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“Here.” Lyra handed Emelie a hunk of bread and cheese. “Eat this. You need to keep up your strength.”
Emelie wolfed down the bread and cheese, then levered herself into the hole. Leap leaned over to see her bracing her hands along the sides and shimmying down. He shuddered as she disappeared into the darkness.
“Be prepared,” she warned them. “It’s about ten feet down.”
The others followed her, and Leap gritted his teeth. As an air fae, the idea of being trapped beneath the earth like this was his worst nightmare. But he couldn’t stay behind, not when Mavlyn’s life was on the line, so he shoved his fear down, then grabbed the torch on the wall and used his wind magic to float his way down the hole.
The tunnel was wider down here, and Emelie had already used her magic to forge a path, allowing the rest of them to spread out so they didn’t bottleneck the entrance. Leap passed the torch ahead to Roylan, who stood just behind Emelie, and he lit the way for the rest of them while she led them. The earth rumbled as Emelie used her magic to shift it aside, and step by step, inch by inch, they made their way to the castle bailey.
Leap tried to focus on keeping one foot in front of the other, on counting his breaths, on anything except how the walls seemed to press in on all sides, and how the shadows loomed threateningly. More than once, he had to wipe off clumps of dirt from the back of his neck, or pick grubs off his hair and arms that had fallen from the walls or ceiling. His skin crawled and he struggled against the urge to scream when something that felt very much like a spider skittered down his forearm. He flung his arm violently, then cursed when it smacked into the wall, dislodging even more earth.
“Are you okay?” Lyra asked, glancing back at him over her shoulder.
“I’m fine,” Leap ground out.
Lyra opened her mouth to say something else, but Emelie came to a stop ahead. “The castle wall is just a few feet ahead,” she announced. “I’m going to start tunneling down.”
Long seconds passed as Emelie worked, the earth vibrating around them, and she told them to hang back while she tunneled farther down. Leap tried not to shift nervously as those seconds turned into minutes, but though he knew it was his fear talking, he couldn’t help feeling that this was taking far too long.
“Is everything okay?” he called.
Her answer came, too faintly to hear, and Leap used a thread of wind magic to collect her words and bring them closer. “I’ve tunneled down twenty-five feet so far and I still haven’t cleared the bottom of the wall,” she said, her magically amplified voice echoing through the chamber. “I don’t know how much farther it goes, or how much longer I can keep this up for.”
The group cast worried glances amongst themselves. “Come back up,” Rina called down. “The last thing we need is for the tunnel to collapse while your magic is running low. We’ll take some time to rest and regroup.”
“Here,” Leap said, pushing past the others to the front. “I’ll help you, Emelie.”
He used his wind magic to float Emelie back up to the top, which was considerably more difficult down here since there was no natural breeze for him to use. Relief flooded him as her dirt-smudged face emerged from the hole, and Lyra offered her more bread to munch on while they all sat down, resting their backs against the dirt walls as they brainstormed solutions.
“Do you think you could use your magic to make a hole in the wall?” Roylan asked Nora.
Nora frowned. “Possibly. It depends on how thick the wall is, and also on the wall’s structural integrity. I’d need to make sure we weren’t tunneling through a weak spot, or the rest of the wall could collapse.”
“You can sense the weak spots by touching the wall though, right?” Rina asked.
“I can.” Tora paused. “I could also tell you exactly how far the wall goes down.”
“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” Leap asked, a little annoyed at himself for not thinking of it. “We should have had you do that first, before having Emelie dig all that way down.”
Tora gave him a sheepish look. “I didn’t think of it. I guess my nerves got the better of me.”
“It’s okay.” Emelie put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Let’s try it now.”
Emelie used her magic to clear a path to the castle wall. The thick stone was a darker color than the above ground section, but still appeared just as solid as the rest of it. Bracing herself, Nora approached it, then placed a hand against the wall and closed her eyes.
“I think—”
Her words cut off as a pulse of magic burst from the wall, knocking them all backward. Leap landed hard on his butt as the earth shook around them, and to his horror, dirt began to rain down on them. The tunnel collapsed, muffling their screams, and the last thing Leap saw was a flash of light before a rock struck the top of his head and everything went dark.
* * *
“Leap. You need to wake up.”
Leap groaned as the voice penetrated through the fog in his brain. His eyes flickered open, and he stared into a pair of green irises rimmed in gold. His heart lurched, and he nearly collided heads with Emelie as he bolted upright.
A dull pain radiated through his skull, but Leap pushed it aside as he took in his surroundings. He was back in the cellar, his earth fae friends gathered around him, all disheveled and covered in dirt.
“Are you all right?” Roylan asked, but Leap barely glanced at him. His eyes were fixed on Emelie, on those strange eyes, and the faint golden glow emanating from her body.
