Page 147 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
We moved down the stairs, where the air grew close with damp. Unease prickled my skin at the darkness before us, at Thean’s warnings of what could be lingering down here.
When we reached the bottom I let flame consume my hand, the lavender illuminating nothing but damp stone and a small circular space where someone had dumped crates and old candlesticks a long time ago, judging from the dust coating them.
‘It’s a dead end,’ I whispered.
Emrys’s gaze swung to me, brows knitting together. ‘You can’t see it?’
His eyes returned to the shadows before us, fixed on a point ahead. What seemed to be nothing but crumbling stone.
Glamour didn’t work on Verr.The doorway was hidden. It was why nobody had found it, and even if Verr could, they couldn’t open it without the right blood. Just like those compendiums.
‘Croinn,’ Emrys ordered softly, his jaw tense with disapproval as if knowing my next movement. I extinguished my flame and slid my father’s blade easily from his finger. It hummed with energy, displeased with being used against its own blood but turning into a small sharp blade.
I pressed it into the just healing wound, ignoring the painful pinch.
‘Show me.’ I held my palm out to Emrys. He wasn’t pleased to see the blood pool in my palm, but he turned and pressed it gently against the stone.
A moment of silence, then it began to quake and rumble. The large stone blocks shaking, mortar cracking and spilling down the wall. My hand dropped as the glamour faded. The bricks moving to reveal a narrow passage strung with thick webs.
Emrys didn’t pay it any attention, ducking to the bottom of my flimsy slip and tearing a strip of fabric free. Then he made quick work of bandaging my wound.
I felt the blade in my other hand curl itself back into a ring. Clearly having a new preference for how it wished to be concealed. One far too big for my hand.
I couldn’t blame it. Emrys wouldn’t lose it like I had a tendency to.
I slid it back onto his finger for safekeeping, then his hand captured my own once more.
‘Ready?’ he asked and my mouth suddenly felt dry. A strange wariness consuming me as I looked at the darkness beyond.
Everything seemed to have come together too easily. Thean’s warning about what could be in there.
I couldn’t speak, too much of a coward, so I nodded – and let Emrys pull me through.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Beware of the places the world forgets. For the memories that remain there are creatures all their own. Feral with their despair and looking to share misery with their bite.
Myths of the Damned, 1645
We were greeted by total darkness until the wishing stone around my neck flared bright like a guiding light, chasing most of the shadows away but leaving us with an overwhelming stench of earth rot, covered with incense and the bitterness of old dead magic that hung in the air. Endless stone corridors branched off in different directions. Some alcoves filled with shelves that were piled with nothing but dust as if all records had rotted in place.
A terrible sadness lurked in the dead air – the kind that came with all forgotten places. Made only more unsettling by the distant echo of noise from high above. Where the streets were alive and trading. Where life was existing, but not down here. A trickling of water echoing through the gloom, reminding me of the canals that snaked through the town above us.
I turned to see the doorway we’d come through was suddenly nothing but a stone wall. Emrys didn’t move, didn’t look behind him, just tightened his hold on my hand as if to ease me.
My pleasure smoke-addled mind suddenly completely clear.
‘A thieves’ trap,’ he whispered, not sounding as concerned. Despite the fact my heart felt like it was pounding in my throat.
A thieves’ trap, designed to keep unwanted guests trapped until the master returned. Only this house’s master was long dead.
‘Thean said there might be a collection of forsaken things down here.’ I shivered as my breath clouded before me.
‘Nice and vague,’ Emrys grumbled, moving forward with ease. As if a thieves’ trap wasn’t an impossible maze to get out of. He seemed to have a sense of direction. Following that instinct that would draw him to the artifact we needed.
‘You’ve never seen a thieves’ trap before?’
‘A few. Never this old.’
