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I nodded, sweat trickling down the back of my neck which was covered from the robes’ hood. I paused when I heard a boom. The floor and walls seemed to vibrate, and I opened my mouth to ask what had happened, but Phobius grabbed my hand and lurched me forward.
“Careful. Hold onto my robes if you need to,” he said, opening a wooden door and releasing me so he could take the steps down first to what I hoped were the dungeons. His own hood covered his head, and I kept my eyes trained on it as I carefully followed him down the stairs.
The air quickly felt full of cold moisture, cloying with the smell of dank and neglect. An echo of sounds met my ears, drowning out our boots on the stone steps. The stairs circled at the bottom, letting in light that glowed a twilight blue.
I took a deep breath, regretting it as that sweet-sickly smell entered my lungs, coating my throat. The dungeon was massive, an open maul of a space. The floor, low ceiling, and walls were all a dark blue cobblestone of masonry, their surfaces almost slimy with moisture.
Ahead was a straight, narrow hall. That was where the echoes were coming from, its sounds like a sea creature who’d been living under the ocean for millennia. A chill crawled up my spine and I turned to Phobius, assessing his expression. If he looked frightened, I knew I’d start breaking out in screams. Instead, his handsome face was serene, expectant almost, and his blue eyes, like the color around us, were bright and clear.
“Keep behind me.” He headed to that narrow hallway, preventing me from seeing what lay ahead as I followed.
Iron bars that separated the walkway from the cells inside passed us by. I wondered how long these cells had been here, how much they were used by the Owl, and wondered about what type of crimes someone had to commit to be held inside them.
Anger welled up in me. I was almost glad that everything from this point had happened. It was forcing all of us to do something about this unchecked power the Owl had been amassing all this time. I thought of those Omega who had been taken, killed, or worse. Were these cells once used to hold them at some point?
At last we found her, the elemental, the cause—or catalyst—of the never-ending winter. The hall had ended at a corner, leading into a square space, where a larger cell was kept on the left. She looked so tiny for someone who turned a season, who buried it in wait with snow and cold and sleep. With ice-blue hair that looked like spun sugar, and pale skin and shrunken cheeks, she couldn’t be anything other than an otherworldly being.
She was sitting forward against a wall, chains on her ankles and wrists. She was naked, bones protruding, knees knobby and caked with dirt.
When she raised her head, I gasped. Her eyes, so dead yet they said so much, like a galaxy lived inside her.
“Phobius?” Her voice cracked like the sound of tearing paper. Those strange multi-colored eyes rolled to me then. “Omega. White Queen. Heart…” her lips formed the rest, as if she’d lost the ability to speak and had worn off its effort.
“Boriel.” Phobius looked around the empty space. It looked nothing like in my vision. Perhaps she had been moved. More importantly, though, there was no one here but us.
“Don’t come any closer, Son of Night,” she whispered, her eyes coming to life briefly. “Spelled.” She lifted her hands, where the chains jangled.
“What do we need to do?” I asked. How on Titus were we to help her?
Below our feet, the floor vibrated. Pieces of stone fell in wet pebbles that plopped at our feet.
“It’s too late,” Boriel said, bowing her head. “Your people brought the weapon.”
Weapon? What weapon? “Phobius, what’s—”
His face, pale and almost child-like. “How?” he asked her.
But Boriel simply stayed silent.
Phobius cursed in a language I didn’t know. “We have to go up!” He grabbed me by the hand and pulled me through the hall, back up the stairs, my feet threatening to trip underneath me.
“Phobius, what weapon?”
“The Ongahri brought it here.”
“What?”
“No time for questions, Sierra. We have to get out.”
But when we got to the top, a silhouette blocked us. An outline of wings. A maleficent, almost tangible, presence, standing there and preventing our exit.
“Ah, good. You’re here,” that familiar voice made of nightmares crooned.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Fadon
It was pure chaos everywhere he looked. The cervos had gone mad, throwing off their riders, their eyes rolling back in fear, muzzles steaming. Fadon tried to crawl away, out of the melee. He needed to get to Sierra, but his arms just didn’t seem to work. That horrible piercing flash of sound when he’d tried to open the front doors still screamed in his head.
