"Passage?" Her pitch rose as she interrupted me. "Where?"
I considered the network of corridors and shrugged. "I really can't say." For a moment she looked as if she were contemplating violence, so I continued. "I was lost when I found it." She huffed. "I was searching for the way back to my room or anything I recognized when I saw it."
"What do you mean 'it'?" she asked.
"The door." She waited. "To the storage room." She leaned toward me. It freaked me out. "There was a storage room in the hallway and I felt like it was right and I looked under the plate with the bird and the snake and I just went in. I won't do it again."
"A bird and a snake?"
I was relieved when her intensity came down a few notches. "Yeah, a big metal plate with a hawk on it, the snake in its mouth. You've seen it?"
"Yes, I've seen it, it's your crest, Elfreda," she answered caustically. "Damn it, did you not think this was important?"
I took up her tone. "How was I supposed to know? You don't tell me anything."
"Because you go out like a lame duck every time I try."
I wanted to be offended but she wasn't wrong, so I just glared at her, my jaw tight. She bit down on her words as well, but still shook her head as she whirled around and continued toward my room. I stomped behind her until my head started to throb, which was only about three steps, and then I felt my shoulders droop and I was suddenly too heavy to carry myself.
"Frey," Ruby was impatient as she stood in my doorway, waiting on me. Geez, we'd been that close?
I didn't remember going to sleep, but I couldn't forget my dreams. They were so unreal, not at all like my usual dreams. But they were just as uncomfortable. Ruby and I were arguing. You didn't tell me, she'd said. Yeah, well, apparently I've had some trust issues, I'd yelled back. The room was spinning around us, filled with anger and bitterness. And then Fannie was there, joining in the quarrel, but it wasn't the new Fannie, not the murderous beast set on revenge. It was the old Fannie, Aunt Fannie, cursing me for the mundane and insignificant. And then Ruby faded and Fannie began to violently attempt to persuade me of her theories of high council's conspiracies. She was vehement, ferocious, and she started to distort, her shape deforming until it resembled a great dog, and then shifting into a cat, but not the frightening lion, a smaller, less menacing version that melted away into the thin carcass of a snake. A dead snake that curled and writhed as if it lived. I could hear her words echo through my mind, disgust evident above all else. It must be brought to an end, it is a perversion, brought on by lust for power. And it struck me that, though I knew it was her, it didn't sound like Fannie, didn't carry her unadorned style. And it didn't sound as if she was speaking of council.
So, when Ruby woke me before I was ready, I was a little testy. "What?" I complained. She didn't answer so when I opened my eyes, ready to convey my grievance, I was surprised to see Chevelle standing beside her. She smiled archly. I sat up too fast and my head spun. Neither of them reached out to steady me.
When it cleared, I peered up to give at least one of them a dirty look. But something was wrong.
"What?" I asked, unease waking me fully.
Chevelle knelt to eye level. "We need to know where the storage room is."
"I don't know," I answered automatically. "I already told Ruby, I was lost when it happened."
"It didn't just happen, Frey. I need you to tell me everything you can remember about it."
"There was nothing, it was just a plain door in the middle of nowhere. I can't find it again." But then I hesitated because, though I didn't know how to find it from inside the castle, I knew where the exit was. I started to stand and he pitched back as if he were frightened of me.
"What are you doing?" Ruby asked, right before I toppled forward and Chevelle, who was standing now, caught me.
"Ugh," I moaned. When the dizziness passed, I looked up at him but he expressed no emotion in his still face. I sighed. "I know how to find it."
"Then tell us," he said.
"I can't, I don't know how to explain it, I just know where it is. From the outside."
I felt Chevelle's hold give just a fraction as the shock hit him. "What do you mean, Freya?"
My chest tightened at the endearment and it took a moment to find my voice. "I mean, I don't know where the storage room is, but I know where the tunnel comes out."
An exceptionally nasty word escaped Ruby's mouth before she tightened her jaw. They were both silent while they regained composure. And then Chevelle spoke. "You took a tunnel out of the castle?"