Page 157 of By the Flames of Her Fury

My throat tightened, but I shoved down the rising dread. Squaring my shoulders, I walked through the hole where the door I’d blasted away last time had been, the one that led to the catacombs. What we saw inside was a charred, blackened ghost town. The fire had burned everything in its path. Black dust clung to the stone walls. Huge piles of ash now lay where bodies of the deceased once stood in rows. Remnants of heat still flickered in the air; embers and soot kicked up with our entrance.

The hair on the back of my neck prickled. I couldn’t explain it, but it felt like someone was watching me. Hushed voices wrapped around me, sparking the magic in my chest the way a spell would.

“They’re here,” I said. “They’re watching us somehow.”

“They know you’ll keep looking for the final amulet,” Everett said grimly. “It’s our only way home.”

“If they think I’m just going to hand it over, they’re sorely mistaken.”

“How do you plan on forging it, anyway?” he asked.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tessa shoot me a look. I brushed it off and turned away from both of them. “Let’s just keep going.”

We ventured through the main cavern to the three long tunnels at the end. I pointed to the one I went down last time. “That’s where I found Everett, but the fire probably destroyed it all.”

Tessa gestured to the far left tunnel. “I remember seeing more altars down there. One had a phoenix on it.”

We slowly crept down the dark path. Something on the walls on either side of us caught my attention. Lines of wood ran through the center, parallel to the floor. I stopped walking and drifted to the side, noticing how the wood smelled like smoke.

I wonder…

Summoning my phoenix fire, I put a hand to the wall. Flames poured from me and ignited the wood. The fire ran straight down the line in the center of the wall, all the way to the curve in the tunnel. I lit the other side, and it did the same thing.

A familiar humming started low in my ears, tugging my chest. The same sound that called me to the strange island in the storm and to that cave beneath the lighthouse. The same one that led me to open the portal.

We were in the right place, I could feel it.

We followed the lines of fire deeper into the heart of the catacombs. Smoke clung to the inside of my nose. Symbols appeared on the walls, illuminated by the flames.

“Do you recognize any of these?” I whispered to Everett.

“Not many, but some were in that book we read.” He pointed to a few. “Flame. Death. Forge. Rise.”

“Why can’t any of them say ‘cookies,” Tessa muttered.

The path ended in a network of tunnels. Endless passages yawned all around us, each leading into darkness. “Which one should we try?” Everett asked.

“Shh.” I closed my eyes and honed my Shifter senses. I prowled around the entrance to each tunnel, letting the humming in my mind guide me instead of sight. It buzzed inside my chest like a swarm of insects, incessant and impatient. When I took my next step, the humming grew so loud, it vibrated my teeth.

“Here,” I ground out. Opening my eyes, I was standing in front of a tunnel on the left. I put my hand on the wall and coaxed fire to my fingertips, sending it soaring down the black path.

Each step made the buzzing grow, and the force in my chest churned with anticipation. Rise, a voice hissed in my mind. It was barely a whisper, a brush of wind on my neck, lingering like fingers on my spine. Rise.

I turned at the end of the corridor, pulse racing, only to nearly smash my nose into a solid wall. I jerked my head around, looking for an opening. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s just a wall,” Tessa said. “Let’s turn around.”

“No, it should be here.” I pressed a hand to the rock, and my chest hummed. A memory flashed to mind, from several weeks ago when Starke and I had come across a dead end in the caves. But not everything was as it seemed. That had been a false wall, too.

“Stand back,” I told the others, putting out an arm to force them back down the tunnel.

“What are you going to do?” Everett asked.

“Break down the wall.”

He gave me a bland look. “I don’t even know why I asked.”

Tessa snorted. “Are you crazy? You could collapse the entire tunnel.”