Page 70 of To Touch A Silent Fury (The Bride of Eavenfold #1)

Tani

H is hand was warm in my own as we paced from the library and down a service hallway.

His emotions and mine melded so firmly I could taste our mutual anger.

I kept my head down as a chambermaid gasped, and I had no idea if it was from the blood coating my skirts or the expression I could only imagine was painted on Lang’s face.

“Where are we going?” I asked quietly.

“I know some of my brother’s hiding places,” Lang replied, just as quiet. “Can you speak to Hanindred, find out anything about his surroundings?”

“He’s asleep, I found domil on the bed.”

Lang paused, then nodded. “Hanin isn’t strong yet, but he would have put up a fight my brother wouldn't have wanted. At least his eyes might have gone unnoticed.”

I found it strange he had come to the same conclusion I had, but I was too distracted to think much of it. “Are we going to his quarters? ”

“No,” he replied. “At least, not first.”

We reached the hall of the southern gardens, and Lang pulled us out into the evening air.

He led me past the rosehilt and the flowering trellises of lamia.

Then, into the maze of shrubbery, much less imposing in the soft orange haze.

The contrast hit me then, of being led in the same way by the other brother through the same hedges only days before, but my feelings now were the opposite.

He tensed at the edge of the hedge wall, and dropped my hand, motioning me to stay. Then he stepped forwards into the marble clearing. Nothing happened.

After a few steps, he called back to me. “You can come out.”

The fountain pittered away, its statue unaffected by the turmoil I was in, ever constant in the empty courtyard.

“I’m not in the mood for another proposal,” I said.

He looked back at me. “I think this place has been tarnished enough.”

“You thought he had hidden Hanin here?” I asked, scouting the hedge for anything that looked out of place.

“Not exactly.” Lang stepped up onto the fountain’s marble flagstones and reached towards the fish’s stone tail. He pressed his palm against it and pushed forwards.

Stones grated against each other, rubbing as if the earth itself was shaking and coming undone. Dirt displaced as three rows of stones slid apart, revealing a hole gaped open behind it. A staircase peeled into view, ensconced into total darkness within two of its steps.

“It’s a tunnel that leads back to the castle. When you get down, there’s an oil lamp on your right. Light it and tell me when you’re done.”

“What about you?” I asked .

“I’ll follow you. I just can’t leave the entrance open behind us.” His hand waited on the fish’s tail, and he gave me a reassuring look.

I rolled my shoulders and stepped onto the first step as if expecting it to move. It was firm under foot, and I stepped down the rest a bit quicker, my hand on the wall as my eyes adjusted to the pitch blackness I was venturing into.

At the bottom, the light from the sky above helped some as I patted the wall and found the oil lamp and the flame striker beside it. I opened the glass door and lit the doused wick.

Before me, the pitch-black four-foot-wide tunnel brightened, enough to see a dusty floor and the next ten feet of hewn rock until it faded away into absolute nothingness.

“You can come down now.” I spoke as loud as I dared. Something about the tunnel made me feel as cold as Eavenfold had. Built, and then left to decay, waiting for its next prey.

Footsteps sounded fast behind me as the stones above began to move.

I was well clear of them, but my heart raced as Lang vaulted through the closing window of evening light, landing quite gracefully on the third step down and descending as the gap above him lessened.

His head was just clear of it as the stones rumbled to a slither and then closed, plunging us into greater darkness as Lang stumbled down the last two steps and fell into me.

I caught him with one arm, steadying his momentum even as it pushed me back against the wall. The oil lamp swung away, and I nearly dropped it. The flame bobbed and resettled as Lang breathed hard before me.

His face was only inches from mine, and he grinned. “I haven’t done that in years.”

“You cut it pretty fine.”

“Couldn’t have anyone following us down. ”

We both breathed too fast, him from the exertion and me from his proximity. He hadn’t moved, his body still over me, folding me into the wall. He raised his arm, his elbow resting over my head, and his tongue darted over his lower lip as we both stared down the dark tunnel.

“What is this place?”

“Secret exits and entrances to various places in the castle. I know a handful of them, I’m certain my brother knows even more.”

I found it hard to breathe, and it wasn’t the musty air causing it. “For what purpose?”

“First built for the Nox, to carve down to the Nox pits,” he said.

“Pits?”

