Page 62 of Sinful Curses
Her heart warmed so much that it took a few seconds to look away from him. Zeth and Elsa lay on their sides with their backs to each other as they slept beneath their blankets. Loth and Fath were snoring at the foot of those blankets.
Sahira searched for Pip before discovering her burrowed into one of Orin’s shirts near his head. She lay on her stomach with her hands tucked beneath her head. Her whiskers twitched like she was dreaming of something; with a small sigh, she settled again.
Unable to ignore her bladder anymore, Sahira trudged upstairs to the bathroom. She could use one of the downstairs rooms, and she really should see the symbol, but it would still be there when she finished, and the possibility of a shower was far more alluring than those aggravating symbols.
In the upstairs bathroom, she was happy to discover the water worked, and after using the toilet, she took a hot shower. Resting her hands against the wall, she let it stream down on her back as she drank the liquid spilling between her lips.
The heat and beat of the shower helped ease some of the tension in her muscles but didn’t get rid of it all. Still, she stayed in it for longer than normal.
When she finished, she stepped from the shower and searched for a towel, but there weren’t any. Sahira leaned over the shower drain and twisted her hair to squeeze the water from it the best she could.
As she worked, she became increasingly chilled while dripping dry, and goose bumps covered her arms. Finally, she used her shirt to dry herself before reluctantly tugging her dirty clothes back on.
Later, when everyone was awake, she’d wash her clothes and take another shower, but for now, this was the best she could do. With her clothes cleaving uncomfortably to her still-damp skin, Sahira left the bathroom and walked over to the banister to look down at the pub.
The others remained sleeping below. Orin hadn’t moved and was only ten feet away from Zeth and Elsa. No furniture of any kind filled the room. Behind the bar, the shelves lining the mirror were empty; not a single bottle sat on them.
Dust covered everything, and footprints swirled through the layer coating the floor. Most were from them, but one set tracked toward the alcove where the other bathrooms and the symbol were.
She didn’t recall anyone going back there when they arrived, but she’d been so out of it that it could have happened without her knowing or while she was closing the windows up here. Anyone could have also gotten up to use the bathroom while she slept.
Sahira turned away and entered the room that was hers in Belda’s pub. It was barren, something she vaguely recalled from her last time here.
She remembered closing the shutters but was surprised to see them bolted into place. She’d been so out of it that she wasn’t sure if she recalled doing it or hallucinated the whole thing.
Running her fingers across the floor, she undid her protective spell before finding the hidden panel and lifting it away to reveal the stone stairs below. She was pretty sure she’d gone down there last night but not certain.
Sahira descended into the darkness; she’d become familiar enough with the hidden passage to have her instincts guide her. Reaching the bottom of the steps, she strode over to the wall.
Her fingers skimmed the cool rocks until she found the button to open the door. She pressed down until it clicked, and the door swung open to reveal bleak, black rock for as far as she could see.
The depressing view caused her to close the door. Once it shut, she tried opening a portal and failed again. She retreated upstairs, settled the panel back into place, and weaved a more intricate protective spell over it.
Feeling defeated, she stared at the panel as she tried to understand what they were doing as they traveled through hellish places only to discover one increasingly lacking town after another. Was this what they would experience for an eternity?
No, they wouldn’t, but simply because they couldn’t go for that long, especially without an adequate food supply, which they didn’t have. They could keep moving and probably find another one of these towns with even less to offer them.
We should have stayed in Belda’s town.
She couldn’t deny it might have been better for them to have done so, but as disheartened as she was by all this, they’d done the right thing. She’d rather be here, without answers butdoingsomething, than there.
If they’d remained in Belda’s town, she would have spent every day questioning if they were making a mistake by staying. She’d also still be surrounded by witches and warlocks who hated her.
At least, out here, no one despised her simply because she existed. She’d take endless hunger over those jackasses any day.
And so far, she had discovered one answer, which was more than she had at Belda’s. They’d traveled out from there and had uncovered nothing to help them break free of the Cursed Realm.
Sahira left the room and descended to the floor below. Everyone remained asleep, and Loth’s snores sounded like a miniature owl calling to its owlets.
She crept past them and on toward the alcove. Her skin crawled, and for some reason, she didn’t want to see the symbol but had to know if it was different too.
CHAPTERFIFTY-FOUR
She frozewhen she saw the symbol etched into the wall between the two bathrooms. Like the last symbol, the top arrow lay next to the figure eight, but now, the middle arrow had been etched across it to form an X beside the hourglass.
The dark coloring that marked the top of the etching in the brownies’ town now shaded the middle half of the figure eight. The top quarter of the symbol was once again only a wall with no shading.
It’s sand moving through an hourglass, and the sand shifts lower as each arrow is removed.
