Page 65 of Down Comes the Night

Side by side, they approached the tapestry. Hal pulled it back, allowing Wren to squeeze through with the light. As she stepped into a corridor as dark as sin, the temperature dropped—a gradual slither across her body, like sinking into cold water. Her breath unfurled in white, uneven bursts.

Here was a place people went and never returned.

There was nothing here but furniture covered in white tarps, but a sensation settled beneath her skin like a too-deep splinter, and her magic buzzed, tinny and frantic, from her eardrums to her fingertips. It was a familiar, unnerving pressure. A whisper against the back of her neck. All her life, she’d been attuned to suffering, to the sour smell of fear and rot. This feeling, this undeniable empathy, had once compelled her to heal that boy with the broken arm. And now, it compelled her so strongly, she was paralyzed with fear.What happened here?

It felt like being on a battlefield all over again. Her throat constricted with panic.

“Do you feel that?” she whispered. “It feels like… someone else is here. Someone hurting.”

Hal appeared beside her, his voice almost soothing. “No. I only feel you.”

“Right.” Maybe it was nothing but stubborn hope, another trick of her addled mind. She couldn’t trust herself anymore. Wren rubbed her arms as if the friction could warm her. “We should keep going.”

To their left, an avalanche of loose brick blocked off what was once a narrow, spiraling staircase leading to the turret. So Lowry wasn’t lying abouteverything.Overhead, she could see an uneven slice of night sky and the snow whirling against it. No wonder it was so freezing.

There was nowhere to go but forward.

In a matter of strides, she hit a dead end. Her candelabra flooded the grout with wicked orange light. The so-called east wing was little more than an antechamber with no outlet. But it couldn’t be. She’d seen Lowry emerging with a sewn-up wound on his arm herself. They didn’t have time to waste, didn’t have time to search. While she’d confirmed Lowry was in his quarters, the possibility of him walking in made her edgy and anxious. Hal, meanwhile, calmly paced the length of the room. He placed his feet carefully onto each square tile on the floor.

“What’re you doing?”

He ignored her, and Wren glared at his back. During their earlier healing sessions, he sometimes avoided talking to her by pretending to be asleep or looking puzzled by her accent.

Under her breath, she muttered, “I know you understand me, Cavendish.”

He stopped dead in the center of the room. Kneeling down, he wedged his fingers beneath a stone tile, which slid away with a rasping grind. It looked as if he’d opened a portal into the Otherworld.

“How… did you find that?”

“There’re no rooms adjacent to this one, and the only way up has been destroyed. And this tile sounded hollow.”

“Of course it did.” She approached him and peered down at thechasm, barely wide enough to fit her shoulders through. When she bent down, the candlelight illuminated the shape of a ladder, rough and flaky with corrosion. Her magic churned even more restlessly within her.

“I’ll go first,” he said.

Although she wouldn’t admit it, she appreciated the gesture. The darkness beneath her felt hungry and endless past the reach of the flames. When Hal finished climbing down, she passed the candelabra to him and lowered herself onto the first step of the ladder. Her sweat-slick skin clung to the frigid metal, and she hissed in pain as she peeled it free. Rung by rung, she descended into the earth.

When Wren reached the bottom, she smelled wet rock and sweet ether, both dulled by the chill. They stood at the beginning of a tunnel that sloped deeper into the ground. Copper wires shone in the candlelight, and when Wren placed her hand against the wall, she found a switch. The lights strung overhead stuttered and buzzed, illuminating a path forward in flickering bursts. With every step, her heart rate accelerated. What waited for them at the end? Wren often thought the war had shown her the worst of the world, but now she couldn’t be certain. Was it worse for a murderer to hide behind the uniform of a soldier or a gentleman?

At the end of the passage was a locked door, reinforced with an iron frame. As the unsteady lights plunged them into darkness again, Wren held up the candles. Orange firelight flooded into the keyhole. “Damn it.”

They were soclose.They couldn’t fail now.

She threw her shoulder against it, but it did not yield. The force rattled her bones. She surged forward again, but Hal caught her by the arm before she made contact with the wall.

“You’re going to hurt yourself.” Although his grip was firm, his voice was surprisingly gentle. “We’ll have to come back with the key.”

“There’s no way we’ll get another chance! How are we going to find the exact key in this enormous house before he’s onto us?”

“We will. As long as we leave everything untouched, he won’t notice anything amiss. There’s always another chance.”

How she yearned for that to be true. Judging by the quiet determination in his voice, Wren supposed he did, too. But in this dark place, she couldn’t force optimism. Not when Byers might be suffering just beyond this door. Not when so much counted on finding concrete, damning evidence.

They trudged back to the ladder in silence. Wren handed Hal the candelabra and began to climb.

Halfway up, she paused. The wind keened as it swept through the room, but if she strained to hear over it, there were muffled voices filtering in from the grand hall. Like a horse kicked to a canter, her heartbeat quickened until she felt woozy with dread. If they were discovered here, everything would be undone.

“Don’t move,” she whispered to Hal. “I think I hear something.”