Page 20 of Elven Lies

So they did, stepping down onto the first stair together, side by side, then the next, moving ever downward toward the nasty darkness of the prison’s basement, with no idea what lurked down there, waiting for them once they reached the bottom.

Now that they were here, though, so much closer to their goal, Rebecca realized with horrifying uncertainty that she might have misjudged Harkennr in this. That was always a possibility.

If that were the case, she and Maxwell could be descending to their deaths together—or, knowing Harkennr, something far worse.

And therewerefar worse things than death in this prison. They’d already seen it with their own eyes.

7

The second Rebecca and Maxwell descended onto the fourth stone step together, the creaking squeal of poorly oiled hinges behind them preceded the echoing clan and metallic clunk of the heavily reinforced door banging shut behind them before its locking mechanism re-engaged.

What little light the dimly lit corridor above had previously afforded disappeared, plunging them into complete darkness.

Snarling, Maxwell spun around and leaped up the stairs again. The thump of his fist against the door echoed down the stairwell, followed by the sliding whisper of the shifter’s hands roaming across the reinforced steel in front of him.

Rebecca already knew what he would find.

“Great.” Another growl filled the stairwell.

Then Rebecca sensed his return to her side on that fourth step, as if the stairwell were already well lit again, but she couldn’t see a damn thing.

“Shut and locked,” Maxwell grumbled.

Despite his agitation, the proximity of his voice and the heat of his body beside her sent a warm, tingling ripple across her face and down the side of her neck. She hoped he didn’t notice.

Then again, she’d found herself stuck inside a dark, narrow stairwell with a shifter. As far as she knew, Maxwell could see in the dark just as well as he could in broad daylight.

“Any other good news?” she asked, gazing into the blackness ahead of them—as thick and unyielding down there as it was all around them here at the top.

“Locked from the outside,” he added. “There isn’t even a handle on our side.”

Of course there wasn’t.

“Well, we already knew we’ve come too far to turn back,” Rebecca replied with a shrug. “Now we can cross this door off the list of viable escape routes.”

She sounded surprisingly calm for how badly she did not want to descend these stairs.

“Iwould haveconsidered that a benefit,” Maxwell said, his voice strained with the effort of containing his frustration. “Maybe. But I’d say our lack of an alternate exit point is the bigger problem.”

Rebecca turned to look at him and found only a pair of glowing silver eyes aimed back at her, floating inches above her in the darkness. “Guess we’ll just have to figure it out as we go.”

Nothing they could do about it now. Trying to fight the inevitable was a waste of both time and energy they couldn’t afford to spend before they found Nyx, assuming the katari was eveninHarkennr’s compound. Moving forward was literally their only option.

The temperature dropped rapidly after the next few steps, which she’d fully expected. The old, stained, dust-layered light bulbs flickering on along the walls after the next four or five steps, however, came as an unexpected surprise.

The light was thin and wan, the glass of the bulbs yellowed with age. The smudges and smears of unknown substances accumulated on the glass over time cast misshapen shadows across the stairwells’ concrete walls.

Still, it provided more than enough visibility as they descended, though at this point, visibility did little to lessen the tension and discomforted expectation without every step forward and endlessly down.

Soon, the concrete walls and stairs gave way to old laid stone, equally stained with age, dampness, and dropping temperatures the farther they descended.

Then Rebecca thought she saw the bottom landing. By the time she confirmed it, the stone walls now boasted thick, sporadic patches of moss and streaking masses of black mold stretching toward the ceiling.

With only three more steps to go, a soft but much stronger, brighter light spilled around the corner of the enclosed stairwell’s bottom landing, hinting at vastly improved visibility and even warmth.

Once they reached the bottom, Rebecca shared another hesitantly knowing glance with Maxwell before the sole of her boot moved across a slimy, slippery layer of something she didn’t care to investigate.

Then they rounded the corner together and froze.

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