Page 70 of Treasured

I could do this. These disembodied voices would not be my demise.

Breathe.

Eventually, the shadows lifted, taking the voices with them. Silence had never felt as sweet as it did at that moment. I sagged against Sebastian, grateful to be out of the darkness.

Then, I took in our surroundings.

Whatever peace the silence had brought me vanished. My stomach dropped. “Where are we?”

To our right was a sheer cliff that it fell into a dark sheet of nothingness. I shuffled backward, needing to put as much distance between myself and that cliff as possible. To our left was a stretch of ice so thick I couldn’t see through it.

In front of us, the storm had worsened. To call it a blizzard would be like calling a toddler well-behaved. It was a tempest of epic proportions. The wind whipped all around us, carrying shards of ice that stung my skin. Snow fell in thick sheets, making it virtually impossible to see more than a foot outside the cave entrance.

We would not be flying out of here.

Sebastian’s arm tightened against me. “This is the Forgotten Passage,” he said, answering my earlier question.

My lungs tightened at the ominous name. “And does the passage… go anywhere?”

A dark chuckle echoing with long-forgotten secrets escaped him. “Not anymore.”

There must have been a story there, but I didn’t want to get into it now. This place was the antithesis of welcoming. Even for Eleyta, it was horrible. The sooner we got out of here, the better.

“We can’t stay out here.” Sebastian led me away from the cliff. “Come on.”

He pulled me deeper into the icy cavern, where a strange scarlet glow lit the icy walls. Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself for what was to come. Thanks to my new vision as a vampire, I no longer hated the dark, but that didn’t mean all my fears were magically erased.

Even so, I followed Sebastian. He was here, and he would keep me safe.

And so, I followed him.

* * *

It was impossible to tell time in the Forgotten Passage. We could have been here for an hour or half a day. While we strode through endless pathways made of ice, Sebastian showed me how to make a shadow dagger. The hilt was heavy, and I used it to notch the walls and mark our passage.

We stopped once to feed, but that was nothing more than a quick exchange of blood before we continued toward the crimson sheen.

On and on and on, we walked. The shadows throbbed, and the hairs on my neck prickled. A sense of foreboding settled upon me, and no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t shake it.

“We’re close,” Sebastian murmured.

“How can you tell?” I glanced around but didn’t see anything different. “Have you been this deep in the passage before?”

“I haven’t been here before, but I can feel the stone.” He squeezed my hand and pulled me to a stop beside him. “Close your eyes and focus on the space around us.”

Doing as he asked, I inhaled deeply and tried to concentrate. At first, I didn’t hear much besides the lub-dub of our hearts, but after a few minutes something else caught my attention. It was so quiet I would have missed it if it weren’t for Sebastian’s direction. A steady pulse, like the throbbing of a heart, came from nearby.

I opened my eyes. “Oh!”

He grinned. “Did you feel it?”

“Yes!” My lips tilted up, and I listened again for the pulse. Now that I knew it was there, it was easier to pick out. “That’s incredible.”

“It’ll keep getting stronger the closer we get,” he said. “Come on.”

Now that I had something to focus on, the journey went faster. We turned corners, descended a sloped hallway, and climbed slippery steps. The red glow brightened, and the pulse grew stronger until it was as loud as a beating drum.

And then, after we turned the final corner, we found it.

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