Page 27 of Unseen Lord

We renewed our efforts and after a what felt like forever, our hard work paid off. I sat on my knees, exhausted and covered in dirt. We had found a secret door leading somewhere beneath the dungeons. It was locked, and so I tried my key, mostly expecting it to fail. But to my surprise, we heard a click and a shift of metal. "Holy hell balls, I think it worked."

Devon leaned over and pulled on the latch, disrupted the dirt stuck in cracks and crevices that hands alone couldn't remove. It clearly hadn't been opened in who knows how many years, and yet the metal was rust free. Magic had its uses.

A ladder descended from the door's edge into a dark abyss. Devon held up his hand and manifested a ball of white light.

"Neat trick," I said, impressed.

He shrugged. "Everyone at my school can do stuff like this. I'm not that special."

There was a bitterness in his voice I hadn't noticed before, but I shrugged it off. Who didn't feel a twinge of insecurity now and then? Especially at our age.

"Well, I think it's pretty cool. I don't have any fun magical abilities," I said, letting my own resentment leak through my words.

Devon smiled at me, his dimple melting my insides. "You don't need them. Youarethe magic."

No one had ever spoken to me like that, and it filled me with a special kind of pride and glow that I'd never had before.

"Ladies first?" he said, gesturing to the darkness.

"Age before beauty," I teased, trying not to let my nerves show.

There was a reason Uncle Sly kept this hidden. A reason it wasn't part of my training.

A twinge of uncertainty ran up my spine, and I shivered. My gut said to turn and go, but I couldn't disappoint Devon.

With a sigh I didn't let escape my lips, I led the way, taking tentative steps down the ladder. Devon's ball of light stayed with us, but the darkness was so thick, almost soup-like, that the magical rays only illuminated a small sphere around us. So I could only see a few steps below me.

I fought of visions of monsters leaping from the depths of the dark to grab my feet with sharp teeth and pull me into hell. My heart pounded and sweat beaded on my skin. I breathed through it. I was training to be a Hunter. I would need to face much scarier situations than this. I'd already faced scarier situations, I reminded myself, thinking of the girl I thought a friend, who nearly killed me in the end. I shivered and hoped there wouldn't be any spiders down here. They were the only things I was truly scared of. Uncle Sly said I needed to face my fears, work through them. I told them it was a fear because Ihadfaced them. I don't need a rehash of that traumatic moment, thank you very kindly.

"Can you see anything?" Devon asked in a whisper that seemed to die on his lips. It's as if the air around us swallowed all sound along with the light. It was a hungry darkness, consuming everything in its wake. Would it consume us as well?

"Nothing yet," I said, pushing a false bravery into my voice that I so did not feel. Hey, fake it till you make it, right?

He didn't say anything after that, and we kept climbing down.

My arms shook and my hands became slick with sweat, making my grip on the rope ladder tenuous at best. I wasn't tired, per se. I trained hard physically and had done much more demanding labors than this. But the adrenaline, nerves, fear and anticipation were building in me and creating an unstable cocktail in my body. I didn't like the feeling.

In the oppressive silence Devon's breath seemed muted, but mine practically screamed in my own head, filling me with a dread I couldn't easily define. The end of the ladder arrived before any definable landing spot did, and I hung there, unsteady, unsure what to do next.

"Why'd you stop?" Devon asked.

"There's no more ladder," I said, trying to keep my voice calm.

"Then drop the rest of the way," he said.

"Are you mad? I can't even see the bottom. Best case scenario I break my leg. Worst case, I die and my body rots here for all eternity."

"I'm sure it will be fine. Why would your uncle have a way into this place if it wasn't effective?"

My voice became pinched in irritation. "Maybe he hasn't been down here in ages and doesn't realize the ladder broke. Maybe he has another way in and this way is for fools who flirt with an early death. It was a bit too easy to break into, don't you think?"

"Not really," Devon said. "You have that key. How many other people have a key like that?"

"No one," I admitted. "I mean, Uncle Sly has a Skeleton Key to everything, but this key has other special abilities." I'd already said too much about something that was supposed to be a secret. Or at least treated with a certain level of caution. I clamped my mouth shut, irritated at myself for confiding so much.

Devon sighed. "Maybe I can help." He paused, going still. I watched him from below, not catching a lot of what he was doing, but I did see when Pitch, his black raven, appeared before him. "Pitch, fly down there and scope it out for us, will you?"

Pitch, seeming to understand him, flew past me in a whoosh. He flapped his wings hard, apparently affected by the heaviness of this dark air, just as we were.