Page 64 of Of Blood and Banes (The Arterian #2)

The ladder groans. Warning that this much pressure on one side of it will snap it in half.

“Get down. Quickly,” Daeja growls.

She doesn’t have to tell me twice. I snatch the paper and, to free my hands, stuff it into my waistband before securing a two-handed grip on the ladder. I work my way down, trying to keep my weight dispersed and balance centered. Four stories left. Then three. Two.

Snap.

The ladder swings to the right.

“Kat!” Cole cries.

Daeja roars.

I lean left and grab onto a shelf with both hands as the ladder drops to the right, and the steps beneath my feet disappear.

Swinging back and forth from my momentum, I kick out for the shelves beneath me to steady myself.

Then pull my knees up slightly until I find a shelf I can rest them on.

It does little to solve the current dilemma.

It’s only a break from the inevitable fall.

My palms grow sweatier, my fingers weakening. If I weren’t wearing Marge’s gloves, I would have instantly slipped.

“I will…break…down…these…walls…” Daeja grunts, followed by thuds as if she’s trying to shoulder her way through a door.

“Don’t! You break them, you risk the room collapsing!”

“Kat, jump to me!” Cole calls.

Breathing out of my mouth, I glance down behind me. Cole’s arms are outstretched to me. Fifteen feet down. Maybe a little less. But enough of a fall that all of us are nervous it might lead to a broken ankle. Or worse.

“Fall! I’ll catch you!” Cole pleads. “Trust me!”

Sucking in a quick breath, I let go of the shelf. And fall back. The rows and rows of empty shelves zip past me, until my back hits something solid. Cole grunts and wraps me in his arms. The two of us fall back until a tremor works its way through his body and out of mine.

I curl up and flop onto the floor next to Cole. “Are you alright?”

His eyes are closed, teeth clenched as he’s lying on his back. The tile beneath him is cracked. He blows out a tight breath through his lips and inches up onto his forearms. “Yeah…I think so.”

I jerk forward to slide my hand behind his back to help him up.

“I see you trust him more than you did me the first time we flew.”

I toss Daeja a look. “That was also at double the height.”

“Over water,” she retorts.

“Are you hurt?” Cole whispers, his fingers brushing the tips of mine.

Marge taps her staff to get our attention and breaks the lingering gaze between us. “You broke her fall. Any broken bones I’m sure she would have felt by now.”

Cole gets up first, the tension in his jaw and posture telling me he’ll be feeling that one for the next few days. He offers me a hand and helps me rise.

“What did you find?” Marge asks.

I fish out the page from my waistband. Then flip it over, only to find both sides are blank.

Marge rolls her eyes, and I sigh. Cole silently asks to look at it, and with my permission, he folds it and pockets it.

“Can you pass along to A’nala and Nadja that we’ve found the library, but nothing else?” I ask Daeja as the three of us exit the library.

“Too embarrassed to admit you almost fell to your death for a blank piece of paper?”

“…Don’t sound so concerned.”

She nudges me with her muzzle as we close the door to the library. Sniffing at me and assessing me in her own way. If I felt pain, though, she would have likely already felt it.

She nods, then tilts her muzzle to the sky, before turning her attention back to me moments later.

“A’nala says they’re still searching the kitchens, though it sounds like they don’t have much hope in finding anything.

Nadja reports Bristol, Archie, and Melaina are still searching the northern quarter.

They’ve found the King and Queen’s rooms but haven’t found anything yet to garner excitement. ”

Marge hobbles over to the next door farther down, attempting to twist the handle before stepping back and prodding it with the end of her staff. Cole joins her, twisting the handle and opening it with ease.

Marge narrows her eyes at him. “I must have shaken some of the dust loose.”

“Or maybe your muscles are loose.”

I smack Daeja’s shoulder playfully with a snort, even if Marge can’t hear it.

Cole nods at Marge, fighting a small smile. “Definitely.”

The three of us enter the room, Daeja standing guard outside.

A humming sizzles underneath the marbled floors.

A massive set of three windows, sparkling with dusty, colorful stained glass, stretch above us to the beamed ceilings at least a hundred feet high.

Streaks of color bounce off the floor and warm the room in a muted collision of light and color.

In front of the windows are a set of shallow steps dressed in thick carpeting.

My breath leaves me in an audible gasp as I stare up at the magnificent stained glass windows. “What is this?”

Marge follows my stare. “Must be the chapel. King Aaric had the one in Arterias destroyed, as he no longer believes in the Gods…I imagine it must have looked much like this one.” She hobbles over to the windows, brushing her fingers across the glass and leaving a clean streak.

A chapel. I’ve never been in one. But I used to dream about the day I finally would with Cole.

With his mother’s ring on my finger, him beside me, and his last name on my tongue.

Bitterness coats my throat—parts of that dream came true.

Except the reason I’m wearing his mother’s ring is because it’s a weapon.

He walks the room with me, and I can’t recall the last time I told him I love him.

And the only reason I can say I’m Katerina Ashbourne is because almost everyone thinks he’s my brother.

I swing my attention to Marge, then to the floor beneath my feet where a rumbling vibrates my boots. I follow Marge and whisper, “Can you feel it?”

Cole calls from the other side of the room, scanning sets of marble figures perched on stone podiums, “I do. Though…” He drops down and presses his fingertips to the marble tile, before glancing up at us across the room.

“What do you think it is? If the castle is built on a mountain, surrounded by the lake and waterfalls…”

He knocks against the tile with his knuckles, listening carefully, before lowering his face and pressing an ear to the floor. He lifts his head again. “I think there’s something underneath this room.”

