Page 20 of Consume
My bones turned to ice and I froze. “Don’t you dare,” I hissed.
But she did dare. She opened her mouth and released an alarm.
Chapter Six
The old woman’s screamscraped down my bones. Dissolved every last shred of confidence. Chased me faster down the servants’ hallway I’d just come from. Somewhere a clock chimed, a low, sinister reminder that I didn’t have much time.
What if I was hurtling down the stairs toward something I didn’t want to find? A nightmare worse than my current one?
When I threw open the door at the bottom, I slid to a halt seconds before slamming into a glass wall a few feet in front of my nose. No, not a wall. A glass cube. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of them in rows and columns within a massive room lit with sickly green overhead lights. The lights reflected and refracted and made it impossible to peer across the entire room. The cubes themselves, about six by six feet, were empty except for a single drain in the middle of the cement floor.
Cells, not cubes. Maybe Ellison and Mase really were down here. Somewhere.
My nerves crashed together, but the tiniest flicker of hope, as insubstantial as smoke, curled up through my chest. I turned and jammed my ice pick between the door’s lock and jam to prevent entry and buy myself some time. I hated to give up a weapon, but it wasn’t my only one. Now, I had part of a chandelier in my mouth and more in my pocket, and this time I was sure of it. I also had a key I quickly fastened to my necklace.
Right and left looked the exact same, but I chose to go right. Inside my head, I mapped out my progress using the periodic table so I could find my way out again. Like I always did, I started at Fe. Iron. Safety. The promise of freedom.
But all the cells appeared empty. No Ellison or Mase, and none of the cells I passed had locks or doors or anything a key might fit inside. Maybe Ellison and Mase weren’t down here. The Byrian woman had lured me into this glass dungeon to trap me. With what?Fromwhat? So far, only silence chased after me.
The periodic table/ map ended in my mind with krypton, and then started again with potassium. There were plenty of opportunities to turn, and all of them led left toward more glass cells. The stone walls curved outward near the bottom half or so and then speared straight up at least thirty feet. I’d never seen anything like them.
Finally, the only way forward was to turn left. From there, the path took several more lefts, but I kept straight to peer down each row.
I almost rushed past. Almost.
Inside the third cell on the right, or platinum, a figure sat hunched on a bed wearing thin light blue pants and matching shirt. No blond hair like Mase. Not long, brown hair like Ellison. I didn’t think I knew this person. But with my breath hovering in my lungs, I took a few steps closer. The face was feminine, mouth drawn into a miserable frown, one I almost didn’t recognize because until lately, she tried not to show emotion.
It was Ellison. I’d found her.
I pressed forward to touch the glass, and my movements must’ve startled her to twist around. She jerked back when she saw me, her eyes round. Me as I currently was, the scaled version of her little sister. Pain ripped through my heart that I terrified her so much.
She dipped her head, her gray eyes searching. Her hand fluttered up to her throat as she stood, blinking hard as if I were a mirage.
“Absidy?” she mouthed, or maybe she said it out loud.
I nodded as I took in the state of her, and my eyes filled with tears. Her hair had been cut short, almost as short as mine had been when I’d been James, Randolph’s chef apprentice son, but not quite. She was bone thin, which accentuated the slight swell of her belly. A month in these conditions had been a month too long. I needed to get her out, and fast.
