Page 49

T he passage reeked of damp earth, like something buried that shouldn’t have been unearthed.

The walls sweated with it, pulsing with something that felt alive, something that coiled through the narrow tunnels like it had been expecting us.

The corridors had faded from marble to stone, a sign that we had gone terribly wrong or that we were close to getting free.

Cobwebs tangled in my hair as I pressed forward, the rough grooves in the stone catching at my fingertips. My body was a raw wound of exhaustion, but we didn’t have time to stop. Why were we descending? Shouldn’t we be climbing?

Behind me, Dorian moved in silence, his violet eyes flickering in the dim torchlight, his body stiff with tension. He looked like hell—uniform torn, dried blood caking his collar, fresh crimson trailing from a cut above his eye.

Footsteps pounded against the marble somewhere above us, dust and gravel tumbling in front of us in a great puff. The rhythm of the steps was a frantic war drum. A countdown.

We took the corners fast, our shadows long and jagged against the walls. Above, the Sanctum was alive with shouts, steel on steel, and the furious echoes of pursuit. We were losing ground. Dorian’s grip on my wrist tightened in a way I knew meant one thing. Don’t look back.

“Why aren’t we climbing?” I asked, voice shaking.

Dorian didn’t respond. Instead he carried on, pulling me down a narrow passage, half-hidden by the dark. “You trust me?” He asked, brows raised, dirt deep in the grooves they formed in his forehead.

“Of course,” I nodded.

“Blueprints in my mother’s study show the Sanctum is a flipped reflection. Its lowest tunnel spits out below the gates.”

“It’ll lead us out,” I nodded.

He slowed just enough to press a palm to the stone next to us. “Evermore lets me through the wards. Blood is a master-key,” he said. “And mine is similar to my mother’s.” A heartbeat passed, but a door groaned open into a concealed corridor, to steps down.

“You first,” I said, my throat dry. Footsteps sounded further down the passage, the shouts were growing closer.

“Stay close,” Dorian whispered, reaching for my hand as the passage grew darker. I felt a lump growing in my throat, the familiar rumble of the Thread waking. I willed my mind to focus on other things. The darkness. The beat of my heart. The feeling of ice in my veins whenever Dante touched me.

It was too dark to see anything. Dorian halted so quickly I almost crashed into him, and he pulled his lighter out. It took a few clicks, but the dim light illuminated everything I feared. We had reached an impasse. The left passage sloped upward, the other downward. I bit my lip so hard it bled.

“Shit. I could have sworn—” Dorian let out a roar of frustration.

“Once this place has its claws in you, it won’t let go,” I murmured. I remembered Dante’s words the night I’d stolen the cards. I turned to Dorian, breathless. “This is not how this ends.”

The tunnel behind us groaned. A deep, unnatural sound, like stone grinding against stone. A sound that belonged to something waking. And then—the darkness behind us exploded. Magic slammed into the walls, sending shards flying. A snarl split the air, sending a peal of terror down my spine.

Dorian swore. “Move. Now! ”

I grabbed his wrist, yanking him toward the upward tunnel. The way twisted ahead, spiraling forward. I had to believe there was light ahead as we flew further and further along the path ahead of us.

Footsteps thundered behind us, many sets. I ran faster. My lungs burned. My vision blurred. The magic behind us howled, a storm of pure destruction. The tunnel itself shook against Evermore’s weight, as though trying to trap us before we could escape.

Then, there it was, the dim glow of the gas lamps.

The tunnel yawned open, spilling into the world beyond Evermore, inches from the gates.

We burst through them, stumbling into the damp night.

The dew-slicked grass was ice cold against my ankles, and the fresh air felt like heaven against my skin. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.

I hadn’t even known the weight I’d been carrying until it lifted. We’d made it. For the first time since this nightmare began, I could breathe. The grip of Evermore didn’t reach this far. The sky stretched above us, vast and endless, stars unfazed by the war unraveling beneath them.

Dorian bent forward, hands braced on his knees, catching his breath. “ Holy shit. Even I don’t know how we did that.”

I laughed, more disbelief than amusement. I was standing outside Evermore’s walls for the first time since that first night in town and I wasn’t dreaming. I was here. I was free.

We followed the narrow path down toward town, our shadows stretching beneath the streetlamps, the concrete glossy from rainfall. The town loomed ahead, its lights flickering, unaware that the strange college on the hill had nearly devoured us whole.

