We do seem to still be firmly in the living areas of the Guild. But I can feel Ronan as clearly as ever. He’s not moving, so they must have stopped to talk about something.
Or maybe he’s having a snack.
“I’m certain,” I say as I lead us through the dining hall and into another long corridor and then up a set of stairs. “We’re close now.”
This part of the Guild looks different from the halls we’ve just walked through. It’s constructed not of white limestone but instead from the same pinkish stone of the palace, and the floors are considerably less worn than those we’ve just been walking on.
There are also far fewer guards here. “Where do you think we are?” I ask Taran just as he places a hand on my shoulder to stop me in my tracks.
I look to where he’s pointing: a simple wooden door at the end of the hall.
The door is guarded not by Royal Guards or any guards of Selara at all, but by a pair of alchemists themselves. It’s engraved with many of the same symbols as the Guild Mistress’s chambers, but there’s one additional symbol right in the middle that anyone would recognize: a circle with a dot in the center.
The alchemical symbol for gold.
“The gold-refining rooms.”
Taran nods at me with a pained expression. “You think Ronan is in there? They would never have let him in. They never let anyone in. You’re certain he doesn’t feel in distress?”
“He’s not in there,” I say. “And he’s not in distress. He’s down that staircase.” I point halfway down the hall, a long way from the gold door, and Taran relaxes.
We turn down the stairs and find ourselves in yet another hallway, this one seemingly underground, given that we were just on the ground floor, but it’s better lit than I would have expected.
Better lit and empty.
I stop Taran, my hand on his chest. “He’s here. He should be right here.” Is he hiding? Can his illusions make him invisible? “Ronan?”
Taran draws his sword. “Sir?”
We both feel our way around the hallway, careful not to run into anything, but there’s absolutely nothing there.
“Taran, I can feel him. Right here. He’s bored, getting a little angry. Do you think it’s the Guild magic interfering somehow?”
“It must be. We should go back to the entry hall and wait there.”
I follow him, but my eyes catch on something. Or not something, but rather the lack of it.
“This torch is wrong,” I tell Taran, pointing to the way the nearest torch is casting light in the hall. “Can you see it? The shadows. They aren’t lying the way they’re meant to.”
It’s subtle, but although the torch looks just like the other torches in the hallway, the light it’s giving off is different somehow. The color isn’t quite the same. It’s bluer, almost like daylight, and the shadows it casts land at strange angles, too distant from it somehow.
“It looks like a torch to me,” says Taran.
“Put it out for me, would you?”
Taran flexes his hand and produces a ball of water, then he drops it on the torch.
It doesn’t extinguish. The water doesn’t touch it at all.
I approach it, extending my hand towards it cautiously. It’s hot, so the flame is real and not an illusion, but there’s something even stranger about it. “This is what I’m feeling. Thistorch. It feels like Ronan. So much like Ronan, if it weren’t for the size of it, I’d swear itisRonan.”
“If he’s here, in some kind of secret passage—” says Taran, feeling along the wall for a hidden mechanism of some kind.
“Let me try something.”
I reach out with my shadows, and a tendril sprouts from my chest just as though Ronan were with me. “What thefuck.” I guide the tendril up to the flame and snuff it out.
And then I lose my godsdamn mind.
