Page 44 of Immortal Throne

I shoved the dagger into my tight shorts, the handle sticking out a little, and kept searching. My hands grew numb, and I finally gave up on the ground and started on scouring the little ledges, relying more on my hands than my sight.

“I found a torch,” Ryker called out.

A silver band of light illuminated a small box on a ledge jutting out from the ground. I plucked it from the rough surface and held it up. “I found matches.”

We turned to each other, and I met his gaze easily, even in the dark cave.

“We need to work together,” I said.

“Agreed.” He didn’t appear too happy about that, and it most definitely wasn’t just the shadows of the cave playing on the angles of his face.

He really did hate me. He hated the idea of me and who I was. It didn’t matter that I had nothing to do with my grandfather taking the throne, nor the poor treatment of his family ever since.

The cave shuddered and more water poured in, running down the walls of the cave in little streams.

Without further hesitation, I lit the match and pressed it to the torch Ryker held out until the fire caught. The thing must’ve been covered in fuel because flames rose up quickly, flooding the cave with warm light.

Ryker watched me, unreadable emotions flashing through his gaze with each flick of firelight.

The water flow eased off again, leaving the level of the water at my knees. If we didn’t work faster, we’d drown in here, all the clues buried beneath the water.

“Let’s keep looking,” he said.

I turned away and gasped. “The wall.”

Visible in the torch’s light, a picture of vertical bands of paint stared back at me—blue, blue, white, yellow, white. “It looks like a code.”

“Let’s search for anything of the same color,” Ryker ordered.

We stumbled around looking for something, anything, with color instead of the slate gray of the cave. I stubbed my toe on a hidden ledge beneath the water and swore, stumbling into one of the nooks. I flung my hand out to catch myself, and my fingers brushed thin paper. With my heart beating so hard it threatened to punch its way free from my chest, I pulled myself upright and snatched the paper from the little ledge.

A note.

A string of weird symbols ran across the thin slip of aged parchment in a single line.

Perfect. A demonic note required for my survival that I couldn’t read. I tucked it in my shorts and dropped my head back to…What? Scream? Pray for divine intervention?

It didn’t matter.

Staring back at me were long spikes of rock jutting down from the shorter ceiling of the nook. Icicle-like in shape, the cascading light from the torch in Ryker’s hand nearby illuminated their various colors.

My breath caught.

The stalactites were red, blue, yellow, and white. Three of those colors matched the paint on the wall. I reached out and tapped them in the same order as the paint on the wall—blue, blue, white, yellow, white.

Nothing happened.

Dammit.

I tried the reverse order.

Still nothing.

“Ryker,” I yelled over my shoulder.

He stomped his way over. The cave shuddered again, and the cave filled to waist level and Ryker had to wade the rest of the way.

Panic threatened to seize my lungs, but I pushed the feeling away. We were onto something here. We just needed a little more time.

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