Page 67 of By the Orchid and the Owl
He chuckled, though I could have sworn there was a tense edge to that sound. “Just keep ahold of me and keep moving forward. The walk down will be a lot easier than the walk uphill was. Trust me.” He closed the trapdoor above our heads, encasing us in the deepest, richest black I’d ever faced.
We began to push through the tunnel, my right hand clinging to the bulge of Coen’s bicep. I was vaguely disappointed I couldn’t enjoy it more, this closeness and the feel of his muscles beneath my fingers—not when the Throat seemed to close in on us from every direction, its darkness swallowing us whole.
“Who made this?” I breathed out.
“Terrin thinks it was another Element Wielder from a long time ago.”
“Why?”
I felt the movement of Coen’s shrug. “Could have been for sewage or transport or mining. Or maybe they just decided to create it on a whim. There are more than a few strange dents in Eshol due to magical experimentation.”
At that word,experimentation, I shivered—but kept quiet. If there were spiders hulking in the crevices of the Testing Center walls, there were sure as hell spiders in this tunnel with us… although I couldn’t hear any of their clicking or whispering. Still, though, better to play it safe, to wait until we’d reached Coen’s secret place.
Whatever that was.
Hardly ten minutes later, I found out.
Coen had been right. The walk downhill was much faster than the walk up, because I could already see light blooming ahead, a block of grayish, shimmering sky. Or…wasit the sky? It was moving so viciously, so chaotically, that I rubbed my eyes.
Something was hissing ahead, but not in a language I could understand. It was a sort of endless drone, yet full of nuance, like millions of voices bubbling together.
“Coen, what is this?”
“A place where no one will ever find us,” he said, and the tunnel opened up into the wide-cut mouth of a cave, where gemstones shined in glittering waves all around.
And the spraying, hissing wall of a waterfall dumped into the ocean before us.
CHAPTER
24
The waterfall stole all my focus, along with my breath.
Its sparkling, feral shower warped my view of the green-black spread of ocean beyond it, but the water somehow caught shards of starlight and sent them cascading back into the cave, reflecting off the gemstones imbedded in the ceiling and walls and filling this entire space with throbbing, multi-colored light.
The estuary. We were directly beneath a part of the estuary, right where it spilled itself off the cliff and into the sea.
I was gaping all around me when I realized Coen had unslung his backpack, pulled out a blanket, and spread that blanket over the polished black floor of the cave.
“What are you doing?”
He didn’t answer until he’d rummaged through the backpack some more and brought out a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. When he’d unpacked it and placed it neatly on the blanket, he nodded down at it and said, “Eat.”
“What?”
Coen, as I might have expected, crossed his arms.
“Your hair looks like a bird’s nest, I just saw a recent memory of you bathing in cockroaches, and your mind seems to be stuck on the concept of torture. The least you could do for yourself right now is eat this damn sandwich I made for you.”
A bird’s nest? I touched my hair, pushed out my best grunt, and stomped over to the blanket, where I sat cross-legged on the floor of the cave and began tearing into the sandwich.Don’t moan,I begged myself when my stomach snarled at the sudden taste of food—seed-filled bread, spiced avocado, and dripping tomato slices. It had to be, what, nearing one in the morning now? And I hadn’t eaten since before stepping foot in the Testing Center.
Apparently satisfied that I was getting something down, Coen untangled his arms and began to pace around me.
“Okay, go over it again,” he ordered. “Everything that instructor of yours told you after the cockroaches.”
Right. Coen had never had Ms. Pincette as a teacher, since he was in a different sector. I spilled out every detail of her warnings through mouthfuls of sandwich, trying to convey the sharpness of her character, how she wasn’t one to exaggerate.
“And then she said the people who fail the test aren’t actually exiled but taken to the top of Bascite Mountain.” I paused as Coen’s eyes remained focused on his own feet while he paced. Shouldn’t he be grimacing or cringing or makingsomekind of unpleasant facial expression at the idea of such a thing voiced out loud?
