The air chilled the further we walked, and the ground slipped away beneath my feet as we descended deeper into the Earth, and as my fingers brushed the wall, I felt the damp against its surface.
The passages turn left and right sharply as we walked through the labyrinth, my sense of direction lost already. Arnold never slowed his pace and sometimes he turned so fast that Orion would shoot us forward with his Vampire speed to ensure we didn’t fall behind. Eventually, one of the passages opened up into a dark cavern that made my heart beat faster.
The roof domed above us and below us the entire floor fell away into an abyss that was terrifying to behold. We stood so close to the edge that I knew if someone turned too sharply out of that tunnel, they’d plummet straight to their death into the shadowy chasm below.
A narrow platform extended across it and a lectern made of some dark metal stood at its centre. Upon it was a white book, its pages open and blank. Arnold turned and gestured for me to approach the book out on that deadly looking platform and my eyebrows arched.
“What is this?” Orion asked.
Arnold’s eyes flashed to him then back to me before falling to the ground. “I cannot address him, my lady.”
A growl rolled up my throat, but we didn’t have time to waste trying to exonerate Orion‘s name to some random Minotaur. And one look at Arnold told me it wasn’t even worth trying.
“Then tell me,” I asked.
Arnold nodded, an apology in his eyes as he turned his massive body towards me, shifting so that his back was to Orion as if even looking at him caused physical pain. “The book is a gateway to all the dark books we keep here. You need only ask it what it is you’re looking for, and the book will present you with everything you might need.”
“What if we don’t know what we’re looking for?” Orion growled.
Arnold’s eyes shot to him then back to me again, a sweat breaking out on his cow brow.
“Tell me,” I said in frustration and Arnold nodded.
“You must try to be as accurate as you can when thinking of what it is you need, my lady. If there is something you require but cannot find, then I will try to help you as best I can. When you are finished here ring the bell and I will come to collect you – or you may ring it if you need my assistance.” He pointed above my head and I turned, finding a bronze bell hanging above the entranceway with a long rope dangling from it.
A bell sounded off in the distance and Arnold mooed loudly in answer before charging off into the tunnels, the sound of his hooves clopping across the stone floor carrying back to us as he went.
“Well thank fuck he’s gone,” Orion muttered, striding straight out onto the platform towards the ominous looking book.
I followed him, glancing down at the terrifying drop below, even the knowledge that I had air magic somehow not comforting me. I wondered how deep that hole was, if it fell away into the pit of the Earth, and my stomach twisted at the thought.
I joined Orion out on the platform, gazing down at the white book. Up close, it was clear the book’s cover was made of some white glass, and as Orion tracked his thumb along it, one look at his expression told me how valuable the substance was.
Orion scrolled through the blank pages before looking to me. “You’d better ask it, Blue,” he prompted, stepping aside so that I could stand even closer to the book. “Think of all the symptoms you can.”
I took in a slow breath, focusing on the blank page before me and conjuring up every dark feeling that had clung to my soul when I’d fallen from the sky back at the temple. As I held onto those awful feelings, I formed a question in my mind, grasping it tight before speaking it aloud. “Which shadow curses could steal away Fae magic?”
Dark ink blossomed across the pages like rain spilling from the sky and staining the book with words. A list of curses gathered on the page with a single paragraph written beneath each one.
Orion shifted closer to read them, glancing at me in the corner of his eye.
“Does any of this seem familiar?” he asked anxiously.
I read through each of them, from a curse which caused your skin to decay, to another that ate at your bones from the inside until you were unable to walk. But the loss of magic seemed like a by-product to these curses, something that happened in the final stages before the Fae inevitably died.
“No,” I said. “It’s none of these.” It was a damn relief too, because some of this shit sounded like a gory ass horror movie.
“Then ask it again,” Orion pressed. “Be more specific.”