I scrunched up my face, reminding myself that this was the perfect setup for a horror movie where the blonde rushed headfirst into the serial killer’s arms and got her ass murdered.
It wasn’t a cave, after all. It was a tunnel with a light at the end that continued to call me forward. Once I was through the opening, I peered out at vast greenery that looked like something out of a fantasy movie. Waterfalls covered high cliffs, pooling into lazy creeks that ran through the meadow in which I lazily walked across.
In the distance sat an eerie-looking castle that reflected the sun’s last light as the red sunset splashed across the sky. The angle of the palace made it look as if it had been bathed in blood, and the closer I got, the more I realized it might be.
Bodies lay strewn all over the meadow in varying stages of decay. Tilting my head, I knelt down, studying the silverish white hair of a corpse before touching it. Seelie? My gaze slowly moved over the remains of the dead to the large, elegantly built palace, and I smirked.
“Asher, you naughty boy,” I whispered, heading in the path the bodies seemed to have come. I reached a trail that led beside the fortress and deeper into the city I could see beyond it. At the end of the trail was a large, round pit that sat dead in the middle of town. It looked as if it went on forever into the earth. Something called me to it, something I couldn’t understand, and yet everything inside of me said to take a leap of faith. “Bottoms up,” I said, dropping into the pit.
I landed hard, falling on a rotting corpse before I pushed off the ground, staring at piles of bodies in varying states of decay. “What kind of idiot listens to the voices in a pit of death?” My hands balled tightly into fists at my sides, and I closed my eyes.
I moved to sift and opened my eyes, noting I was still in the pit. I peered into the dark cave that sat inside the hole I’d dropped into. The hair on my neck rose as something watched me from the shadows, peering at me as if it saw directly through me.
My feet stopped before I could enter the cave, spinning around in a circle as I took in the strange writing on the walls, written in crusted blood. More corpses sat staring lifelessly up at the sky, as if they’d wished to feel the sun on their flesh, even in death.
“Not good,” I stated to the dead.
I turned away from them, rushing toward the light. The hair on my neck rose again as I felt eyes continuing to watch me. Edging away from the cave, I walked back to the center of the pit and stared up the moment I was back in the light fed by the opening of the hole in the middle of town. I released the breath I’d been holding. Ryder stared down at me, smiling. His men were beside him, peering down at where I stood.
“Problem, Synthia?” he asked, studying me carefully.
“Not at all,” I lied through chattering teeth as the sensation of being watched refused to lessen.
“Good, because you’re staying here for a while,” he growled, inspecting me as his gaze burned with anger.
“You’re an asshole,” I muttered. “You realize I can climb out, right? That was a requirement to enter your fake palace. Don’t you recall my first mission, where I had to climb the walls of the Dark Tower to get your crown?”
“Try it. Go ahead. We’ll wait.” Crouching on to his haunches, he continued staring down at me with a wicked grin as his men looked cautiously from him to me.
I cracked my neck and jumped to the first outstretch of dirt, only for my hands to slip through it. I surveyed the pit, noting it was all fucking dirt. I moved to the next part, jumping and digging my nails into the earth, hoisting myself up before I continued to the next