Page 59 of A Touch Enchanted

“I think the gate is screaming.” Thora motioned to where the metal threads trembled as if they were in pain. “It’s not supposed to be lowered.”

When the rumbling stopped, a terrible silence followed. It was the silence of emptiness. Nothing in its purest form. None of us dared to speak, for fear it would swallow us whole.

After several beats, Audrey crouched by the gate to check her Sharpie mark. “It’s been lowered another inch.” She stood and faced us. “I think we should go.”

The rest of us agreed with her. I didn’t know what kind of power Nirah was using to lower a gate that wasn’t his, but I didn’t want to stick around to find out. We took the rough rock stairs up through the tunnel, keeping our pace slow and steady, in case the rumbling started again.

“Where’s the light?” There was a tight edge to Donovan’s voice that matched my own growing anxiety. We should’ve started seeing some light from above by now.

A few seconds later, we heard Wes swearing in front of us. “It’s fucking blocked.”

“What do you mean, it’s blocked?” Finn shouted from behind us.

“There’s a big-ass rock on top of the hole.” The sound of grunting and panting filtered down to us in the dark. “I can’t move it.”

“Try blasting it with your lightning or freezing it,” Donovan said.

A flash of golden green light temporarily illuminated the cave and a sizzling spark streaked past my arm, then nothing. “It’s like the snake’s belly. There’s some kind of armor that makes our lightning bounce off it. Freezing it didn’t do shit.”

“I thought the bird said the curse won’t go into the dead zone anymore,” I whispered.

Donovan squeezed my shoulder. “It must’ve thought it was worth the risk.”

“Does anyone know we’re down here?” Thora asked.

The silence that followed was worse than the one that had filled the cavern immediately after the golden gate stopped screaming. I hadn’t told anyone where we were going. Neither had Donovan. I gathered that no one else had either. So if we didn’t return to town, no one would know where to look. It probably wouldn’t occur to anyone that we were down here.

We were fully trapped.

Panic began to claw at my throat, cutting off my air. I bent over, careful not to tumble off the edge, as I tried to suck oxygen into my lungs. All I could get were small sips of air, which only increased my panic and put more pressure on my throat.

Donovan rubbed a steady hand over my back. “Breathe, Cricket.”

His soothing voice and calm touch brought me back down from the worst of it, but I wasn’t anywhere close to okay. Being buried alive was my ultimate fear, and we just got locked in a giant coffin with no way out.

“I can’t get cell reception,” Audrey said. “Can anyone else?”

We all pulled out our phones and found the same. Dead air.

“We should head back down and see if we can find an alternative way out,” Thora said.

There wasn’t another way out. If there was, the curse couldn’t have been trapped down here for all those years. Not even insects could crawl through the cracks in the walls. There was no point in staying on these steps, though. It was dark and cramped and I was one panic attack away from going off the ledge, so we turned around and headed back down.

Once we reached the bottom, we went back to the room with the tomb. We spread out and pushed on the smooth walls, looking for any tricks or levers that would provide a way out, but there were none. The only way out was up.

Or through the river.

I grabbed Donovan’s hand. “If that river really does run through the island, we can ride the current down to the ocean and come back with help.”

He looked at me like I’d suggested he jump out of a plane without a parachute. “And if it doesn’t lead to the ocean? If it leads to another cavern that we can’t escape from?”

“Then we’re dead either way. But at least we tried.”

Resignation softened his frown. I could see the wheels turning in his mind, looking for any alternative to jumping into that river, but there was no other option. His shoulders sagged as the weight of what we’d have to do set in.

We could very well be taking a willing leap toward our deaths.

“I don’t want to do this.” He cupped my neck, tilting my face up with his thumbs. “But I’m going to. Because while you have faith in this, I have faith in you.”

---