Bounty Claimed (Solstice Huntress Book 2) by Lindsey Devin

Author:Lindsey Devin [Devin, Lindsey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

12

We stepped quietly out of Corbin’s room and into the cold halls of the palace. There was still a flurry of activity at the far end of the hall, with servants rushing in and out, and between storerooms and the kitchen. We weren’t going that way, though. Corbin led me down the hall and around a corner, where it narrowed suddenly and somehow grew even colder. The ceilings were so high I could hardly see the beams at the top, and the cold air seemed to weigh on me, like I was moving through freezing cold water.

I’d thought a palace, even a weird shiny black one like this, would be lush and filled with expensive, fine things. Plush rugs, statues, portraits, things like that. If this castle was decorated at all, it wasn’t here where the servants ran the show. I stuck close to Corbin’s side.

At the end of the narrow hallway was another immense door, tall and wooden with a metal lock like the one on Corbin’s door. He placed his hand on the wood of the door, murmured a low incantation, and pushed it open.

“Oh, come on,” I muttered. “Don’t tell me the workshop is down there.”

“What, are you scared?” Corbin teased.

“Personally, if I needed to see a healer, I wouldn’t trust any healer that worked down stairs like these.”

“This isn’t the workshop you go to when you’re still standing,” Corbin noted. “That’s elsewhere.”

I cringed. “Ah.”

The doorway opened to the most unwelcoming staircase I’d ever seen in my life. It was steep and narrow, so we’d have to walk single-file, and the stone walls were illuminated with small torches that cast such deep, ugly shadows, it’d actually be better if I had to stumble down in the dark. The rough stone surfaces of the stairs were eroded by years of footsteps. Whose, though, I didn’t want to think.

I followed Corbin into the stairwell and the door swung closed behind us, as if of its own volition. I jumped a little and gripped the back of his shirt. “I feel like I’m in a damn haunted house,” I muttered.

“That’s not completely inaccurate,” he said. “Come on.”

The staircase wound down, down, down until my calves were aching from the descent and I felt like I was deeper than the Den. Finally, we reached the landing, and another great door, which Corbin opened with a brief incantation. He peered through suspiciously, then nodded at me and stepped through.

“Great,” I whispered. It was as silent as a grave. “Another hallway.”

A squeak ripped through the silence like a bullet, and I jumped again, biting back my own shriek as I pressed to Corbin’s back. The offending rat darted across the hard-packed dirt floor and disappeared into a crack into the wall.

“Guess some things transcend realms, huh?” I cringed as another huge, fat rat scuttled along the edge of the wall and then disappeared into a different crack. “Can’t get rid of rats even here.”

“Shh,” Corbin said.

Well, that made me nervous. Why did we need to be quiet? But now that he’d shushed me, I wasn’t going to ask.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.