Page 31 of Hellbound

Behind her, shadows pulled in and out as Varka passed between the lamps.

The edge clicked open softly, and Ksenia tucked herself into the musty passageway, closing the portrait door behind her.

She backed into the space before allowing herself to suck in a full breath. Motes of dust rose from the ground beneath her feet.

A flaxen wisp of hair drifted past her periphery.

Ksenia spun on her heel, catching sight of a slip of powder blue fabric disappearing down a staircase.

It led in a direction Ksenia had never explored—away from the manor, downward, deeper into the earth.

“Danika—” Her breath stuttered. Here—this whole time?

The stairs turned uneven, hand-cut. Older than Beranek Manor. Ksenia’s palm dragged along the damp stone for balance and came away gritty.

Somewhere above her, the muffled creak of Varka’s footsteps crossed the library. They grew softer as Ksenia descended further.

She turned the corner and there—another flash of blonde hair. Ksenia had finally found her.

She sped in pursuit of the disappearing figure, fumbling for the match and wax taper in her pocket.

Fsssssssht. It struggled to spark on the damp walls.

She was falling behind.

“Niks—wait. Please, it’s me.”

But there was no answer except her own panicked and echoing voice. She lifted the candle, then dipped and darted through narrow crooks and crannies as the passageway took her deeper underground.

The air changed, no longer the dry mustiness of the manor’s hidden spaces but something earthier and decayed.

The walls were changing. Rough-hewn stone gave way to something older and ruined. A passage that had been here before Kraal ever existed.

And just out of sight, Danika’s presence taunted her forward.

“Niks—stop, just stop!”

The flame flickered toward her.

Airflow.

There was something ahead.

After a long while forward with only her shuddering breath for companion, the passageway opened into a wider space, and she stumbled to a stop.

She found herself in the dark underbelly of the Vein beneath Rothaven.

Ksenia walked slowly, bewildered, down the catacomb hall past a landscape of dealers, their clients, and wares, searching for that shade of blonde hair.

The Vein was a disease, yet it remained the lifeblood of Kraal. To be rid of it was to bleed the body dry. Even in the most affluent circles of Kraalian society, there was a need for services and products that only the black market could provide. She continued wandering between makeshift wooden stalls hawking fragrant herbs, medicines, and illicit drugs.

Contraceptives made of red thorn nectar and painkillers made from a mountainous thistle were amongst the more innocuous offerings.

Her gaze snagged on blonde hair.

Ksenia pushed through the crowd, fighting to keep Danika in sight. She slipped between stalls, never quite close enough to reach yet never disappearing entirely.

The crowd thinned, the stalls sparser and shabbier as Ksenia pursued her sister into narrower alleyways, tapering like fine capillaries. Overhead, oil lanterns became far and few between.