Page 135 of The Light Within

Like the fact he’d never get to say goodbye to Cinn. To Elliot, to Darcy.

What was worse was that they would likely come looking for him, eventually. After a week or two, he supposed.

Though… would it really be that long?

Julien had made it crystal clear to Elliot that he needed to stay put with Cinn. He’d promised Elliot he’d be twenty-four hours. What would happen when that time ran out?

Would they come straight to Paris? To his father’s house? Would his father bump them off too? Finally, get his hands on Cinn, for whatever nefarious purpose he wanted him?

Although… was Julien being naïve? Would it even take twenty-four hours? If Julien had woken up to find Cinn gone, he wouldn’t have followed the instructions of some silly note left on the dresser. He would curse him every name under the sun, then leave immediately to go find him by any means possible. Give him several slaps before kissing him silly.

You thought you were so clever, didn’t you? Well, you’re a fucking idiot.

Julien threw his head back against the hard rock, the sharp bite into his scalp not nearly an adequate enough punishment for what he’d sentenced those he loved to.

You’re a useless piece of shit.

They’d all be better off without him, anyway.

It worsened Julien’s nausea to think about, but with him gone, Cinn would meet someone who didn’t make him want to tear his hair out on a daily basis. Elliot would finally make more friends, now that Julien was no longer holding him back. The faint frown lines on Darcy’s forehead would smooth out. She’d have constant hot water in her shower.

Hot tears trickled down Julien’s face, igniting fresh waves of anger. No matter what happened, his father would not see him cry. Julien blinked them back, rapidly. His mind reeled, searching for some glimmer of happiness to cling to.

An image fell into his brain—cool sunlight streaming into Maz, as Julien drove on a winding country road towards Paris. Julien accidentally singing that silly Wu-Tang Clan song. The look on Cinn’s face when he realised—

A loud bang, followed by the sound of stone being dragged across stone. The memory of Cinn’s delighted smile dissipated into smoke, leaving only the blackness behind.

Julien didn’t have the energy to devise a cunning escape attempt, so he just lay there and waited for whatever was to come.

His body was rolled over, once, twice. Yanked roughly to the side. A flicker of dim light illuminated the space, revealing the shape of a tunnel, its walls lined with crumbling stone and dark, tangled roots snaking down from above.

Julien didn’t bother to suppress his low moan of pain, his headache reaching sledgehammer levels. The person manhandling him wasn’t his father, or Jonathan, but some unknown man with a thuggish face. He barely glanced at Julien as he dragged him to his feet. Another man joined them, another muscled brute.

“You can walk, or we can carry you, princess,” he said. “Your choice.”

Julien took one unsteady step forward, followed by another.

The man grunted in approval, pushing on Julien’s shoulder.

Two twists and turns of the catacombs later, the three of them spilled into the chamber with the massive stone slab, where Jonathan had knocked him out. That fucker. After all the late nights Julien had pulled for him, all the designs and projects he’d seen to completion.

Julien paused, expecting his father to slip out of a shadow, smiling victoriously.

“Down there,” a man grunted.

Squinting in the low light, Julien could make out a narrow set of steps descending from the far side of the stone slab, almost invisible against the rough-hewn surface. The slab wasn’t just a table—it was ahidden doorway, its edges barely perceptible, leading to the dark mouth of another chamber below.

A few hard shoves had Julien flying towards the next staircase, then stumbling down the uneven stone steps.

When he reached the bottom, his eyes dashed around the space, dimly lit with several lumenmote disks propped against the catacomb walls. His gaze soughtson connard de père.

The chamber was empty, however. Empty of people, at least.

Because there, dead in the middle, was something that could only beit. That goddamned machine.Machina Tenebris.

He would have loved to laugh at it, to say that it didn’t look like much, after all this build-up. But that would have been a lie.

It dominated the chamber like some monstrous metal heart. Roughly the size of a compact car, its intricate structure contained an array of polished brass gears, darkened iron plates, and strange crystalline tubes snaking around its surface. At its centre was a core—a sphere encased in a lattice of black metal, pulsating with an unsettling blue light that seemed to draw the shadows inward. Tendrils of red flowed from the sphere, reminiscent of the shadowrealm’s red vines. They coursed up through a series of glass conduits that stretched towards the ceiling, casting sharp, erratic patterns on the walls.

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