Page 27 of Captured in Love
I give Raphaël’s fingers another squeeze, then let go and shine my light forward. After a moment, Levi touches my shoulder and moves in front of me, sending out his magic probes. I pump my legs to follow, ignoring the strain in my muscles. We’re nearlythere, I can feel it, even though I have no idea what to expect.
The water grows warmer around us, and my body breaks out in a sweat under the semi-dry suit, trying desperately to regulate its temperature. If we don’t reach the end of the tunnel soon, I might have to remove my cap and gloves just to cool down…
A light glows in front of us, a strange flickering of blue.
It’s faint at first, and I think I might be imagining it, but Raphaël stops beside me, his body tensing. Levi halts as well, then turns to look at us with a shrug, as if to say,What other choice do we have but to go on?
I pat the knife strapped to my calf—it might not do much damage, but it’s the only thing that gives me a physical edge in a fight—and draw on my power. I don’t have a lot of defensive magic I can use without proper preparation, but Icanzap people with electricity. And if any witches are hiding down here, waiting to ambush us, I’ll show them what it means to mess with a Moss witch.
I give myself a bracing pep talk as my leg muscles scream in agony. After this, I’m going to burn these fins and never go diving again. Ever.
The light ahead grows brighter the closer we get. At last, the tunnel turns upward…and the water above us ripples as though we’re about to surface.
Which can’t be right. We’re dozens, maybe hundreds of feet underground, and there’s no way—
Levi bursts through first, and Raphaël and I follow. The large cave we’ve entered could fit a small football stadium. It’s almost perfectly round, a cupola of smooth rock with a pool in the center. It’s in that pool that we popped out, into this cavern lit up by torches burning with blue-green flames. The flickering light casts strange shadows on the walls, but even then, the carvings stand out, beautiful medieval art that runs around the entire chamber.
I reach for my mask to tug it off, but Raphaël grabs my hand and stops me.
“We don’t know if there’s oxygen,” he says, his voice muffled by his mask.
Right. I automatically assumed this would be like a regular cave, with an outside air source flowing in.
We swim to the edge of the pool, and Levi pulls himself onto the stone ledge. Raphaël follows, then gives me a hand to hoist me up, for which I’m incredibly grateful because my body istired. The ledge is maybe twenty feet wide and scoured by deep gouges, as though someone took a very large knife to it. Or a fork.
Or…
I tug at Levi’s arm and point at the scratches. They mostly come in fours, parallel lines cut deep into the rock.
Levi glances at me, confused, so I shape my hand into a claw and mime scratching at the ground. His green eyes go wide with the same realization.
Somethingverybig climbed this ledge before us. Judging by the multitude of scratches and the deterioration of the stone, it was more than just one creature that did this.
I glance at Raphaël to tell him what we discovered and find him without his mask, his face turned up and his nostrils flaring. He carefully breathes in, then lets out a deep sigh.
“It’s okay,” he says. “The air is slightly stale but breathable.”
I switch off my air flow and pull the mask from my face. “Oh, thank the gods.”
My voice echoes faintly in the space. We remove our fins and harnesses with air cylinders and stack them near the water’s edge. Levi keeps his rope wrapped around his waist, and I keep my knife. Whatever is going on here, I want to be armed.
“This is wild,” Levi exclaims, running his gloved fingers over the gouges. “What do you think made these?”
Raphaël purses his lips, his black eyebrows furrowing. “I have a hunch, and if I’m right, you’re not going to like it.”
“What?” I look around the ruined stone floor.
He points at the only door leading out of the chamber. It’s as wide as the tunnel we’d just arrived through, and tall carved pillars support it on both sides.
The carvings on those pillars give me the final piece of the puzzle.
“Are those…dragons?”
I clamber up the ledge, over a low wall, and stop in front of the massive portal. The carvings barely seem faded, so I have no idea how long they’ve been here. Two dragons stand guard on either side of the opening, their heads high above mine. Their eyes are set with blue jewels, sapphires, maybe, and their claws glimmer with silver, as do their scales. The tails coil around the columns, reaching all the way to the floor.
I swallow thickly. “You guys, those scales we found… You think there are actualdragonsdown here?”
I feel like we have wandered into a fairy tale, with dragons and secret caves. Are there trolls, too, like Levi suggested?
