Page 13 of At the Mercy of Midnight
Amelia laughed before she could stop herself, feeling slightly hysterical as she looked over to him. “You have to be kidding me.”
“Not even a little.”
She ignored him and looked back to the daggers. “We should get the team in here,” Amelia said excitedly, “and begin documenting this place, what we’ve found. We could disrupt their power if we move them.”
Silas glanced down at his watch. “And we should be heading back, it’s going to be dark too soon for my liking. I’d rather not be wandering the ruins when that happens.”
Amelia nodded her agreement. “Alright, let’s—”
The rumbling started around them once again, and she couldn’t stop the groan of frustration and fear that left her throat. They both looked around as the deep sound thundered in her ears, right before the ground began to shake.
Silas swore as they both stumbled on the rocking surface of the dais.
Amelia lost her balance and grabbed for the pedestal, her hands entering the orb of magical light surrounding the daggers. The sense of something entering her elicited a loud, unrestrained gasp. It started as a stillness, like a breath held for too long. Then it poured into her, threads of heat lacing through her veins, burning in her blood.
It didn’t just feel like an energy, as she might have expected. It was something alive, writhing with intent, like it wanted something from her.
The pedestal rocked roughly under her hands.
She was breathing heavily, trying not to picture the roof caving in on her from above.
A sharp sound, stone on stone, crunched before her, and Amelia’s eyes widened as she realised the pedestal was crackingapart. It split between her hands and tore apart just as she cried out with shock, stumbling back.
“The ground!” Silas cried out with alarm.
Amelia’s body lurched sideways, the stones under them tearing in two and shifting apart. She screamed as she staggered away from the hole that was yawning open.
She looked over just as the light from the daggers winked out and began to shift slowly towards the crevice with the incessant swaying of the pedestal.
“Finley!” Amelia said, panicked. “The daggers will fall in!”
They were on opposite sides of the split, and so they both lunged towards their halves of the pedestal, a dagger laying on each side while moving precariously towards the gaping drop.
She reached for the black dagger, her fingers curling around the gleaming hilt as she pulled it away from the breaking stone. Silas grabbed for the silvery-gold dagger, plucking it to safety and then they both blundered backwards, away from the wide hole that separated them.
Amelia lost her footing, tripping, and falling down the top step of the dais. She fell hard onto her hip with a hiss of pain, gripping the dagger tightly in one hand. There was a sharp pain on the palm of her left hand as she reached out to stabilise herself.
In the next moment, the quake was over, and she sat sprawled out on the top step, panting, and trying to catch her breath amidst the cloying panic.
She looked at Silas, who had fallen several metres away. He was watching her, too, his chest heaving.
“Can we get out of here?” Amelia asked weakly.
He nodded quickly. “Yes, let’s.”
She stood shakily, feeling jumpy from the constant spikes of adrenaline. She looked down at the black blade of the daggerin her hand, holding it carefully. It was then she noticed the small line of blood across the edge.
Frowning with confusion, she lifted the blade to inspect it closely. Definitely blood.
Amelia turned over her left hand, where she had felt the slight sting and found the long, slim line of a clean wound across her palm.
“Oh,” she whispered, numb with shock.
A cold shiver seemed to run up her arm, spreading through her veins like the chill of night. Her vision blurred at the edges as she stared at the cut, and for an out-of-body moment, she could feel her stuttering heartbeat pulsate in time with something else, something that did not belong to her at all.
The pain and bizarre feeling subsided as quickly as it had come.
“Finley, I—” Amelia started, not sure how to explain that she had somehow injured herself with a magical blade cut from the Southern Monolith, but when she turned, Silas was staring down at his own hand, face pale with shock.
