Page 78 of Hallowed Games
Now, he was lost to us.My head was hammering, thundering.
No, it was a great pounding on the door, and I turned, teary-eyed, to see the wood splintering above us. It looked like someone was taking a battering ram to the great dungeon door. Was I imagining this?
Lydia yanked me up by my elbow, and I stood, huddled against her. A fist shot through the thick wood, blood streaking his knuckles and wrist. Brutally, someone was tearing at the door from the outside until nothing remained of it and the door came off its hinges.
Through the puff of smoke, I saw Maelor. His robe hung open, and blood poured down the front of him. His shirt lay torn, ripped open where he’d been stabbed. His piercing, pale eyes took in the scene, and screams erupted in the dungeon. To them, Maelor looked terrifying right now—a man standing when he should be dead. A man capable of tearing through a fortified door with his bare hands.
“The trial is over,” he bellowed. “Get back to your rooms. Take the stairs up to the courtyard and find your way back. The Magister Solaris will make sure you end up locked in your rooms again, so don’t try to run.”
He was here to save us, but he looked so inhuman now, still standing despite his horrible wound.
I staggered to my feet. “Come on! We need to get out of here. Do as the Raven Lord says. The trial is over.”
Maelor slipped back out into the torchlit corridor, and I found him there, leaning against the stone wall, clutching his chest. I sidled up to him, grabbing him around the waist to help support him. But dizziness was swirling in my thoughts, too. Neither of us was in great shape.
As the other Penitents slipped past us, I huddled against him, coughing. “Maelor, what the hell is happening?”
“I’m ending the trial.”
We were the last ones left, hobbling along. Down here, it was a network of dark tunnels spiderwebbing beneath the castle, and he led me into a narrow passage. There were no torches in here, and I couldn’t see a thing.
“Should I return to my room like the others?” Coughs racked my chest, and I doubled over. I gripped my stomach. “I feel sick.” My head throbbed, and I wheezed with every breath.
“You sucked in too much smoke.”
Nausea climbed up my throat, and I stumbled. Maelor scooped me up, pulling me against his chest.
My lungs weren’t working properly, and my breathing rasped.“Are you all right?”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said quietly. “You were right, love. You need to find a way out. This is all my fault.”
My eyes were drifting closed. “Why would it be yours?”
“The Pater hates you. He suspects someone helped you after the first trial. He won’t kill you yet, though. But the failure in Eboria set him off. He knows someone at a high level sent warnings to the independent city. And now he knows I’m a vampire.”
I laid my head against his chest. He smelled intoxicating. Even injured as he was, he still made me feel safe with his powerful arms wrapped around me.
He walked only a few feet before he stopped in his tracks. He muttered something in Lirion, and his muscles tensed.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I hear Luminari coming. The Pater is trying to kill me, and I’ll need to hide somewhere for a few minutes.”
My mouth felt watery. “What happened?”
He turned down another narrow tunnel, carrying me swiftly through the darkness. “He’s upset about Eboria. He suspected I was a traitor, and that was confirmed fifteen minutes ago when I slaughtered twenty of his Luminari to get down to you.” Under the soft velvet of his voice, I could hear the strain in his throat.
We stopped in front of a heavy wooden door, and he glanced behind him. He gently let me down, and I leaned against a stone wall as he opened the door. As it groaned open, orange light beamed out.
I followed him into a stone room of flickering torchlight. It was a small underground temple with a row of whispering chambers.
Maelor turned, quietly dropping the iron bar over the door to lock anyone else out.
I wavered on my feet, surveying the space. Instead of an oculus and torchbearers, a round chandelier hung from the ceiling, flickering with lit torches. A pit in the center sheared down deep into the earth. It seemed the maddening face of the Archon dwelled even in the dungeons.
Dizzy, I dropped to the floor, lying flat on my back. The flagstones chilled my skin through my thin shirt. Standing above me, Maelor pulled off his cloak and laid it on the ground next to me. He scooped me up again, shifting me onto his soft, sandalwood-scented cloak.
“Do you think they saw us?” My speech sounded slow, confused.