I imagined my room at home, only a flight away, and of Dorian there. It was all within reach.

The Crossed-Keys was quiet when we slipped inside, the scent of old wood and ale wrapping around me. The fireplace crackled low, casting flickering golden light, the hum of quiet conversation filling the room.

Dorian’s eyes were still dark with the echo of what we had just escaped.

He was slouched back against the red-leather booth, his uniform torn, knuckles split, chest rising and falling in uneven bursts.

“I can’t believe we actually got out,” he muttered, shaking his head like he didn’t quite trust the reality of it.

“With the Archdemons there and everything. That was—” he exhaled, a sound between disbelief and exhaustion. “More complicated than I expected.”

My fingers curled around the edge of the table, grounding myself.

For the first time since this nightmare began, I let myself believe that maybe we could run.

Maybe we could disappear into the folds of some distant city, where the echoes of Evermore wouldn’t reach us.

Maybe, if we slipped far enough into the dark, we could be free.

The air shifted, a presence watching.

Dorian noticed instantly. “What is it?” I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Slowly, I turned my head. The man at the bar was watching me.

His coat was threadbare, his boots caked in dust. He looked like a traveler, someone unremarkable, someone easy to forget—except for his eyes.

They were black, entirely black through the whites of them.

He was not human. The candle on his table flickered violently, the flame stretching unnaturally tall before it snuffed out entirely.

And then, like we were old friends meeting again after years apart, he smiled. I nearly recoiled.

“Isn’t it wonderful,” the man with black eyes rasped, his voice curling through the low hum of the Crossed Keys. “Now that the Archangels are gone, we can really make ourselves at home.”

Suddenly, the pub felt fuller, the air brimming with something I hadn’t noticed before, something that had been waiting. I turned my head slightly. A man at the far end of the bar laughed, tilting his glass back, ale sloshing over the rim.

A woman with a jagged-toothed grin leaned against a pillar, tapping her nails against the wood.

Around the fire, a group gathered, though I couldn’t see their faces, their voices lilting in a language I didn’t understand.

It was an ancient tongue, maybe Latin. A dozen, no…

two dozen pairs of eyes flickered toward me.

The pub carried on as normal. The bartender with the thick mustache cleaned his glass, the servers weaved between tables, the mortals went on laughing, drinking, talking—oblivious. They were completely oblivious.

Dorian went still beside me. I felt him tense, felt the moment he realized, the moment he understood. I grabbed his wrist. Hard. It clicked all at once. We hadn’t escaped, not really.

“This is bad, Dorian. I don’t think we can leave Evermore.” I shoved back from the table. “Not like this.”

“Davenant.” His voice dropped an octave. “What are you saying?”

“Look around us,” I hissed. “Don’t you see? All of this is bleeding into the Common World too. We’ll never be safe. No one will ever be safe unless we fix this and free the Archangels. Running is not the answer.”

He pressed his lips into a thin white line, his hands making tight fists that he clenched and unclenched as he scanned the room. Finally, he nodded, a grim expression settling into his features as he stood.

The man at the bar tilted his head, still smiling. “Leaving so soon?”

I turned, the woman leaning against the pillar blocking my exit. She grinned, all teeth. “ Stay. ” Behind her, a dozen more shadows moved.

“No, thank you,” I snapped, trying to keep my voice firm. “We have to go back.”

I didn’t look at Dorian. I couldn’t. I remained fixed on the doorway, on the shifting figures just beyond it, the Daemons who no longer needed to hide. The world was already slipping, the veil between realms thinning with every breath. If we ran now, we’d only be delaying the inevitable.

I let out a long exhale as we stood outside the pub, rain spitting from the heavy clouds above. Dorian tilted his head down the street, toward the figures watching us from the alley. He could see it, too. There was no escape.

With Dante in charge, the gates to Elsewhere had been fractured and the boundaries between worlds were growing thinner.

“Surely there’s an island somewhere,” Dorian wasn’t looking at me. “Somewhere we can be free from all of this.”

“Dorian.” I lowered my voice. We both knew it was a ridiculous suggestion. There was no hiding from this, no pretending it wasn’t real.

He looked back to me. “It doesn’t have to be you.” He spoke the words so quietly, I almost didn’t catch them. Then, “Does it?”

“It does,” I nodded bitterly. “I have to play into Dante’s hand,” I said, forcing the words through my teeth. “I’m the only one that can. I think that’s the only way. ”