Lang shifted his arm, pushing off the wall as his expression changed. “Mass graves.”

I shivered. “How horrible.”

“Half the kingdom died in those spans of years.” Then he ran his hands through his hair. “But this tunnel was built after that. One of my forefathers was clearly paranoid.”

“Why do you come down here, then?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “What boy isn’t curious?”

“A morbid curiosity, that one,” I replied, with a smile.

He breathed in, staring at my mouth so blatantly that I flushed. “Better to play with death than run from it.”

I swallowed hard.

Then he took the lamp and offered me his other hand to hold. I took it without question.

If he had kissed me, I would have let him. The thought came unbidden, but I could not get it out of my head as I followed him down the hall.

I knew he had wanted to. I felt his desire in his touch, and it only made my blood run hotter, the walls feel closer.

Everything about him put me on edge: the size of his hand around mine, the slope of his wide shoulders, the coiled muscles at the base of his neck.

Even his walk. How a walk could make my insides churn baffled me, and yet he had done something to me.

His own desire only heightened mine, a clanging desperation I tried to avoid thinking about.

“Where does this entrance lead?” My voice was too high.

“The war room.”

I faltered and my slowing pulled on his hand. “Is that safe?”

He turned as he walked. “Your hearing is better than mine. I’ll let you listen at the panel. We will only enter if you’re happy it's clear.”

My heart steadied. “And you think Hanin might be in there?”

“It is where I took Chaethor the night I stole her egg from him.” I felt his frustration and exasperation rise. “As much as I hope this isn’t about him and me, I cannot deny my part in his behaviour towards you.”

“It’s not your fault.”

Despair rolled over him, and I grimaced as I felt the full weight of it. Lang didn’t notice my expression, for he had already looked away. “Let’s just find him.”

Lang slowed us after only another minute, releasing my hand as he gestured for me to be quiet.

Oddly, he used the Euphon gesture, a splayed hand moving down.

I nodded. Achieving true silence would be hard with a damp and crusting skirt, but I did my best, rolling my sleeves up and then using one hand to pull my skirt up and out to the side, with the other ready to steady me or pull out the dragontooth if I needed it.

We approached the end of the hall, a tiny piece of light coming from the edges of a thick wooden panel. Lang gestured for me to go ahead, and I did, lightly stepping past him.

At the end, I slowly crouched, putting my ear up next to the panel as I held my skirt off the ground .

Nothing. I waited a solid minute, and then another. Lang did not move, nor gesture, only looking at me as I breathed steadily, keeping my ear to the wall.

Eventually, I signalled to Lang. I used the Euphon symbol for clear, and combined it with a nod to hopefully indicate what I meant.

He mimicked pushing the panel, and I moved back and pressed my hands to it, slowly pushing the wall. Even if there was no one in the room at that moment, that did not mean the guards were not listening for any disturbance.

Thankfully, the panel did not creak, and it opened near silently from behind one of the huge floor-length curtains.

I pushed the fabric away, revealing an empty room.

Skirts in hand, I clambered out from the panel set two feet above the marble floor and stared around.

Lang left the oil lamp on the floor and followed me, touching his hand to the small of my back as he moved past. His eyes narrowed as he ducked to check under the table.

“They’re not here.” It was an obvious statement, and yet I said it anyway, my voice barely more than a breath. Hanindred was still sleeping, his mind far from me.

Lang shook his head, letting a breath out in a hiss through gritted teeth. “Maybe we should check his quarters after all.”

I looked back at the wall panel, sat open.

With the curtain pulled away, the window showed the castle’s walls and the rooftops of the city beyond.

Between the reddish roofs and marble walls, canals slithered like dark roads, converging in the distance in the great water channels that would hug the tiny islands from here to the coast proper.

The twilight touched the water and mixed with the growing lamplight, scattering purple and white across the water top.

Only hours ago, I slept in preparation for a journey with my dragon and my closest friend, on a boat peeling across that lapping water, and now they were both gone, locked from me.

Lang groaned. I turned my face from the window and saw him staring at the floor, his hand balled into a fist.

“What is it?”

He shook his head. “It’s just as you said. I’m a monster.”

I took a step forwards. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Don’t.” He raised a hand, keeping me away and still not looking up.

I stilled, studying his tense form. “Lang.”