Chapter 19 Saskia
Lucan’s words steady me in the dark.
And it really is a darkness unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I can’t even see my own hands moving when I slip the key back into my pocket, as if the lack of light is a cloak clinging to my own skin. My eyes don’t adjust. There’s nothing to adjust to.
I’m not going anywhere, Lucan repeats, and in this darkness, he might as well be standing right beside me—so I let myself pretend he is.
Okay. I nod as if he can see me. I’m going down.
The sentries’ voices rumble from the other side of the door, but I can’t make out what they’re saying, exactly.
I just know that if they happen to have their own key to this secret space, I’d be a fool to stay right here where they could open it and catch me.
If I can just make it down the flight of steps…
I brush my foot out in front of me until I feel the edge of the topmost stair. Then, pressing my hands against the walls on either side of me, I take a step down. And another one. And another.
These are some narrow stairs, I try to say nonchalantly, bringing myself down step by step. Whoever had it built should have really hired a better architect.
Of course you’d joke at a time like this, Lucan murmurs, and I can’t tell if he’s angry or impressed. So help me, Saskia, if you fall and break your leg…
Then what? I taunt, eager for more distractions—this place is really creeping me out regardless of what I try to convey to Lucan. My fingers brush against cracks in the wall, the smooth stone turning ragged and rough the further I descend. You’re going to punish me for breaking a leg?
That depends. Lucan’s tone turns thoughtful. Do you enjoy being punished?
Enjoy it? I think back to the smacks on the hand that my instructors used to give me whenever I talked out of turn in the schooling phase. Who would enjoy that?
You might, if it was someone else doing it. Someone who knew how to wring out the right amount of pain to enhance your pleasure.
My insides flutter, and I nearly lose my footing. I grasp the walls on either side of me, feeling a slice of pain as one of the rocks cuts through my finger. A startled breath tears out of my mouth, and the sound rebounds back to me in waves.
Shit. Lucan’s side of the connection explodes with alarm. Are you okay?
I’m fine. I can feel the slight pulse of the cut on my finger, and the wetness of blood trickling down my hand. I’ll have to sanitize that as soon as I get out of here—there’s no knowing what kind of bacteria could be on the stone that cut me. It’s just a scratch, I tell Lucan.
He doesn’t sound convinced. Okay, but no more distractions for you until you reach the bottom safely.
I do as he says, focusing on my balance with each step, further and further down until I finally sweep out a foot to find that the ground has flattened out.
The darkness in front of me seems more spacious, too, as if the tunnel has widened slightly.
I still can’t see a thing, but I hear the unmistakable plink, plink, plink of dripping water from somewhere up ahead.
It seems to pulse in time with the cut on my finger, and in the darkness, my imagination tells me it’s my own blood drip, drip, dripping onto the ground.
I’m sure the sentries are gone, Lucan starts. If you want to turn back ar—
Goodness, Lucan. I shuffle forward, keeping my hands out in front of myself in case I run into anything.
I’m almost starting to think you don’t actually want me to do any of this.
How am I supposed to sneak into the Blood Moon Palace or bring down the Wall if you keep telling me I can turn back around or try again later?
This is obviously where Diggory went when he disappeared, so if we want to find out how he got into the Blood Moon Palace, I have to keep going.
Lucan stays silent on the other end, and I know I’ve hit a nerve.
As my footsteps begin to swish through thin puddles of standing water, I cast around for a different subject.
I need to keep the conversation going or else I’m definitely going to be imagining all sorts of hands reaching out of that water to grab at my ankles, and that wouldn’t be good for anyone’s blood pressure.
What was that word you said earlier? I ask. Right after I almost fell?
What? Shit?
Yeah, that one. My fingers brush against a wall in front of me, and when I drag my hand along its surface, I feel the slight curvature of the tunnel—now I’m angling slightly to the left. What does it mean? Is it like that other word you taught me—asshole?
Lucan snorts. Not quite. Technically, shit refers to a bowel movement. Less technically, it meant I… cared. That I was worried something had happened to you.
My breath squeezes in my lungs. You were?
Yes.
Because you need me to get inside, I say.
