Page 31 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

How many faeries had found their final breaths trapped here?

Her breath began to pant. That fiery blood unnaturally chilled.

Would she become one of them?

Something cupped her shoulder blade. The sudden jolt of her heart could have echoed off the stones. Turning, releasing a breath of relief, a sudden calm rushed over her rising panic. And from that calm, a warm smile formed. One that mirrored Garrik’s as his thumb stroked over her leathers. A reminder she wasn’t alone. That she wouldn’tbealone.

He was there. They were all there. Right beside her. Their fates chosen together.

Further and further, they followed the blazing white light. Crossing pathways so black and ominous even the Lord of Darkness shifted uncomfortably. The darkness down there wasso infernally lightless. So unsettling. Whereas Garrik’s shadows were guardians, these were something … damning.

The walls—they whispered with their own breath. Their own heartbeat.

How could a mountain breathe?

Garrik had a death grip on the hilt of his sword as they turned another corner.

Soulstryker waited comfortably in her sheath, and the leather hilt of her sword groaned in her grip.

“What?” Alora asked, turning her face to Garrik, whose expression hadn’t fallen from stone-stiff for the last hundred feet. It wasn’t hard to guess something was wrong. His eyes had shifted into inked abyss.

His footsteps slowed as he drew his sword, positioning the blade expectantly in front of him. “Odd,” was all he said before he battled a step forward, and that hardened expression tightened even more. “You do not feel that? The resistance in your steps? Like something is interfering, trying to stop your path.” His eyes flickered to her, then his Shadow Order.

No one said a word for fear their echoes would bring the mountain down around them. One by one, they shook their heads, and each dared to keep moving.

Alora didn’t remove her eyes from Garrik’s boots. Indeed, he seemed to be struggling. But unlike him, her steps were seamless.

“There is something … so familiar…” Garrik’s words trailed off as his eyes narrowed down the tunnel, but he said nothing more, continuing on.

The distant sounds of grinding stone echoed as a minor quake shivered under their feet.

Not odd,she convinced herself. Merely the earth shifting—the mountain aligning.

Turning another corner, Alora knocked into Aiden, who’d gone still. She side-stepped him, then stared into a rounded room with six awaiting thresholds.

Behind, Jade fumbled with the map. When circled, she twisted the parchment, traced her finger along a red line, and cursed. “This isn’t on the map,” she snapped and ground her teeth. The green of her eyes found Garrik with panic settling inside.

The doorways illuminated with Alora’s firelight.

Garrik straightened and settled on Jade’s pointed indent on the page. There was no indication as to which tunnel to follow. In fact, every tunnel was a perfect mirror of the rest, down to the chisel marks that carved them.

Aiden stepped forward, eyes darkened and twisting a scaled ring on his finger nervously. He stared at Alora, who commanded five more orbs into the air, allowing the glow to penetrate the darkness beyond each door. Or attempting to. The effort was futile.

Swallowed by the darkness, not one ounce of light entered the tunnels. Even Thalon commanded a portal inside the fourth, and it, too, vanished into the oblivion beyond.

“Some kind of magic,” Thalon assumed. His golden eyes like dark bronze in the lack of light. Again, he conjured a portal and attempted to illuminate a different tunnel. It disappeared just as easily.

“Shall we roll a die, then?” Aiden shuffled inside his coat pockets and produced a skull-like ivory cube with black dots.

Alora’s face twisted, sweat lined her hairline. Her eyes bounced between the dice, Garrik, the others, and each one of the five open doors. One for each of them.

By her best guess, it’d been over an hour since they’d left the cliffside. This would set them back even closer to the fate of being trapped in the mountain by winter. But they couldn’t sit inthis room all day. And everyone taking the same path would slow them down. What if they got to the end and it was the wrong one? But then again, what if they split up and someone got lost?

The room breathed.

Actuallybreathed.

One moment, immovable stone surrounded them, the next …

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