Page 129 of The Mask Falling

The pendant sent a small vibration through the æther when I took it, as if it recalled my touch. It was the last object I had held before the waterboard, a connection tobeforeand tonow. I sat up a little to clasp it around my neck and freed my hair from under the chain.

“Thank you,” I said. “It will help.” I coughed and lay back down. “We should get some rest.”

“Yes.”

His eyes were the only light. Perhaps it was because I was too weary to care about keeping my distance, or because I was starting to feel the cold of the abyss, but I shifted closer to his chest and fitted my head under his chin. His heartbeat kept the dead silence at bay.

I hoped Ivy would be all right. She had moved through the tunnels with ease, unafraid of everything except what might be in Versailles. As I began to drift off, trying not to cough too loudly, I thought about just how far we were from the world above. Ménard could hunt forever, and he would never find us here. As disorienting as la ville souterraine was, I knew now why it appealed to the outcasts of this citadel.

Exhaustion towed me into a deeper darkness. I had thought last-minute nerves would keep me awake, but after such a long slog, it was impossible not to fall asleep.

When I stirred awake, I reached instinctively for Arcturus, my palm finding his chest. I could sense that he was sound asleep, feel his heavy watchcoat over me. When I emerged from my warm nest, I found the air and my skin much colder than they had been when I drifted off. Everyone was still and quiet.

Everyone, that is, but Léandre.

He had dialed his headlamp down to the lowest setting and was sitting in the corner, knees pulled up to his chest, next to a plaque I had failed to notice when we arrived. Keeping the coat around me, I sat beside him. He spared me a look as I read the plaque.

“I carved this here,” he said, low-voiced. “When we found this place.”

To disappear between shadow and stone. I traced the letters.To walk the buried places of the world and still draw breath. To be everywhere and nowhere, seeing all, known and unknown. To rise from the depths, never seeking the sun. To live as one already dead, and with the dead beside.

“It describes the desire in the heart of an unnatural.” Léandre shifted. “Or maybe just in mine.”

“No,” I said. “I think I get it.”

“Okay.” He tightened his jaw. “I apologize for being short with you earlier. I did not know you had been tortured.”

“I understand. Your sister and lover are in danger.”

He shot me a fleeting look of surprise, which was swiftly papered over. “Renelde told you.” A tiny huff escaped him. “She wants to get there just as much. To reach my sister. Camille.”

“La Tarasque,” I said. He grunted. “Are they . . . âmes jumelles, like you and Le Vieux Orphelin?”

“In a different way. They are like sisters, toujours collées,” he said. “You also have friends in Versailles.”

“Yes.”

“What are their names?”

“Zeke Sáenz, Nadine Arnett, and Michael Wren.”

“We will find them. We will give them a safe place.” He placed a hand on the plaque. “This day, Underqueen, we walk the buried places of the world and still draw breath.”

“So we hope.”

Léandre didn’t smile.

“Yes,” he said. “So we hope.”

****

Not long after, the others began to stir awake. We ate a little. With our strength restored, the six of us set out again, through the final section of the Passage des Voleurs. I crunched the stimulant between my teeth.

We slithered down to the deepest known part of the carrières, where the air was soup and water fell like tears from the ceiling. I strode after Léandre, dull pain and trepidation climbing in my chest.

Eventually, our course took us upward once more. We scaled a series of broken metal ladders. At last, Léandre stopped. He gave me a leg up, and I grabbed the edge of a crack in the wall, lifting myself into a corbeled room. For the first time in two days, I glimpsed natural light. Léandre moved past me and unlocked two rusted wrought-iron gates.

I stepped out of a mausoleum, into Versailles.

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