A hand closed over my face, and I bit down hard. Another muffled cry of pain and I was free again, spitting blood as I lurched forward into a stumbling run. I bolted for the deep shadows beneath a stand of cypress trees, where I hoped to hide before sprinting for the nearest path leading back up into the house. But even though I could hear distant raucous merriment, I couldn’t find any stairs back up to where the party still carried on. In the state I was in, I didn’t even know which way was up, and when I did finally find a stone staircase—half-hidden by an overgrown thornbush—it didn’t take me toward the revelry.
I could hear angry shouts behind me, so I pushed past the grasping branches and crept down the stairwell as quietly as I could. I didn’t understand much in that moment, but one thing seemed abundantly clear: I had suddenly become hunted quarry. At the bottom of the stairs there was an iron gate secured with a chain, but it gaped enough for me to squeeze through. Without a moment to spare, I stumbled deeper into the shadows of what seemed to be a tunnel leading beneath the house.
“I did my part!” The female voice drifted down the stairwell. “I got her here. How did you manage to let her get away? He’ll kill you if she manages to escape your grasp again. He’ll probably kill me too—”
“Shut up!” That was Aeddan’s voice. He sounded near frantic.
I held my breath and stayed as still as I could.
“She’s a weak little gladiolus, and she’s wasted with mandragora.”
Nyx, I realized with a dread chill crawling down my spine. It was Nyx’s voice.
“You’re useless, Mandobracius.”
Their voices grew faint as they argued.
They clearly hadn’t seen me duck down the stairs, and that was my only advantage. I was certainly in no shape to fight. I was panting like a cornered animal, and I could barely even run. I had no idea where Elka was, and I desperately wished Caius were there in that moment. I was in dire need.
Dire need. All of a sudden, I remembered the scroll Charon had given me—the one that guaranteed my safety—and I fumbled at my waist. But of course I hadn’t worn my leather belt pouch that evening. It had spoiled the look of the delicate stola I’d worn, and so I’d left it behind. The little vellum scroll was tucked away in my pouch, back in the traveling trunk in my room—in spite of Cai’s and Sorcha’s warnings and Charon’s admonitions.
I was a fool.
The shadows of the cypress trees loomed menacingly on the walls of the stairwell where I hid, and I began to imagine them reaching for me. I had to get away from that place. My only option was to run, and the only direction I could go was down. As silently as I could, trying not to stumble against the walls in my addled state, I descended into a catacomb that ran beneath the Domus Corvinus and felt my way along, brushing fingertips against the rough-hewn stone. I heard water dripping and then, after what seemed a long while, what sounded like muffled voices.
A faint glow of torchlight at the end of the tunnel beckoned, and I crept toward it, hoping to find a servants’ entrance up into the house. I found an archway instead. It opened out into a vaulted chamber, and I peered cautiously around the wall. In the flickering torchlight, I had to look and look again before my bleary eyes fully understood what they saw. I listened hard to make sense of the sounds above the weird, low chanting. But then my eyes and ears put their senses together, and my stomach climbed into my throat.
The body of Ajax—the slain gladiator from earlier that night—lay naked on a polished black-marble slab. His olive skin was pale and slack and painted with blood. His face was turned toward me, and his eyes were open, vacant and staring into the afterlife from which his spirit would never return. A circle of robed and hooded figures wearing black-feathered masks hovered over him. Through the gaps of their huddled forms, I could see that they had split Ajax’s torso open like the roasting carcass of a wild boar. I glimpsed the white gleam of his rib cage grasping like rigid fingers at the shadows, and I could hear the wet, gluttonous sounds of feasting.
Morrigan protect me—they’re eating his heart!
The bile rose in my throat, bitter and searing, and I felt my own heart thud heavily in my chest. I clapped a hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. What manner of monsters had I stumbled upon? Did the revelers in the palace above have any idea what was going on in the catacombs beneath their feet? Did Nyx?