Deepest and Darkest (Wraithwood Academy Book 4) by Teresa Hann

Author:Teresa Hann [Hann, Teresa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-01-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

It was slower this time, climbing down the ravine I’d originally pitched down half-dead with Arcturus’s sword in my chest. But it wasn’t a difficult climb. One lip of the ravine was partially collapsed, as I remembered, providing a convenient slope of scree to scramble down. We passed bands of dried, crusted salt on the ravine walls as we descended—they marked waterlines from the seawater’s retreat.

Once we reached the bottom, I led the way, walking along the ravine with one hand pressed to its stony vertical side, feeling for a change in the surface.

Abruptly, stone changed to cool, smooth metal. The door to my father’s research lab had been enchanted to look like the surrounding rock, but my sense of touch didn’t lie. “Here,” I said. I groped for the keyhole, and found it. With a click, my key slid home. I turned it.

A rush of stale air hit our faces as I swung the door open, the tang of alchemy mingling with an undertone of sickly decay. “Whoa,” said Darshan, raising a conjured ball of light to illuminate the darkness within.

The others stepped inside; I brought up the rear, so I could maneuver our floating platform through the doorway. As eerie as the lab was, it was probably the safest place we had to stay in tonight, protected by heavy doors and top-grade enchantments.

None of the flooding that had gone on outside had touched the perfectly sealed interior of Priam Redbriar’s lab. Everything was as I remembered it from half a year ago. The dust. The piles of notebooks and specimens. The broken jars littered across the cement floor, shards and dried puddles of residue gleaming stickily in the light, without any seawater to wash them clean.

The—

The room spun. Darshan caught me as I stumbled.

“Oh, fuck,” I rasped. “I need a moment.”

I’d forgotten. I’d forgotten that the floor would still be splattered from my blood, from when I first dragged myself through those doors, a sword wound in my chest.

The stains were almost black in the summoned light, stark against the smooth floor, left pristine and untouched in the abandoned lab after half a year. The sight of them had sent me straight into the past, to the closest I’d come to death. Betrayed and abandoned in the Hells. Bleeding out in agony.

Darshan’s arms were tight around me as I fought to control my shaking. I hated that I was freaking out like this, where everyone could see. Where Arcturus could see. But I couldn’t look away from that trail of my own blood—

Darshan’s hand came over my eyes, cool and strong. “Cass, breathe. I’m so sorry.”

Right. Breathing.

“Breathe,” Darshan said again, quietly. I touched my hand to his, needing him to ground me. “Breathe.”

I heard Arcturus’s voice, stiff, controlled. “I will remove myself to examine the back shelves.”

He was taking himself out of my line of sight. “That would be a good idea,” Darshan said, his voice edged with a barely suppressed harshness I’d never heard before.

It made me feel a little better, despite myself.

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