Page 114 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

“She’s fine,” he replied. “Probably the reason no one’s here. They took one look at her and shit themselves.”

“Quiet,” Diara snapped.

“Why?” Leal leaned against the nearest wall. “No one is even here to—”

I raised my hand for silence, but he’d already cut himself off.

Something was being dragged just beyond the bend in the hall. A heavy, slow scrape against the low carpet. The sound was soft. Slow. But it shrieked inside my head the way a silver fork clashed against porcelain, making me want to cover my ears and scrunch my shoulders until it stopped ringing from inside my thoughts.

The blood drained from Diara’s face. Closest to the corner, she stepped backward, pressing into me, her body tight with tension. I passed her off to Hadrian behind us, nudging my way to the front, my jaw clenched and eyes squinted as I rounded the corner, fists ready.

They surged behind me, already at my back.

But the hall was fucking empty.

“Has everyone been eating shield weed?” Selena demanded. “Someone is playing tricks.”

“To my sun-damned detriment,” Leal muttered, a tongue roaming the sides of his teeth. “I swear it’s turning my piss green.”

Aren tsked. “Your piss was already green.”

“One time,” Leal hissed back. “One time, and you said you wouldn’t mention it again.”

“Shut up. Keep moving.” I wove down the hall, moving faster now. At the spiral staircase at the base of my tower, we broke into a run, thundering up the steps. The sound bounced and echoed against the glass, pounding against my ears. I was panting by the time I reached the door to my quarters, my hand curling around the iron handle.

It didn’t budge.

I swore under my breath, a wave of perspiration kissing my skin with cold air. I turned to face them, huffing and gasping with breath. Hadrian coughed, pausing to sit on the nearest bench, clearing his throat. “You don’t have a key?”

“I do,” I said, glaring at the door. “Inside.”

“Well, that doesn’t help us, does it.” Aren stepped into my left, trying the door himself as if I might have been mistaken. Diara reached for the door behind her. Aitne’s little apartment, the one I’d once abandoned Maren to.

She tugged, but it may as well have been welded shut. “Is there anything that isn’t locked?”

Hadrian stood, clasping a hand against the servant’s door hidden in the wall. It swung slowly under his weight. We stared for a moment, as if the dark staircase within held a trance we couldn’t escape from. The lights along the stone wall extinguished, it descended into shadow, down to the servant’s quarters that ran the length of the palace. As if the palace wanted us to descend below. My skin raised behind my neck. That’s where Cebrinne had gone. Alone.

Selena was the first to break from the spell, rushing toward the stairs.

“Stay together!” Pheolix growled after her, fingers skimming the wall as he chased her steps. “Heiress!”

“Hurry,” she called back, the word rebounding a hundred times around us.

My gaze darted to Hadrian, who was still swallowing the salt in his throat away. My body screamed for me to move, but I refused to leave him behind. “You need a minute to breathe?”

“No,” he said, drawing a rasping pull of air. “Let’s go.”

Our steps cracked and roared again, a stampede against stone. We dropped into sheer darkness and I had to slow, afraid to trip over Dimas. As a child, I’d explored in the servant tunnels, ignoring the elderly maids as they chided at me for sneaking behind them when I hadn’t meant to, laughing at the younger ones in which I had.

Those memories barely served me in the dark now. I surged forward as fast as I dared, a newfound appreciation for Pheolix’s blindness. The rough rock rubbed my palms raw, but I held my hands against them anyway, as willing to let go now as I might be while holding the reins of an unbroken horse.

We delved past floor after floor, until the air became packed with damp mildew, alkaline and bitter on my tongue. Cumbersome gusts of air overlapped as we heaved our lungs, my skin blotchy with the oppressive weight of body heat and sweat seeping from my pores. I recognized the soft panting of Selena nearby, and something in me loosened. She hadn’t made it that far ahead.

As if waiting for the final pair of feet to touch the stone floor, Pheolix pushed himself ahead, leading us through the narrow hall. We hunted single-file for light or sound or anything but fucking shadows, my thumb latched into my belt for the ghost of a hilt that wasn’t even there.

A faint outline stirred, hints of light nestled between grooves of the ceiling. It curved around Pheolix’s shoulders, shifting between the strands of Selena’s hair. We tried every door we passed, but they all remained stuck tight, guiding us forward.

The drone prowled like a damn cat, low to the ground as if running at a crouch didn’t even faze his knees, his steps silent and precise. I’d only ever seen him sit or stand, and if not weaving jokes at his own expense, quietly listening to the world, as if tucking every chirp and whistle and click away like details to paint together in his mind.