“Whaddya know.” Malachite frowns. “A nice staircase leading down into the earth. Well, uh, not-earth. Sky-island earth.” He pauses. “Hey, what happens if we fall through and die?”

“We fall through and die,” Fione deadpans.

“At least it’s an interesting way to go,” I encourage him with a thump on the back.

Lucien’s the first to walk in, and Fione and I move in after him, Malachite on uneasy rear point.

Just past the mouth of the stairs, the dirt quickly becomes curved stone, perfectly round, as if a tower’s been pressed down into the earth and excavated on the inside. No doubt made by magic, though Malachite comments it’s very good stonework. And coming from his Dark-Below-dwelling arse, that means something.

“Old Vetrisian,” Fione murmurs, running a hand along the granite. “All of it.”

The Weeping leaves me in increments—the blood tears of resistance growing cold and then stopping all at once. The clear, perfect clarity in my head grows the fuzz of emotion and thought again. The world comes back to being just two—left eye and right eye—and I wipe my red-streaked face on my sleeve.

Torches dot the walls down here every so often—black fire with no color to it at all. Which I find odd, considering every variation of witchfire I’ve seen so far has had a different hue to it, based on the witch. Or so I think. Lucien’s is faintly purple. His black-purple flames engulfed South Gate weeks ago. It battled Varia and the Bone Tree’s white light on the mountain peak. Varia’s witchfire was faintly green. Nightsinger’s was gray on the edges. The only time I’ve seen pure black fire was when Gavik made that fake witchfire to scare the populace of Vetris. But this fire is no fake—it sputters and gouts, eating no fuel at all considering the torch heads are completely bare and made of metal.

Actually, now that I think about it, it’s the same pure black witchfire that lit up Y’shennria’s apartments, and I begin to feel uneasy. What witch is powerful enough to keep so many torches burning, over such a distance? The High Witches, maybe?

Can they keep an eye on us through their fire?

“Where are we going, Lucien?” Fione asks suddenly. “This place—it hasn’t been touched in a long time.”

She’s right. There’s no dust, but the feel of the air is stale and heavy. The prince suddenly freezes on the steps, his head darting up, up to the stone steps above us and the surface beyond that.

“Something knows we’re here,” he says.

“Well, we did destroy their possibly magic door-tree,” I hum.

“Something?” Malachite asks. “Or someone?”

Lucien doesn’t answer. He grabs my hand instead, pulling me farther down the dark depths of the stairs.

“Come. Quickly. Ready your weapons. Malachite, watch the walls.”