Page 6 of Eternal Surrender

Her eyes danced with sadness. “Orpheus.”

My shoulders dropped a little, relieved that finally someone was answering my questions.

“I know a way out.” Her face lit up and she grabbed my hand, pulling me out of the cell.

We both stepped over Alex’s body and headed off in silence.

Struggling with whether I should trust her or not, I followed her down the longest, darkest corridor, glancing back occasionally to check if we were being followed.

“There’s a tunnel beneath the castle,” she said. “We can wait in there until sunset.”

“How do you know?”

On her face was written a kind of pain, as though remembering something. “It doesn’t feel like two hundred years. . .” Her eyes shone with tears. “Since the Stone Masters tortured me here.”

“Who?”

She rose up on her toes and kissed my cheek, pressing her soft full lips against me as though time had never wedged its way between us.

“That’s what this place is,” she said. “Or was?” She looked confused.

Not wanting to be locked up in that cell again or secured back inside that coffin, I picked up my pace. We quickly reached a stone wall, and on seeing the dead-end, I turned to head back the way we’d come. But Sunaria gripped my arm, insisting, motioning toward the brickwork. Realizing what she was suggesting, my fingers traced the irregularities along each brick, feeling for the one that might give.

“You forgive me?” Her voice was soft, vulnerable even.

“For what?” Something gave beneath my touch and stone scraped along the ground, opening up a gaping tunnel. A burst of cold air.

Peering down the endless blackness, I felt a wave of relief.

“This runs under the sea.” Sunaria moved past me and stepped into the never-ending passageway.

I hesitated. “What should I forgive you for?”

“I didn’t know the ashes were joined,” she admitted.

Her words stormed into my mind, sending my thoughts into a frenzy as though some part of me had understood her meaning, and that same taunting sensation that had gripped me back on the beach overwhelmed me again.

A black violin case, resting on an oak table.

Strange memories, spanning decades.

I doubled over, the twisting, wrenching agony in my gut snatching away my breath. Reaching out for her hand, my vision blurred.

“Orpheus?” Sunaria’s voice seemingly distant.

Snow blanketing London’s rooftops with a perfect powdery white. I was back in Belshazzar’s, my old London mansion, sitting quietly and watching a bloodhound sluggishly pad across the length of a room before settling beside the roaring fireplace.

Crawling along the floor, I tried to make it to Sunaria.

With two clicks, the black violin case sprang open, and I revered the walnut violin within.

Gasping for air.

Lifting out the violin and positioning the black chin-rest naturally into place, my fingertips settled on the lower end of the fingerboard. I brought up the bow upon the strings, caressing the fine cords and bursting forth a chorus of harmonic colors of sound. This violin was an extension of me, conveying more than just the secrets of the soul, its memories too. . .

Spellbound, I tried to grasp ahold of each memory.

That same violin. . . caught up in its maelstrom, swallowed whole and entranced completely by the instrument’s curse, an impossible spell to break free from.