I know Ale is still nearby, and it’s the only thing that brings me comfort. Right now, I feel like I could lie here forever, hiding. All I want to do is hide.
Then the ground underneath me turns cold.
I sit up.
“Ale,” I say. “What’s happening? Is that… is that the—”
My throat fills up with panic, and I can’t finish. For a long moment, Ale doesn’t say anything.
“I don’t know what else to do with you,” he whispers finally.
The ground disappears.
And I’m falling.
I hit the floor hard. I rip off my blindfold and scramble to my feet, looking around wildly.
But I see nothing. It’s pitch-black. I wait for my eyes to adjust, and they don’t.
I drop to my hands and knees, expecting to find the stone floor of the catacombs, but instead, I touch smooth metal. Iron, maybe. It smells like iron. I feel my way across the floor and bump into an iron wall.
There’s absolutely no light. I have no idea where I am, and it’s too quiet, and it’s freezing, and my best friend is nowhere to be found, and I didn’t mean for this to happen.
I just wanted to save my city.
I back up frantically. I run into something solid but strangely soft. It smells disconcertingly sweet, like flowery perfume.
I know that perfume. But by the time I realize it, Verene is already screaming and shoving me away.
TWENTY
VERENE AND I DON’T SPEAK. WE SIT ON OPPOSITE SIDES OF our small prison at the bottom of the catacombs, and we do nothing.
Time passes—hours, or maybe days. I don’t know. All I know is that we’re inside a very deep cell. It’s the blankest place I’ve ever been. It’s so dark that my eyes never adjust. There are never any new sounds, and there are certainly never any visitors.
Except for the bundles of food and water. They fall from above every so often, carefully packed so that nothing breaks. At first, I don’t eat. I can’t eat. The taste of blood is still too strong in my throat, and everything I put in my mouth makes me retch. But eventually, I get so hungry that the instinct comes back. I don’t have the will to do anything else, but somewhere deep inside, I suppose my body still has the will to survive.
The food is all from Theo, who must still be in Iris. I can tell by the bread. It’s still fluffy in the middle and crunchy on the outside, like bread should be, but it’s just not the same as Occhian bread.
Of course it’s not Occhian bread. There’s no one in Occhia to make bread. I’ll never have Occhian bread again.
The bundles are mostly basic—fruit and loaves that can be easily wrapped—but there are always a few treats. There are chocolate bonbons and candies I’ve never had, sticky and chewy, tasting like everything from sweet orange to sharp licorice.
Verene never takes any of the candies. So either her brother is purposely sending her things she doesn’t like, or they’re all her favorites, and she’s trying to take some sort of righteous stand in front of no audience.
There’s no food coming from Ale. Apparently, he doesn’t care if I live or die in this prison.
I have no idea where Ale is. He had a map of the catacombs, and he knows how to communicate with the vide. He has nowhere to go. He could have gone anywhere.
Time stretches on and on, and still, I refuse to speak to Verene. I don’t want to have to explain the details of how I ended up being banished to a pitch-black cell at the bottom of the catacombs. I don’t want to talk about all the terrible things I did to her in Iris. I don’t want to listen to her preaching at me about how I ruined her, blaming me for why her life is in shambles.
She probably thinks I’m so quiet because I’m scheming. I’m not. The cell is too tall to climb out of, and it has no weak points in its walls. The iron keeps the vide from being able to reach us, apparently. It can toss the food inside, but we can’t offer it any of our blood.
And even if I did get out, I’m just a girl with no city and magic she can’t control. I might as well stay in here and lie curled up on the cold floor, alone.
I have no idea how long it’s been when I hear a voice from the other side of the cell.
“Aren’t you wondering how we found out about this place?” Verene says.
I realize that I’ve sort of forgotten how to speak. I struggle to answer her.
“I’m going to tell you whether you want to hear it or not,” she says. “I miss the sound of my own voice.”
“Of course you do,” I mutter, surprising myself a little.
“After our maman died—” she says.
“After you killed her,” I say.
“—we went into the catacombs,” she says, pointedly ignoring me. “We knew there were other cities. She’d told us that much. And we knew, of course, that it would be dangerous to try and cross the other rulers. But we needed water, and I was so sure that we could find a better way. Something that none of them had found before.”
She pauses.
“We got lost,” she says. “The only reason we survived is because Theo had this ridiculous bag of supplies that would have lasted six months. Somehow we ended up at the very bottom of the catacombs. And we found this strange iron circle in the ground. I realized it looked like a door. So I opened it.”
“Oh, always a smart move,” I say. “What did you think you were going to find at the bottom of the catacombs? Do your people not have terrifying superstitions about what lives down here?”
I’m acting like I wouldn’t have opened the door, too. But I would have done it in a smart way, with a weapon poised. Verene probably just flung it open without even warning her brother.
“We have plenty of superstitions,” she says. “But… thinking about what was going to happen to Iris without water was scarier than any of that. And I thought…” She pauses again.
“What?” I say.
“Never mind,” she says. “You’re going to mock me again.”
“I’m going to mock you regardless,” I say.
“I thought it looked like a well,” she says. “I don’t know why there would have been a well down here. But that’s what I thought. Anyway, I opened it before Theo even realized what was happening—”
I knew it.
“He pulled me back,” she says. “I fell, and I accidentally cut my hand. I left blood on the floor. We looked down through the door, and we saw… this. It was empty. But then I noticed that my blood was gone. And there was a shadow in its place.”
I’m quiet for a moment.
“So…” I say. “The vide was a prisoner.”
“It was very weak at first,” Verene says. “But I think it’s getting stronger. Sometimes… sometimes I would test it. To see how much it could do. It could do more than I expected.”
I think about the way it shattered my chains. I know what she means.
“All of this is your fault,” I say. “All of it.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“This all happened because you decided to play around with a thing from the catacombs that you don’t even understand,” I say. “Because you decided to steal from my city until it was so thirsty that our ruler was— She was desperate for prisoners. And it’s because of you that—”