I like this, he admits.
You like what?
Us, studying our enemies, plotting out our next moves.
I frown, even though my heart speeds up.
The sorcerer stands, rescuing me from the moment. He moves to my door and tilts his head, studying the protective spells.
They shouldn’t have been able to get in here with all these wards in place. Memnon turns back to me. If I told you it wasn’t safe to stay here—
There is no way I am staying with you in that burnt husk of a house, I say.
If it weren’t burnt?
That would also be a no.
The sorcerer stares at me, eyes narrowed, for a long beat. Then he smiles, like he relishes my anger. Turning back to the door, he murmurs in Sarmatian, “Guard this door against all those who wish Selene harm.”
His indigo power flows out of him, spreading across the door as he adds yet another ward to the growing knot of them. The plumes of his magic condense into lines of what looks like writing. The markings glow as they sink into the frame of the door, then dim until all that remains is the barely perceptible sheen of the spell.
If you want to find out more about the people behind that note, then there’s one place we should definitely explore, Memnon says down our bond. The persecution tunnels.
CHAPTER 11
“This is not how I planned to spend my evening,” I say as the two of us enter the Ritual Room.
The windowless room, with its walls and ceiling painted black, was where coven sisters gathered for certain ceremonies. Currently, a circle of partially burned white candles sits at the center of the room, the box they came in pushed off to the side.
“Yes, well, mine didn’t quite look like this either.”
“How did your plans look?” I ask Memnon curiously.
“I expected to be enjoying the fruits of my vengeance. Namely, I thought I’d be married to you and well on my way to eating your pussy out.”
I make a face as I step up to the spelled wall, shivering a little at the thought. I’d like to say the shiver comes from a deep-rooted fear, but that’s not true. Mostly, I’m remembering what being married to the sorcerer was like, which mainly involved lots of love and good sex.
“I see you’re still deluded,” I say.
“Am I now?” he says behind me, and the mocking tone of his voice sets my teeth on edge. He and I both know I have a weakness for his mouth when it’s on certain unmentionable parts of me.
“I still cannot believe you proposed to me by threatening the lives of my friends. Talk about the least romantic proclamation of love.”
Memnon comes around to my front. “Yesterday, I sought revenge,” he says slowly, walking backward toward the far wall. “Today and for the rest of my life, I will seek to make you happy. If it’s romance you want from me,” he says, his eyes too bright, “then that’s what I will give you.”
I scowl. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Isn’t it?” he says. “You want a soul mate who can love you as you mean to be loved.”
I raise my eyebrows, trying to ignore the tug of those words. “This might come as a huge shock to you,” I say, “but I am actually fine not being in a relationship with anyone. Especially you.”
“Mmm,” he says noncommittally.
I can tell he’s disregarded my words as soon as he hears them.
Memnon turns to the wall and places a hand against it. “Ifakavek.”
Reveal.
The doorway fades away, exposing a hidden room and a spiral staircase that descends down from it. The two of us set that spell what feels like lifetimes ago. Good to know it still works.
The sorcerer steps through the opening, then glances back at me. “Coming, Empress?”
I cross the room and step into the small antechamber where the spiral staircase waits.
I turn to face the exposed wall.
“Buvekatapis,” I murmur.
Conceal.
And I seal us inside.
Unlike the last time I visited the persecution tunnels, I’m no longer afraid of what’s down here. Perhaps it’s because then, I was interested in running from those who had hurt me. Now I’m interested in finding them.
My gaze sweeps over the subterranean room where the spell circle was held only two weeks ago. It appears just as it had the last time we visited.
“What are we looking for down here?” I ask.
“Anything at all. We can start with figuring out where the witches entered from,” Memnon says. “The night of that circle, did you notice anyone in your house going to that room above us?”
“The Ritual Room?” I think back to the night in question. I’d waited in the library for Kasey. The rest of the house, however, had been quiet. I shake my head. “I don’t think so…
“Wait,” I say as something comes to me. “Some of the tunnels down here were lit.”
As opposed to right now, when the torches sitting in the sconces are dark.
“Then it’s possible they were meeting somewhere else and then entering these tunnels from that point.”
The trouble is there are so many tunnels that branch in all directions.
“Which way should we go?” I ask.
“I don’t think it matters, little witch.”
I can’t quite suppress the pleasant shiver that endearment evokes.
I decide to head down the same one I took when I last fled this room. We haven’t gone a hundred feet when the tunnel splits apart.
Did I go left or right last time? I’d been so hyped up on adrenaline, I don’t remember.
On a whim, I go right, Memnon close behind me. Then I make a left. Then a right. The torches hiss to life as we go. Eventually, we hit a staircase that lets out into the Everwoods.
We backtrack, then begin again. Ten minutes later, we hit another exit, this one leading into a crypt that smells like mold and old bones.
“Hey look,” I say, nodding to the stone coffin as I drag away a thick web. “It’s my second lover”—I squint at the name—“Ephigenia. I’ll wake her in another year when I get tired of you. I do so like burying my lovers.”
When I turn to look at Memnon, his face is displeased.
Too soon for jokes apparently.
We retrace our steps and try again, the torchlight making our shadows dance. The futility of what we’re doing is starting to set in. I don’t even know what we’re looking—
Thump.
The sound echoes off the walls from somewhere far ahead of us.
Memnon and I look at each other, then we both quicken our pace.
This is probably a bad idea, I say silently.
Don’t tell me you’ve lost all your courage now, est amage.
In the distance, the tunnel dimly glows, the light growing brighter the closer we get. Either we are recrossing our old tracks, or another person is down here.
If someone else is down here, we shouldn’t assume the worst of them, I caution. It could be literally anyone. Maybe Henbane’s staff uses these passageways.