“Please trust me.” I stared into his smoky eyes and ran my thumb along the back of his hand. “I might be able to find out what happened to Terra.”
He considered me and stopped fighting my grip. In a heartbeat I placed his palm against the notch in the stone and waited. For a short while nothing happened. Then a symbol of light shone from beneath the crimson dirt, matching the brand on his wrist identically, and the wall rumbled and slid open. Ethan pulled his hand away, his face ghostly in disbelief.
“Holy shit,” I said, staring at the open passageway. “Terra must have been-”
“Ava.” Ric turned to me, an uneasy look upon his face. “What is going on?” He was afraid. They all were.
I shook my head. “Do you remember before, I said about how I saw my grandfather and how I sometimes saw other lost souls?” They nodded. “Catriona came to me in the mirror, after that she started showing me what happened to her that night. At least, up until this point.” Their faces didn’t exactly inspire confidence. “Perhaps I am going mad.”
“It’s a bit late to be stuck on that thought now, isn’t it?” Daniel said, trying to push past me. My heart hammered. “Are we just going to stand here or will we see where these ‘memories’ will take us?”
I stared at him. He was suddenly eager, too eager considering he’d doubted me since stepping into the house. Something inside me didn’t want him to enter. It felt wrong for him to enter. I looked at Ethan and wondered if he felt something similar. His face was blank. Instead, I swallowed the feelings and started into the entranceway.
“I’m going to stay here,” Ric said from behind us. When I turned to look at him he was nervous, but not about the passage. His attention had been drawn elsewhere. “Something feels off.”
Ethan stepped back into the corridor, “I feel it too.” He turned to Daniel. “See what you can find. If Ava’s suspicions are right it’ll be a tremendous breakthrough. We’ve been fighting a losing war for hundreds of years now. Daeus knows, we need some luck.”
Daniel said nothing as he turned back and moved further down the passageway. I didn’t like that plan. I didn’t want to be alone with him. But I stepped through regardless and followed him along the narrow passage without another word. There was no point arguing when something far more dangerous could be coming.
The winding staircase took us deep underground. I brushed my torch against other untouched wicks that hung in their wall fastenings, washing the passage with light and relieving a little bit of the darkness. It flickered over the walls, illuminating the rubble and occasional dark-loving vine or root that had poked its way through cracks in the stone. Ahead of me Daniel froze under a leaning archway and I was overcome with nausea. I stumbled and pulled myself along the final stretch until we came to the end.
“It’s a tomb,” Daniel said quietly.
That it was. I had never seen a casket so small. There had been little bodies before, the ones that fell alongside the adults in the mass graves of Wetherdon but those deaths were accidental and sudden. To have a crypt made specifically to accommodate a child would mean that they saw a need for it.
“You don’t think...?” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
It made no sense. After all, why would Catriona go through the trouble of fleeing if she was just going to kill her daughter? We stepped into the crypt. The casket had been carved from one piece of stone: a process that would have taken weeks. Its lid was ajar, though not by much. Daniel’s face was awash with anxiety and excitement as he curled his fingers around the top and heaved the great, stone slab away, bracing himself for what lay beneath.
“It’s empty,” he said, his voice ringing with bitter disappointment.
“Isn’t that a good thing?” I challenged.
He caught my eyes, the red in his more prominent than it had been before. “Of course,” he said a few moments later, the luminosity of irises fading, “but it leaves us with no answers again.”
I’d opened my mouth to speak but the sound faded to nothing as I noticed a final body at our feet. She lay on her side, aware of nothing in the final moments but the casket before her. A sheen of cold sweat raked along the back of my neck and a great pain burst through my head again. I collapsed to my knees, grasping the side of the casket for support, and wiped my runny nose. My hand came away red. I tasted the blood before I saw it was there. I felt it, hot and salty, running down my throat so fast that I thought I would choke on it. My eyes rolled back in their sockets and the world around me turned black.
Safe at last. Adrian knew that the passage would work in their favour as it had worked in his favour, that creature, when he needed a place to go to be alone. He had not chosen an heir; instead he stored his knowledge and memories in the books that surrounded the walls. Then Terra came into the world, her eyes blue as the sea and hair brown as a wildcat’s golden summer pelt with a personality to match, and everything changed. How her brother adored his niece.
Catriona pushed aside the casket lid and laid her daughter carefully atop the fine cushions. Terra clung to her hand, her eyes fearful behind her ageless smile, and she bent to kiss the child’s forehead.
“Sleep now, darling child. Moon of my night – sun of my morning – you will see your uncle set free from his torment.” Catriona pulled back as her daughter yawned, still clinging to her fingers, and watched as her now odd-coloured eyes closed. One blue as the day she was born, one green as the new spring leaves. “I love you,” she said as she stroked her soft skin, “now and forever.” She closed the lid and pulled a blade from its sheath, taking a deep breath as her tears ran freely. Adrian was waiting for her.
She began to speak incantations in a language I couldn’t understand, her voice was strong and full of power, and after a few verses she pushed the long knife into her side. She couldn’t die straight away. She had to finish the spell. It took all of her strength to stay conscious as she painted the casket with her blood, and when her legs faltered and collapsed under her she continued to draw her markings on the floor; trading one life for another.
It was done.
The pain subsided and the dark, enclosed room became bright. She felt the warm, gentle hand of her husband press against her back as he helped her to her feet. There was no pain. No fear. Only sorrow for what they were forced to leave behind. When the time came she would tell Flint where to find her, and when she woke she would not remember them. She would not remember anything. Catriona allowed herself to look back before she and Adrian walked hand in hand into the light of judgement.
I clenched my teeth together at the pain, barely giving myself space to breathe. My head was splitting – I was almost certain I was dying – and I begged whatever deity was listening for it to stop. Hands came around me. I cried out as another vision burned its way into my mind.