Chapter Thirty-Seven #2
I did, but anxiety had paralyzed me, and I could not move.
“We don’t know how far these passageways extend.
Or who might be waiting at the end of them,” I hissed.
Though I tried to quell them, images of Dorian rose in my mind’s eye.
I did not know what kind of punishment Noé had meted out as consequence for his actions earlier; what if the judge had slunk down here afterward, like a snake retreating back into its hole?
Eliot’s jaw ticked, his stare tightening at my protests. I tensed in anticipation of his rebuttal, but rather than press me again, he dropped his shoulders, sidling closer to where I stood.
“Lovett,” he said, his murmur carrying easily through the dark. “We have come too far together for me to allow anything dwelling within these tunnels to take you.”
Abruptly, he extended his hand to me, his skin washed an unnatural white by the lantern.
“Take it,” he said, nodding toward his open palm. “If you fall, I fall with you.”
My heart lurched. If you fall, I fall. Strange as it was, a part of me felt that whether or not we were physically linked, the sentiment would hold true.
That over the past weeks, despite the ways we’d wounded one another, or perhaps through them, his self and mine had become entwined.
Bound inexorably together, in the way that a person’s childhood fears live with them long after they are grown, connected like an auxiliary limb.
Giving in, I reached out and laced my fingers with his. His palm was unexpectedly rough, calloused, like a farmer’s rather than a gentleman’s; he squeezed my fingers once, then let his arm drop to his side.
This time, when he moved toward the archway, I did not pull him back.
With my free hand, I clutched the lantern I’d brought with us, squinting at the flash of the additional one mounted above the door lighting as we passed under it.
Eliot’s fingers tightened on mine, urging me gently closer. “All right?”
His voice moved over the back of my neck and a shiver passed through me. Clearing my throat, I nodded tersely, then shifted away.
Separating from Eliot, I turned around, raising my lantern to better illuminate the design carved along the top of the archway we’d entered through.
Just as I remembered, rising waves bordered a crescent moon in their center, the etched lines simple but distinct.
A swell of adrenaline rolled through me, hot and sweet, at the sight of them.
I’d been right.
I pointed at the carving, tracing the arc of the moon with the tip of my finger. “There,” I said. “One of the markings.”
Beside me, Eliot nodded, his jaw taut; his eyes roved over the dimensions of the room, lit by a vague sense of awe, before focusing back on me. “Look for the full moon,” he replied, his voice hushed. “If your theory is correct, there should only be one within this room.”
We split neatly apart, driven onward by our mission.
I worked my way counterclockwise around the archways while Eliot advanced in the opposite direction, the Woven lamps positioned above each arch jumping like a progression of lightning bugs, marking our progress.
Ignoring the steady burst-and-retreat of their illumination, I focused myself entirely on the archways in front of me, pausing to examine the marking atop each one.
Waxing gibbous. First quarter. And then…
“Here.” I stopped at the threshold of an arch perhaps halfway around the atrium from the one we’d entered through, my lantern stretched above my head.
Caught in its light, a full moon beamed down from above the doorway, positioned between cresting waves just as the rest of the carvings were.
The plain etched circle glowed when I held the lantern up to it.
My pulse thrummed as I waited for Eliot to leave the archway he was studying and cross to me.
I turned to him. “First comes the rabbit…”
He met my gaze, smirking. “Let’s go find the fox.”
We moved as one through the arch and into the tunnel beyond it, the narrowness of the passageway stifling after the open spread of the space behind us.
I shuddered as it gulped us down. On both of my past journeys into the tunnels, I’d kept to the same route, never traveling beyond the atrium.
Never leaving my exit path—the tunnel that led to the workroom—entirely behind.
Now we were going somewhere I’d never gone. Without Ophelia’s riddle to guide my path forward, I’d quickly becomelost.
For a while, Eliot and I traveled in silence, the steady fall of our footsteps and the occasional drip-drip of unseen moisture off the tunnel walls the only sounds to be heard.
After less than a quarter hour of walking, the tunnel ended abruptly, spitting us out into another rounded cavern almost before I’d processed its end.
Like the atrium we’d left behind, the space was a crossroads, five archways positioned in even intervals around the circle, each leading to a passage of their own.
