Page 62 of A Reign of Roses
Wyn and I sighed in unison.
The closet wasn’t really large enough for us both. It only held three brooms, propped against a wall of shelving stuffed with cleaning supplies, buckets, and rags. The cramped space was lit only by the warm, flickering light of the blaze outside, slipping in through the crack at the bottom of the door.
“Now what?” I asked, willing my fear to quiet its ringing in my ears—I couldn’t panic. Not now.
“There was a false wall in here years ago…” Wyn’s warm, ragged breath fanned over my face in the small space. “One that led toa tunnel that took you to the city center. An escape route for Lazarus in case the castle were ever breached.”
Dust filled my lungs and I swallowed a hacking cough, my heart rate already picking up inside the tight, suffocatingly dark enclosure. My fingers drifted along the cold stone wall, the one bare of shelves. No hinges, no break in its smoothness. I could hear Wyn digging through the feather dusters and soaps.
“But maybe…I don’t know, maybe it’s been sealed…” Terror was slipping into Wyn’s voice.
And with each scream that sounded outside, doubt crept further into my voice, too, even as I said, “He’s too self-serving. He’d keep a private way out just for himself.” I crouched down to palm the molding where the wall met the marble floor. My hands scraped around lint and rodent droppings.
Wyn nearly toppled over me trying to feel the opposite shelf. Pitchers and linens toppled to the floor and an errant sponge rolled off my back. “Arwen,” he sighed. “I’m sor—”
Before he could apologize, a creak split the shallow closet.
The entire wall of supplies wrenched open, more materials tumbling down, until we were rewarded with a small, unlit corridor.
Air I’d stored up fled my lungs in a rush. Wyn thanked the Gods.
Then we stood and walked out into the abyss.
The corridor was inky black and silent. More and more silent the farther we walked. I could only tell we were heading downward by the slight pull of my thighs and calves. A quiet dripping sounded from somewhere. Up or down, I couldn’t tell. Footsteps thundered every once in a while high above us. But no doors. No light. No ladders or windows or waysout.None as we marched deeper and deeper into the bowels of the castle.
My mouth had gone bone-dry. My hands trembled at my sides. My burns stung.
When I heaved for no reason at all, Wyn finally turned back toward me. I only knew he had from the echo of his feet shifting in the gritty dirt floor. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said, walking past him. My heart had settled itself in my tonsils. I dry heaved again.
“What is it?”
Tightness seized my chest with the scuttle ofsomethingacross my foot. “I get anxious in enclosed spaces. It’s fine.”
No sooner had I said it than a simple turn yawned the tunnel open widely before us. The rocky catacomb was dimly lit, but where the light was coming from I wasn’t sure—not moonlight from above us, not candles—but I sucked in great heaves of air regardless. I nearly leaned over to brace myself against my knees.
Critters scurrying and the sound of shifting sediment echoed, but I was too relieved to have some space, some light, someairthat I hardly noticed.
Moss—or perhaps severely mildewed fabric—lay in tufts in one corner. A stone well crumbled in the opposite one. I couldn’t imagine how stagnant, how putrid that primeval water might have been. And from some other corner, a clatter—
Dinner scraps clinking.Bones—
Wyn drew in a breath.
Either this had not been the right route, or Lazarus had employed some kind of safeguard to block his only exit to the city center. Some kind of—
A withering, earsplitting screech rocked the cavern and silenced my thoughts.
“We need to go back,” I heard myself say. “Now.”
Wyn grasped my hand and we ran for that tunnel. To go back the way we’d came, back up that immortally dark corridor and back out into the flames.
But we weren’t fast enough. The creature was already there, waiting for us.
Grinning.
17
