Landing softly behind him when he gestured, she pulled off what remained of her own boots, and hobbled over to peer at the wall. “What do you see?” A sudden blink, her body motionless. “Why can I see?”
Naasir, able to see no matter the light, hadn’t noticed the fact it was no longer pitch-black, the luminescence from the walls at a much higher intensity. “Alexander.”
“I guess this means he liked us after all.”
“Not enough to lead us out of here.”
“Alexander was never known to be an easy archangel.”
Grunting in acknowledgment, Naasir began to run his fingers along the lines where he’d felt the fresher air. “There’s a door here.”
Going to her knees below the outwardly unbroken stone, Andromeda began to feel around the wall at ground level. “Sometimes the pressure point is hidden lower, where people are less apt to—” Her fingers slid over a faint, shallow indent. “Naasir.”
He came down beside her, confirmed he could also feel it. Fitting a finger against the indent, he pushed.
No door. No effect at all.
“I think we need to find two,” Andromeda said, thinking back to an ancient door she’d read about in a history book. “Let’s hope it’s not a code which requires the application of pressure in a precise rhythm.”
“Alexander can just drop those he doesn’t like into a boiling pit,” Naasir pointed out with a shrug. “Anyone allowed to stay alive must be given a way out.”
“Good point.” Andromeda felt for the second dent alongside Naasir.
“Got it.”
Touching the spot Naasir indicated, she nodded. “I’ll push here and you push there.”
When nothing happened, her heart squeezed, the idea of being entombed a nightmare.
A harsh groan split the air the next second, motes of dust shining in the luminescence.
Rising to stand on marginally less painful feet, she took Naasir’s hand and they backed away in case the mechanism swung outward, but when the ancient door finally moved, it was inward. The tunnel within was gray with thick cobwebs that made it clear no one had traversed it for centuries, but the walls glowed with the same luminescence as the central chamber.
“I hate cobwebs.” They stuck stubbornly to her feathers and this thick, they might even affect her ability to fly once they made it out.
Again that smile from Naasir, the affectionate one that hit her right in the solar plexus. “I’ll go first and clear the way for you.” Stepping in, he started using his claws to rip away the sticky mass.
Sword in hand, she got the bits that he missed and together, they managed to keep her wings mostly unsticky. “I’m trying very hard not to think about the spiders who built these, or about what just crawled over my foot.” She shuddered.
“You don’t like bugs?”
“Not ones with more than six legs. Or shells. Or antennae.”
Naasir chuckled and they carried on. It felt as if they walked for two hours on their burnt feet before the tunnel spilled them out into a small cave illuminated with the same luminescence that had lit their path this far. Given the lack of natural light, it was clear they were still deep inside the cave system.
Where they might permanently remain, courtesy of the angry wing brothers waiting for them, their crossbows pointed and primed.
*
Three hours after the tense meeting outside Alexander’s chamber, night had fallen over the oasis and the wing brothers knew what was coming. The fact their archangel was waking had caused wide-eyed awe among the younger members of the Brotherhood, grim joy in the older.
“I am happy to know I will see the sire again.” The tautly held emotion in Tarek’s tone was a testament to the loyalty Alexander inspired in his people. “I only wish his Sleep hadn’t been so precipitously interrupted. He did not plan to wake for thousands of years.”