This time, it was Eliot who identified the next passage to take. “The fox,” he said, waving me over to him and nodding toward the carving above the arch. “Waning gibbous. The archer is next.”
Again, we dove into the darkness; again, we came up on the other side.
Was it my imagination, I wondered, or were the tunnels becoming narrower with each successive passageway, the walls closing in tighter, the darkness intensifying?
Even the glow of my lantern seemed to dim as we walked on, as feeble as a match head.
The third cavern was smaller than either of the two that had preceded it, only three archways set into its rim. We found the bow moon—the crescent, signifying the archer—with ease, venturing down it with little hesitation this time.
Only a few minutes later, a faint dripping noise echoed off the walls around us, like the steady plink of rainwater. I paused. “Do you hear that?” I whispered.
Eliot nodded wordlessly in response, his brow furrowed. Holding his palm flat in a gesture I somehow understood to mean careful , he beckoned me forward, the subtle click of his footsteps once more filling the air.
My breath caught when we came to the tunnel’s end.
Rather than an atrium like the previous ones we’d passed through, the passageway let us out into a vaulted, open space, twice the size of the first and largest chamber we’d passed through.
Before us, a bridge stretched, carved of white limestone and arcing over an underground lake.
The water beneath it was smooth, glossy black, and still, except for the rhythmic drip of moisture from the cavern roof overhead—undoubtedly the source of the sound we’d heard.
In disbelief, I glanced over at Eliot, who was studying the ceiling above us with an expression of shock.
Tilting my head back, I saw it had been carved in the ornate Gothic style of Fortblanche, buttresses and rib vaults hewn from virgin stone.
Here and there, stalactites punctuated the design like fanged teeth.
Goose bumps erupted over my arms, the moist air prickly against my skin. What was this place?
Eliot’s inhale drew me back to him. “Lovett,” he hissed. “Look.”
I did. On the far side of the cavern, the bridge ended at the foot of a limestone shelf, which extended up and out of the dark water like a cliffside. And at the back of it, positioned perfectly opposite the arch we’d come through, was a door.
Unlike the previous, open archways we’d encountered, this door was closed, carved of gleaming ebony fallownut—the same wood the door to Noé’s quarters had been made from—and with a gold knocker in its middle.
Instinctively, my eyes darted to the top edge of the door’s curved lintel, searching for the customary pattern set into it, but there was nothing.
No waves etched into its surface, no moon.
“The rook,” I whispered, recalling the final stanza of Ophelia’s riddle. “The new moon.”
To my side, Eliot nodded. “The moonless door,” he murmured back. “It has to be.”
In unison, our gazes swung toward one another’s.
A wordless question passed between us; then, decision made, Eliot walked forward, away from the solid rock where we stood and onto the rise of the bridge.
Heart in my throat, I followed him. The bridge itself had no railing, only a smooth arc of limestone curving over the silent lake like a fish leaping from its depths, its white belly turned up.
I made the mistake of looking down as I moved over it; on my either side, the water was as slick as paint.
I was struck by the sudden certainty that if I fell in, it would close over me like tar—not drown me so much as fossilize me, like a fly in amber.
My skull pounded. There was, I thought, a strange unreality to this entire chamber.
It was as if I were back in the third trial, trapped in an illusion again.
Or as if the entirety of my stay in Fortblanche had been nothing but a dream, like I would wake up to discover that I’d fallen asleep drinking my coffee in the Diplomat, Eliot’s hatted figure still waiting across the bar.
I shook the thoughts from my mind. Focusing back on the bridge in front of me, I kept my feet steady and resumed advancing toward the other side.
Despite my anxieties, we reached our destination without incident. One by one, Eliot and I stepped off the bridge and onto solid rock—first him, thenme.
The door loomed in front of us.
This near, I could see that beneath its knocker, a small keyhole had been centered in the wood, edged in gold. I traced my finger over the delicate filigree, thinking of the missing key that accompanied it, and glanced at Eliot beside me. “Where do you think it is?” I asked.
I did not clarify my subject, but he seemed to comprehend my meaning nonetheless. Perhaps he had been wondering thesame.