Brandon Ashveil's Arc

Chapter 7 of 18

Brandon walked with his hand pressed to his wrist where the black wax still burned. The fever ran up his arm in slow waves. Each wave gave him a heartbeat of the fae lord ahead — a cough, a shiver, the weight of stone overhead — and then faded. He moved when the wave came. He stopped when it passed. Dayna followed a step behind with the lantern, watching the fireflies inside it for any that leaned toward safe ground. "Anything?" she asked. "He's still under. Close now." Brandon spat. His mouth tasted of iron that wasn't his. "But I can't see a door. Just stone." "Then we look for what a door needs. Air. Water. A path worn smooth." They pushed through wet fern into a low clearing. A moss-covered bench sat crooked at its center, one leg sunk in the peat. Nothing else. No trail in, no trail out. Brandon almost walked past it. The fever spiked. He dropped to one knee. Below him, through the ground, he felt the fae lord turn on whatever he lay on and cough hard enough to bring blood. Brandon's own throat filled. He swallowed it down. "Here," he said. He pressed his palm to the moss beside the bench. "He's right here. Straight down." Dayna crouched and lifted the lantern close. The fireflies inside it drifted to one side of the glass and clustered there, wings beating fast. She turned the lantern. They stayed pointed at the bench. "It's the seat," she said. She pushed. The bench did not move. She dug her fingers into the moss along its base and tore a strip away. Underneath the stone was cut clean, and a seam ran down into the earth. Brandon set his shoulder to the end of the bench and shoved. Pain tore through his ribs — not his, the fae lord's, some old wound waking with the fever — and he shoved again. The stone ground sideways. A square of black opened at his feet. Cold air came up out of it, and with it the smell of sick breath and old smoke. Steps went down into the dark. Somewhere below, a hound barked once, deep and wrong, and went quiet. Dayna held the lantern over the hole. The firefly light reached only a few feet before the tunnel swallowed it. "He kept a beast," she said. "He kept more than one." Brandon drew his knife. His hand shook from the fever that wasn't his. "The queen's coming back. We go now or not at all." Dayna stepped past him onto the first stair. The fireflies pressed against the near side of their glass, straining toward the fae lord below. Brandon followed her down. Behind them, the mist began to thicken over the open seat, feeling for the door they had just found.