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She didn’t say a word but narrowed her smart eyes at him.
Devon, who had been too quiet ever since the Neems had poured out of the cellar, poked his head through the doorframe. “Do you need one of these?” he asked, dipping one hand inside his pocket, pulling out a healing potion, and extending it to Orion.
Orion shook his head. The bite had gone numb a while ago. Perhaps it was the adrenaline, or maybe the Neem had torn a nerve. Either way, he wasn’t feeling much.
They had discovered a large stack of potions in the infirmary, but worry prickled Orion’s mind. His brother needed too many of them, too quickly. He was weakening too fast for them to keep up.
Devon shrugged and emptied the potion into his mouth without preamble. Then he stared down at the cellar, his brows dipping. “Can you see a way out of this hole? Or did we open this place for nothing? Because if the bells didn’t call the Corvus, opening this cellar sure did.”
Devon was right. If they continued to destroy the wards, the Corvus might choose to break all rules and portal here against the king’s demands.
The dark water mirrored the cavernous ceiling. Orion steadied the weight of his body with one hand against the roof and crept down a few steps. His fae eyes could spot more than any regular human. He rarely needed light to see in the dark. And whatever he didn’t see, the souls in his aura would pick up. But they were quiet now…too quiet. It left him uneasy.
“The safe house must be near the coast. This is seawater,” he said, finding a steady drip from a corner of the room. The waterline appeared to be three feet high at most. Shallow enough to wade through.
The cellar was about the size of the bedroom he’d shared with Nava for the past few days. Shelves extended on either side of it. They must once have been thick wood but now lay rotten and broken in the murky depths of the water.
The spell the Crows had cast upon this place must have resembled a typhoon, tearing this room to pieces.
Nava had finally had enough and followed him down the stairs. “If there’s a way out, is it going to be a portal like the fountain that will take us back into the Copper City?” The wood groaned beneath her feet, and Orion’s heart jolted as he waited for the next step to break underneath her.
“Stay up there,” he growled as she propped herself up against the poor excuse for a banister. At least it was still bolted to the wall. Barely.
“Calm down—it’s not that big of a drop. Can you see a way out?”
Orion stepped into the frigid depths. His teeth chattered, the water sloshing as he inspected every single fallen shelf and anything else that might cover a hidden doorway.
His mind was yelling at him to get out of there. A sense of pressure seemed to emanate from everywhere, suffocating him the farther into the room he went. Nava followed him on light feet, with Devon trailing behind her.
Magic pushed against the power of Orion’s aura. Heavy, ancient, and furious. A gust of wind howled through a crevice behind a tipped-over wine barrel right before him.
“I think I’ve found it,” he said and rolled it away—only to reveal the angry Neem of a child.
It hurtled toward him with a biting gasp, and he barely got out of the way in time before its nails sliced his jacket and shirt. The eyes of what had once been a little girl glowed brilliant white.
She launched at him again, and he was too numb to move—too tired. Too sad. Devon’s magic dissipated her right in front of Orion’s eyes, leaving behind the black tunnel her family had likely tried to hide her in, right before the Crows had flooded this place and drowned them all in it.
15
NAVA
Cold water sloshed around Nava as they moved through a narrow, winding tunnel. If it weren’t for the warm glow of her aura, they would be in absolute darkness. They had been walking for at least five miles in the smelly water, and her toes had long since gone numb inside her old boots.
After the last Neem had appeared, the crime the Crows had committed by trapping a child and leaving them to this kind of ending had overwhelmed them all. The three of them had been quiet ever since.
“We are here.” Arkimedes’s voice made her jump.
Nava watched his hand as he trailed his fingers across a muddy wall. They’d hit a dead end, and in her daze, she’d barely noticed. Everything was wet, and water clung to every surface, dripping off the jagged shapes of barnacles.
There was no door, no handle—no light leading them to believe this was the exit. Only the walls closing in on her.
“Is there a door?” She swallowed around the thick knot in her throat. Had that child tried to escape through here and found no way out?
Placing a hand across her chest, Nava gripped her neck. With her other hand, she reached past Arkimedes to shove at the wall. There was no nature here, only death and despair. She was itching to leave this place. “Can you see a way out?”
His glowing eyes flashed to her. “Are you feeling all right?”
“Seems I don’t like tight spaces.”
