“Stop fighting!” His voice trembles with exertion. “Or I’ll hurt you so badly you’ll wish you were dead.”
I don’t doubt him. Blood pounds through my skull, but I won’t back down. I pry at his hands. I claw. I kick. I clamp my lips together so I don’t mouth, Please. I won’t beg. He won’t steal my self-respect, as well as my graces.
“Um, Bastien?” Marcel says with nail-biting sluggishness. “I think she understands your point now.”
Bastien’s grip hardens. My eyes water. I fear my neck might break. Maybe he’ll end my life right now. I dare you, I think, even while my head prickles on the verge of unconsciousness. If he kills me, he’ll die with me.
“Merde,” he says, as if he’s had the same thought. He releases my throat.
I collapse and suck in burning mouthfuls of air. Before I’ve a chance to recover, he lugs me up again and hauls me forward. We trip forward a few feet, and the ground steeply declines. My legs are knee-deep in wild grass; this isn’t a catacombs entrance. We’re moving down the side of some kind of cliff or ravine. Before the terrain levels out, my left foot plummets into a burrow. “Put the other foot in there.” Bastien shoves me. “That’s the entrance. We’ve arrived.”
I try to scramble away, but he grabs me and holds me still. I jerk against his grip. “All right,” I say, “I’m going.” He slowly releases me, but the warmth from his body still hovers nearby. I square my jaw. Bastien thinks I’m nothing without my graces. I’ll prove he’s wrong and hasn’t stripped me of my courage.
I place both feet in the hole and kneel to slip in headfirst.
“No, feetfirst or you’ll get caught inside,” he says, and I suppress a growl. If this is a trick, I’ll make him suffer for it.
I take one last breath of fresh air and drink in what I can of the moonlight. I pray its cool energy will be trapped beneath my skin long enough to help me survive the darkness.
I slither into the hole.
The space is tight. I’m forced to shimmy in on my back. My head slides in last, and I swallow hard. I’ve wriggled through small tunnels before. The caves beneath Château Creux are riddled with them. But I never did so feetfirst and trapped between three people who want me dead.
“In thirty feet, you’ll feel another hole, the opening of a side tunnel,” Bastien tells me. He sounds irritated, like it chafes him to offer me assistance.
I yank my blindfold off so it hangs around my neck. My surroundings are still dark and smothering. I squirm downward at a diagonal angle until I find the branching tunnel. I shove my legs in, but the tunnel angles upward, opposite the way I’m trying to slide through. Panic builds inside me like growing thunder. I start to whimper. I never whimper.
Laughter echoes, but I can’t tell from which direction. “It’s fun to hear you struggle,” a husky yet feminine voice calls. Jules. “But now I’m bored, so here’s the secret: move down past the second tunnel, then climb back up and go through it headfirst.”
I close my eyes against the blow of my own stupidity. Why didn’t I think of that? I’ve been held underwater by a tiger shark and confined in cramped snow caves in the north, but I’ve never panicked like this and lost my right mind.
I take a calming breath and follow Jules’s instructions. At least I’m sliding forward on my elbows now, rather than creeping backward. About fifteen feet later, I emerge from the second tunnel into a larger place where I’m able to stand.
Unlike in the tunnels beneath Château Creux, the air is warm here with none of the coolness from the sea. I blink and try to adjust my eyes to the darkness without my keen peregrine falcon vision. Some tunnels under Château Creux are dim—even black, if you go deep enough. But they’re not this black. Nothing could be darker or more unfathomable. I feel Elara’s Light already leaching from my body, and my natural strength fading with it.
A terrible pang of loneliness squeezes my chest, even though I’m not alone. I miss Sabine. I could endure this if she were here with me.
A thump comes from behind. “Why haven’t you lit the lamps, Jules?” Bastien says. Swish, pat, flick. He must be brushing dust from his clothes.