Page 43 of Forging Darkness

I roll my eyes. Cryptic non-answers are lame. If she’s trying to psych me out, it’s not working.

A couple dozen more paces and the hall ends at a door, which opens to a stairway. Silver jabs me in the shoulder to keep me moving. I tilt my head back as far as it goes to check out the spiral stairway we start to ascend.

The lighting isn’t much better here than in the tunnel we traversed, creating the illusion that the climb goes on forever. Staring up makes me dizzy, so I refocus on a point a few stairs ahead of me.

A distant roaring noise increases in intensity as we climb the corkscrew stairway. Occasionally, I make out elevated shouts, though the words are unfamiliar.

“So, you and my brother, huh?”

She can’t be serious. I press my lips together, not wanting to encourage this conversation. As we continue up, weak rays of light start to filter down from above.

“I’m slightly surprised. I always thought it would be Nova. But then again, with you out of the picture, maybe it still will be. They were so tight as children, our parents were practically planning their union.”

I’m aware she’s trying to bait me, so her words bounce off easily. What does stick with me is Silver’s familiarity with life before she became a Forsaken. When she talks like this, it’s harder to believe she’s really gone.

How would a Fallen know so much about its vessel’s life? The Nephilim is completely erased when the possession occurs. Is a Fallen able to access its victim’s memories? Or is it as Silver claims, and there are Forsaken out there that have retained some of their Nephilim souls?

“I get it,” Silver continues, despite my silence. “Steel always had the ability to catch the attention of the opposite sex. Even when we were little, he used to charm everyone. He could get away with murder, that one. I should know.”

“We’re just friends,” I grit out behind clenched teeth, ready to be done with this conversation.

She chuckles low in her throat, the sultry sound bouncing off the walls. Spectrum daylight makes it bright enough to see the steps between the torches.

“Friends? Do you know how all your friends taste? If so, you just became marginally more interesting to me.”

I stumble over a step.

“What is this?” I snap. “Girl talk?”

“I’m getting bored with zapping you.”

I’m about to roll my eyes when I’m hit with an electric current strong enough to cause a spasm. My body shudders and muscles lock as I pitch forward. My kneecaps crack on the stone, but I manage to catch myself with Jell-O arms before face-planting into the edge of a whitewashed step.

“I was wrong, it’s still fun.”

I bite my lip hard enough to draw blood and call Silver every filthy word I know in my head.

“Come on, we still have a ways to go.”

Silver can’t seem to keep quiet as we continue to trudge up the spiral stairway. Funny, her twin doesn’t seem to suffer from the same affliction.

“You should be thanking me.”

I snort.

“I did you a favor. Steel can’t be trusted. When things get hard, he’s always only going to look out for himself.”

I struggle with trusting people and even I know Steel’s not like that. If anything, he puts himself in unnecessary danger for the people he cares about. “You were nine the last time you spent any significant time with him,” I scoff. “As if you truly know what type of man he is.”

“I’m the only one who really knows what he’s like,” Silver growls. It sounds like she’s juggling a throat full of pebbles when she talks. “If you truly knew the selfish heart that beats beneath that layer of flesh, your little infatuation with him would be crushed.”

We both fall silent after that last comment. My mind whirls with reasons for Silver’s laser-focused loathing of her brother. It has to have something to do with what happened to them on that mountaintop all those years ago. But how can someone blame a child for their fate? What could Steel have done that was so bad? And as a Forsaken, why would Silver even care how Steel treated her vessel?

We have one more spiral to go. The noise from the crowd is now loud enough to be seen moving on iridescent waves around us. It makes the last curve of stairs undulate, and I have to close my eyes a few times and use my hand on the wall for navigation to keep from getting disoriented.

Bits of stone dust rain down on my head as we round the final curve, making me cough, but I don’t slow my steps. The knowledge that I’m going to finally get an idea of the structure of my prison keeps my pace steady despite the exhaustion of just having climbed a million steps.

We crest the stairs and march through a high arch. I’m greeted by the bright spectrum sun and its gilded rays. I blink against the light as lavender snowflakes collect on my lashes.

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