He’s silent again—as if his thoughts have clammed up. As if he himself doesn’t even know the answer to that.
I know I’m right, though. It might be a crystallizing fantasy in my head, that the male on the other end of the connection actually gives a…
a shit about me. But the truth is, we’ve never even met each other face to face.
If I had fallen and broken my leg—or worse, cracked my skull open—it would be a grievance to him only because his connection to the inside would have been lost with me.
Saskia, that’s not—
How does the necklace work? I interrupt, not wanting to hear him flounder around for an excuse to soften that blow. I’m using him too, after all. Because I have a feeling I’m going to need him to get to my mom. If you don’t have a matching necklace, I continue, then how does this one connect us?
A pebble of something cold lands on my head. I flinch and freeze. Another one lands on the tip of my nose, and I exhale when I feel a bead of liquid roll off. It’s just the dripping water I heard from earlier.
Still, I resume more slowly, trying to blink away the wavering shapes and shadows that have begun to cultivate in front of my eyes—just my imagination making up images in the absence of anything real to see, I’m sure.
Lucan seems to sense I need his voice to ground myself. He answers my question with the edge of a growl lacing his words.
The blood of my kind is unique, to say the least. When we’re in our monstrous forms, it becomes a transmitter of sorts, a conductor of the electrical impulses of our thoughts. We can all communicate like this when we shift.
There’s that we again, a reference to the mysterious others who are with Lucan physically. For the briefest moment, a pang of jealousy pricks my insides before I snatch at a different thing to focus on.
Shift? You have another form?
He told me once that he could retract the claws, but I never imagined he could actually change his entire self. That he has a form other than his Monster one.
Yes, I do, Lucan murmurs. And you’d probably find it more appealing.
I swallow the sudden urge to ask him what he looks like when he’s not the Monster. All I can really picture are amber eyes. So when you’re in your… more appealing form, your blood doesn’t connect you to the others? Or to me?
Look at you, asking all these good questions.
The words might have sounded patronizing if I couldn’t feel his emotions swelling through our connection—actual pride.
And a bit of admiration that makes my cheeks heat even in this frigid nothingness.
I can sense if someone is trying to connect, like a knock on the door, Lucan explains.
But I can’t actually hear anyone’s thoughts until I shift into my monstrous form.
So whenever you’re talking to me, you really are the Monster. And we’re connected because…
That vial between your breasts, Lucan says, and I try to tell my nipples to stop pebbling as his voice drops low. It contains the blood of my grandfather, from when the Guardians slayed him in his shifted form.
Okay, well that was enough to get my nipples to calm down. My shoulders deflate, and the vial suddenly feels much too cold against my skin. The idea that there’s actual ancient blood trapped within it…
Whenever that vial of blood is pressed against your pulse, it connects us, Lucan continues.
A clever contraption the vampires made to spy on those of us who escaped.
His tone is so bitter, so biting, that I want to ask him more questions.
But something about the space around me pulls my attention away.
I rub my eyes, trying to blink away the shapes in front of me again. I can’t imagine how Diggory knew where to go when he escaped down here. Maybe he brought a light with him.
A light…
My body straightens. Is it really just my imagination procuring shapes in the darkness, or is the darkness itself thinning out?
I swear I can see the silhouette of the ceiling above my head, and now the texture of the walls ebbs into focus—rough and rocky, like someone carved out this tunnel with a crude knife.
Lucan, I think there’s light up ahead.
I move faster now. The further I follow the tunnel along its curving path, the more I can see: the stalactites hanging from the ceiling, the pools of water at my feet, my own hands raised in front of me.
The light is flickering now, a jittery orange glow that makes shadows sway along the walls.
And when I round a particularly sharp corner—
I stop dead, staring at the open cavern before me.
It’s a round space held up by stone pillars, with five or six other tunnel openings forming gaping mouths all around me.
A thin film of water forms a glassy sheen across the floor, but I swear it almost looks red, as if someone else’s blood dripped into the water.
The whole thing is lit by what I can only describe as really, really large candlesticks fit snugly in metal brackets on the wall.
Torches, Lucan says urgently. Someone’s been down there recently to light them. You need to get out of the open, Saskia. Now.