Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 140462 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 702(@200wpm)___ 562(@250wpm)___ 468(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140462 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 702(@200wpm)___ 562(@250wpm)___ 468(@300wpm)
The unbearable heat returned the moment I regained my smooth skin and fingers, but that only means I need to act fast. The door doesn’t seem to come with any handle though, and I growl, smacking my palm against it. The thing is so damn thick we barely hear any echo inside.
I’m about to complain when something clicks, and I put my ear against the cool surface.
“Does it work?” Sylvan asks, prompting me to look back his way. I haven’t paid attention to anything beyond the door itself, but far away from it, by the stairs, is a mechanism embedded in the floor. Sylvan puts his entire body weight on the lever attached to it, and the sharp noise is back.
I want to kiss him.
“That’s it! That must be the way to unlock the dungeon!”
“Come over. I need some of that superior strength.” He smiles at me—for the first time since the disaster with Lepearl and her kelpies.
Pride fills my chest, and I join him by the device, intent on moving the lever. When raw strength doesn’t do the trick, he admits he carries a bit of oil, to aid our lovemaking, and we use some of it on the mechanism. The process still takes a lot of effort, but the vault door finally cracks open, its lock released after at least a hundred years of inactivity.
Sylvan’s instinct is to crawl through it, but I keep him back and widen the gap leading into the dungeon before settling next to it and letting myself inspect the hidden space.
It’s cold and damp, but there is no life I can sense, just fungi, moss, and old bones.
Sylvan follows me, his cool fingers sliding into my hand. My whole being knows he belongs at my side, and yet he will leave me in this cold prison. He has to. I want that for his own safety. Every minute he’s still here feels stolen.
I need him as far away from the Nocturne Court as possible, so he can live a good life, and maybe sometimes think back to me, smiling.
The massive chamber has a tall, vaulted ceiling, and Sylvan slips out of my grasp to light all the swamplight torches by the rows of cells. Behind thick metal bars, corpses have long been devoured by time, leaving behind only bones and chains. I can’t help but stop to stare at the skeleton of a creature with a canine skull and a humanoid body.
Will this be me in two hundred year’s time?
Sylvan grabs a torch and walks across the stone floor, all the way to the end of the long corridor of cells.
“There should be… Aha! Hawk, you need to see this!”
Just as I walk up to him, he lowers the torch, and a massive firepit lights up with green flames, revealing what’s at the very end of this dungeon.
A mosaic covers a whole wall, depicting men and wolves. Some chained, some cowering under waterfalls. In the center of the image is a large pipe in the shape of a dragon’s head.
“And down here,” Sylvan says, leading me to a part of the floor covered with a round slab of metal roughly the size of a small car. “Is where they brought feral werewolves. Help me open it.”
Unlike the vault door to the prison, this covering isn’t that hard to lift, and what’s revealed is a three foot-deep, rounded hole. The mosaic here is colorful, and not stained by years of dust the way the walls are. If this small pool wasn’t located in a dungeon, it would fit right in at a luxury spa in my world. At least that’s how those places look in the movies. The closest to a spa I’ve ever been to was the gay sauna in Boston, and that had… a bit of a different atmosphere.
I exhale and stare at the metal covering. “Do you… want to lock me in here?”
He frowns, as if I hurt him by even voicing my question. “No. First, we will turn on the water to cool you down,” he says and puts the back of his hand against my arm. “Then—”
I meet his gaze. “Then, you must leave. I’m not joking, Sylvan. If I hurt you, I will never forgive myself.”
He’s silent for a while, so beautiful with the green light dancing on his skin. “I will leave. I will lock the vault door behind me. T-to not starve, you will need to turn into the Sunwolf,” he mutters.
My lips quirk into a smile despite the hole inside my chest. I know this will be for the best, even if spending an unpredictable amount of time on my own, underground, sounds like torture. But if my mind gives in to the creature I’ve invited inside me, it won’t matter any longer.
I’ve had a pretty good run after all.