The chamber is exactly as she left it, though the golden glow of the candle where it has come to a precarious stop clashes with the faint luminescence of the stream. Treila can only see the blue light at the far end of the little cave, where the candlelight begins to fail. Otherwise, it is erased by more aggressive yellow. She lowers herself down to the narrow bank, righting her candle as she passes.

She dresses this time. Single stocking, smalls, boots, chemise, kirtle, apron, even cap. It cuts the chill, and she has been below the earth long enough to appreciate the barrier, now. Her skin is gooseflesh all over, scraped and raw, and she realizes, as she puts herself back together, that her heart is racing.

Her gaze fixes on the crack.

It is innocuous, in the light. A little line of darkness. There’s no obvious path forward; no spidering accessory cracks, no widening a little ways up that she missed in her panic. But Treila takes her time, even turns her back on it to scan the far wall for a matching exit; perhaps the air flows in and out down here, and the breeze she feels back in her workroom is only an echo.

But no. There is only the one crack. Wherever the water goes from here, Treila cannot find it.

So she approaches the crack.

It doesn’t whisper to her. It remains only stone, even as Treila reaches behind her, fumbles, grabs up the unmelting wax and manages to singe the pad of her palm for the trouble. She brings the candle to the crack, and hopes that her desperate madwoman’s heresy can reveal a way forward.

It’s still too narrow to admit her whole hand, but the candle is as slender as a finger, and she feeds it into the darkness. A little farther in, she sees the passage widen again. And then she has reached the limit of the candle. She draws it back and tries to think. If she can find the tools, she can break this thin ridge of stone and get through, but she told Phosyne the truth: she doesn’t think any pick has survived the Priory’s requisitions, and what remains (swords, armor, arrowheads) will not be strong enough for this.

So much for the flame revealing anything useful.

Frustrated, she turns back to the tunnel that will return her to the castle, but one glance of the flame off the close walls has her heart hammering again. She dunks the candle in the stream. The cavern plunges into its almost-darkness, and now she is lit only by the steady, unnatural glow of the water. Her fear ebbs.

She rubs the heels of her hands against her eyes and lets out a creaking laugh. Her confidence wavers, threatens to crack beneath the absurdity of her situation, the desperation.