomach flips, but I refuse to show it. “If you want to get into the catacombs undetected, this is the only way, apparently.”
Riven glares. “The only way to what? Early burial?”
I roll my eyes this time, gripping the handholds someone long ago carved into the stone. “Stop being dramatic and climb.”
“Oh, I’m dramatic?” he mutters, but he swings over after me, boots scraping the wall, knuckles white against the stone. “If I fall, I’m haunting you.”
“We both know you already haunt me,” I fire back.
“Not in the literal sense!”
“Debatable. If I didn’t know better, I would say you’re afraid of heights,” I joke, slowly making my descent.
When he remains silent I stop and look up, finding him still, glaring at me.
“Voyd take me, you are aren’t you?”
“This is hardly the time or place…”
I zone out of what he’s saying, my thoughts returning to Stryx.
She’s in danger, she could even be dead already, and here we are bantering like we are off to lunch.
My breath gets caught in my chest and a tear slides down my cheek as I hold on to the wall, my limbs suddenly frozen.
A thumb comes out of nowhere to brush away the tear, and I look up to find Riven clinging to the wall next to me.
“Hey,” he says softly. “She’s going to be okay. We’ll find her. Don’t feel guilty for mucking around, everyone deals with stressful situations differently.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You were goading me on purpose, weren’t you? To distract me?”
He nods with an apologetic smile.
“Let me guess, you’re not actually afraid of heights either?”
“Nope!” he yells down to the lake. “This is exhilarating!”
I stare at him deadpan and he has the decency to look chagrined.
I shake my head, trying to hide my returning smile at his antics, and continue to descend slowly, the tunnel entrance a distant, dark mouth beneath us.
I try not to imagine my hands slipping. A loose pebble skitters from Riven’s boot past my shoulder and drops into oblivion.
I stupidly watch it, counting the seconds until I hear the distant splash of it hitting the surface of the lake.
Gods, that really is a long drop.
Fortunately, though, we finally reach the tunnel lip unscathed, Riven pulling himself inside with a muttered curse behind me while I wait, breathless.
He looks at me, hair disheveled, chest heaving. “You’re absolutely insane,” he mutters with a lopsided smile.
“Maybe,” I answer, stepping past him into the dark, “but you followed me.”
“That I did,” he mutters, mostly to himself, before gazing at the route ahead with a grim look. His silence says everything. I follow his stare into the inky blackness of the damp, musty tunnel, trying to swallow, but my throat has gone as dry as sawdust.
“So, Stryx said this tunnel leads to the catacombs?” he says finally.
I turn to him with a grimace, and he tilts his head, his jaw tensing angrily. “I’m guessing from the look on your face that there’s also something you forgot to mention?”
I run my hands through my windswept hair. “She may have also mentioned that it’s essentially a labyrinth that no one’s escaped from.”
“Well that’s just fantastic,” he mumbles, rolling his eyes. “Oh well, no time like the present.”
And without another word, he marches off confidently into the gloom, leaving me to run after him, once again questioning his sanity.
Okay, maybe mine too.
The tunnel exhales cold air as we walk briskly along, the echoes of our footsteps swallowed immediately by the dark. It’s been at least an hour already, and I’m seriously regretting the decision to come down here.
The ceiling slopes downward into a narrowing corridor of carved stone. We reach a junction and I brighten the gentle light in my palm with a thin thread of my magic, just like Riven taught me, the faint blue glow revealing a maze of intersecting hallways splitting off in every direction.
Riven lets out a low, unhappy sound. “Oh, perfect. A subterranean nightmare. My favourite.”
“It can’t be that bad, surely?” I whisper.
We turn left.
It is that bad.
The tunnels twist and loop back into one another like the innards of some colossal beast. Our footsteps start to sound unfamiliar, as though new echoes have replaced our own. The air grows thicker, colder. I try to hide my rising dread, but the oppressive dark presses against us.
As time slowly marches on, my mind starts to unravel.
My Shadow follows at every turn, whispering terrible things repeatedly.
I start to picture in awful, vivid detail all of the various scenarios that could befall us, the horrific things that could be happening to Stryx if we don’t make it in time.
At the fifth dead end, Riven stops abruptly.
“This isn’t right,” he says, panic leaching into his voice. “We’ve been here before.”
“No, we haven’t,” I insist, though my heart hammers too fast. Then I see it—my own footprint, smudged and half-washed by moisture. Next to it…bones.
Panic claws up my throat. “Oh Gods. We’re going in circles. What if we get lost and we can’t find her–”
Riven grabs my shoulders, jaw tightening.
“Stay calm, we will find her.” His tone is determined, but I don’t miss the fear in his eyes.
“They’re designed to disorient intruders.
These aren’t just tunnels, they’re wards.
Spatial loops. There must be a way of navigating them, otherwise they would be entirely useless. ”
I nod, trying my best to slow my heart, but it thunders on regardless. The set of Riven’s shoulders is too stiff as he walks on ahead of me, like he’s trying really hard to look calm for my sake.
It’s not helping.
We try another pathway. Another. The walls start feeling closer. The air thinner. All the while, my Shadow whispers relentlessly to me, giving voice to my anxieties. My light flickers each time my hands shake, and my thoughts start to spiral again.
“Riven, what if we–”
“Don’t.” His voice snaps sharper than intended. “We are not dying down here. And neither is she.”
It doesn’t escape me that he’s failing to hide his panic now.
I swallow hard, my mind spinning with every wrong turn, every dead end. “We’ve been down here for hours–”
“I know!” he shouts, his voice echoing loudly off the stone walls, the feedback ringing in my ears. He instantly takes a step back with his head hung, biting his lip as he avoids my gaze.
I grab him, my anxiety and anger battling it out, only to feel him sway slightly, eyes once again unfocused, breath hitching.
Something inside me goes cold.
“Riven.” I cup a hand on his cheek, studying his face. He won’t look at me. His hands tremble. “Riven, what are you not telling me?”
“Nothing,” he says too quickly. “We just need to keep moving.”
“Don’t lie to me.” My voice cracks like a whip in the dark. “You’ve been slowly falling apart whilst we’ve been down here. Tell me what’s wrong.”
He flinches, jaw tightening, like he’s trying to physically hold himself together through sheer force. But another shudder ripples through him, and I see the truth he’s been concealing, barely holding on.
“Riven,” I hiss. “Don’t make me drag it out of you.”
Finally, he crumbles. His shoulders sag, his breath stuttering as he presses a shaking hand to the wall to steady himself.
“They haven’t stopped,” he admits, voice breaking.
“The visions, they keep coming. Flashes, pieces…every time I see her, the future is worse. Fading.” He swallows hard, looking at me with haunted eyes.
“The longer we stay down here, the more certain her fate becomes.”
I stumble back, my throat tightens. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
He looks up at me imploringly. “I didn’t want you to panic. You’re struggling to keep it together as it is.”
His words fade as every one of my breaths start to come fast and thin, the walls seeming to close in with every rapid heartbeat.
“We’re not going to make it,” I whisper, the edges of my vision blurring.
I double over, hands braced on my knees as I fight to breathe, to think, to keep the terror from crushing me.
The floor swims, then steadies, and that’s when I see it.
A faint indentation carved into the stone at the junction. Almost invisible…unless you were staring at the ground in despair. It’s an engraving.
A magpie.