Page 76 of The Daughter of the Scarred Elf

She hurried toward the closest door as the soldiers came closer—probably around the bend of the hallway. Ten more seconds and they’d spot her.

“Guarding a random hall that leads nowhere? The only things here are storage units. I’d rather do something interesting. Like going on one of those missions?—”

Kolfinna quietly opened one of the doors along the hallway and stepped inside. The door clicked shut behind her, but the soldiers kept talking without missing a beat.

“White ranks don’t have that privilege.” The footsteps drew closer. “We’d be killed the second a magic beast saw us.”

Her eyes adjusted to the small, dark room. Like the soldiers had been saying, this seemed to be a storage unit. Only a crack of light peeked underneath the door, but it was enough for her to make out the boxes lining the room, the dust slowly descending from her quick movement of entering the room, and the rolled-up rugs at one end of the room.

Kolfinna waited for the soldiers’ footsteps to drift to the end of the hallway. She leaned against the door and breathed in relief. They didn’t notice her.

Her mind traveled back to the doorway that most definitely should have been there. She hadn’t made a mistake. She and Joran went to the basement training room every single day without fail. That must’ve meant that Joran manipulated the stones of the wall to create an opening so she wouldn’t notice there were more levels below.

She hadn’t noticed it before, but now that she was touching the floor, she could sense with her stone magic that there were at least two levels below this one.

If her hunch was right, the elf was likely located on one of those floors.

Right before the footsteps disappeared, she heard them switch directions and head back toward her. Kolfinna slunk deeper into the room. Were they rounding back here, or had they realized something was amiss?

Her heart pounded in her chest and she waited for the footsteps to stop at her door. But they didn’t. The men continued along, their voices drifting away.

Her palms shook and she let out a shaky breath. This was too dangerous of a plan. She should’ve woken up Blár and made him accompany her. But that thought sent a wave of unease over her. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to share her elf blood with him. Not after he had shared his feelings to her.

She dropped to the floor and pressed her hands against the cool stone. She initially wanted to go back to the end of the hallway where the basement door usually was and open it up, but with the guards in the hallway, she doubted she could do it without their notice. That only left her with one option.

With her eyes closed, she felt for the stones below this room. She could make out a larger room below this one. It wasn’t the training hall, she realized, because that one was far, far below, with at least twelve feet of stone on all sides of it. Was the training hall the lowest level, and the floor below this one was the floor the elf was kept at?

There was only one way to find out.

She ever so slowly manipulated the stone beneath her hands. The stone melded with her imagination, pulling apart as she raised it higher and higher. Sweat dribbled down her brow as she lifted the stone up. She could’ve broken a hole and had thepieces fall to the floor below her, but that would create a mess of evidence.

The stone was at least the circumference of her hips. It was heavy, but she was able to lift it in the air. When she finally rested it on the floor beside her, she released a shaky breath. Her training with Joran to levitate stones had come in handy. She wondered what he would think if he realized she had used it in this way.

A distantthudmade her pause. She tilted her head to the side, trying to listen carefully. It sounded like it was coming from below. Maybe the training room?

She heard it again. Her heart skipped a beat. Was the elf woman doing something? Crashing into the wall in a fit of anger? Breaking down floors and tiles?

Kolfinna poked her head below. It took her several seconds for her eyes to adjust. It seemed to be an office of sorts. The light was dimmer a level below and she couldn’t see much, but she squeezed her body through the hole, hung onto the edges, and dropped.

She lithely landed on her feet. The room was almost pitch-black. She carefully stepped around wooden furniture, her hands scouring the space around her. Her fingers danced over velvet and she could make out a backrest—a couch, she realized. She continued through the door and her hip smacked onto a corner. She cringed, her fingers pressing against what seemed like a desk. It took her less than a minute to find a wall and then a door. She wrenched the door open.

Another corridor. This one, unlike the one above her, was completely dark.

As she felt along the walls, she realized this floor was much smaller than the one above. There were only three rooms here. The room she had left was clearly an office. The second room also seemed to be an office. She had felt around the room—couches, tables, and slips of paper, but nothing that seemed like a prison.

The third room, however, she could feel the faint pulse of mana.

Kolfinna stopped at the door, the blood rushing to her ears. This was it. If the elf wasn’t in this room, then she had no idea where she could be.

Her hands were sweaty as she twisted the doorknob.

She opened the door to inky darkness and golden runes. Kolfinna stepped through, her gaze flicking over to the glaring runes etched into the floor in a ring.Magic will not work inside this circle.No one shall leave the circle.

The only light source was a flickering candle outside the ring of runes. It was all the light Kolfinna needed to make out the cramped room and the woman sitting cross-legged inside the rune circle.

The woman’s red eyes were already pinned on Kolfinna, as if she had been waiting for her. She seemed to meld into the shadows, and her brilliant white hair contrasted beautifully with her midnight-like skin. Some chinks of her black scaled armor were missing, courtesy to Blár, but it didn’t take away from the vicious image the scaly armor created. It took Kolfinna a split second to realize she had seen scales like that before—on the dreki.

The woman’s mouth curved into a grin.

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