I follow suit, dropping to the floor and pressing my hand to the cold, grimy tile. What I thought was a rumbling of magic is something else entirely. I glance over my shoulder at Marge, who’s watching the two of us with knitted brows.

“Underground dungeons, perhaps? Or…” she trails off, scanning the room for a hint before she taps her staff against the ground.

“Or what?” I stand at the same time Cole does.

Her blue-gray eyes meet mine. “Or…they’re hatching grounds.”

“A’nala and Sethan’s group are on their way back to the main dining hall. They’ve tried all the doors in the kitchen and servers’ quarters they can, but just about everything seems to be locked,” Daeja calls.

“Weird…why lock the kitchens and servers’ quarters but not the library or chapel?”

“I don’t know. I suggested they try to break down the doors, but apparently it didn’t work.”

“What about Nadja, Bristol, Melaina, and Archie?”

“Still searching.”

“Got it.” I turn to Cole and Marge and relay the message before the three of us agree to head back and meet them. As we leave the chapel, I swear I see one of the marble statue’s eyes shift to follow us out, but as I spin to face it head on, its glazed eyes are set on the stained-glass windows.

We meet the rest of the group back in the dining room. Where Melaina’s group disappeared is an inset room that overlooks the massive dining hall. Two elegant throne chairs sit in the center, their golden frames twisted into intricate circles, swirls, and dragons of every shape and kind.

Behind the chairs, a door is propped open a few inches by a dagger—Archie’s dagger—with light leaking through and casting the throne chairs in a backlit glow of warmth.

The door swings open farther, and Archie appears on the other side with a smile, holding it open for Melaina and ushering her in, followed by Bristol and, as Archie opens it wider, Nadja.

Archie plucks his dagger from the ground then sheathes it before their group joins us near the throne.

“Any luck?” I ask.

All of them shake their heads.

Sethan turns his attention to Darian. “Now’s your chance to make a difference, boy. Tell us what you know.”

Darian sneers, staring Sethan up and down. “I’ll die before I tell you anything, you fucking slug.”

“Hey, watch your mouth!” Bristol snaps, jolting forward like he’ll fight Darian.

Archie moves forward, following Cole, and everyone swarms in to stop a fight before it breaks out.

Darian shoves Cole, forcing him back, and his heel hits one of the throne chairs.

Before he can topple over it, he regains his balance and slingshots back into the throng.

Archie withdraws a dagger from his side, and as he’s shoved by a scraping Darian and Bristol, he accidentally slices Cole.

“Shit, sorry, Cole!” Archie calls.

“Sheathe your weapon!” Cole hisses, brushing Archie away from the throng. “Nobody needs to get hurt!”

“No, fucking cut me if you think you actually can,” Darian growls, before Cole seizes the chain to his shackles and tears him away from Bristol.

Their squabbling dies out as I focus on the chair.

Magic buzzes beneath my feet, breathing and living.

But also rising out of the hum comes a rushing current of whispers, growing louder and clearer as I step forward to the closest chair.

As if led by some invisible force, I reach out, brushing my hand along the chair’s golden arm, and following each intricate curve, over dragons’ elegant figures, and swirls with rings.

Rings.

Two of them. Joined at the center.

I turn, scanning the room beyond our group where rows of tables with corpses lie, and the slain dragons hanging above them.

“What is it?” Marge whispers.

Two rings…two chairs. Marge said the rings were worn separately to disperse the natural flow of power.

But why position the throne room here, of all places?

Yes, perhaps to overlook their citizens and any out-of-town guests.

But there had to be some other reason…more than just some gathering room.

I look back down at the throne chair, moving my hands up the arm and over to the back as Marge watches me with mild curiosity.

Without looking up, I ask, “Cole mentioned he noticed something underneath the chapel. It may be an underground dungeon, but you mentioned hatching grounds?”

“Yes…? And?”

I drop down and touch the tile to confirm my suspicion, then smile. Something is definitely underneath this throne room. I stand, circling back to the front of the chairs—and freeze.

There, set into where the two chairs’ arms touch, is an inlay of two rings. With a shaky inhale, before I can second-guess myself, I remove my gloves and tear the Blood Ring off my finger and place it into the inlay on the left. When nothing happens, I move it to the one on the right.

The ring snaps inside of it like something magnetic, and then the humming grows louder.

Loud enough everyone fighting stops and turns.

Thin lines like rivers hidden in the golden frames of the throne chairs glow an iridescent blue.

My breath fills my ears, and I reach forward as if I’ve done it a thousand times before and turn the ring to the right.

The ground trembles beneath our feet, shaking loose dust from the ceiling and showering us in a thick cloud.

After the dust settles and we wave away our coughs, the platform with the throne chairs we all stand on is sunken ten feet deeper than before.

A dark staircase spirals down into the depths below the throne room.

“Well…that wasn’t weird at all,” Archie laughs, then scans our group before his face falls. “What?”

I snag the ring back from the chair and slip it onto my finger before meeting Marge’s wide gaze. It’s a silent confirmation I haven’t been sealed to the Blood Ring…yet.

“How did you know how to do that?” she whispers.

I shrug. “It was a lucky guess.”

“I believe you’re more than just lucky, Katerina. You are brilliant.”

Smiling, I walk to the edge of the platform and peek down over the side, only to find the steps shrouded in shadow, not telling me much else. Like how many stairs there are and what it leads to. But one thing is for certain.

I turn to everyone already watching me. “We have to go down.”