I’d only gone a few feet into the corridor when the world turned from dark gray to as black as the coal Tobias Dawson had ripped out of the mountain. There was no light up ahead, nothing to help me see the dangers that waited. And I hadn’t escaped the dwarf only to break my leg and end up starving to death down here. So I reached for my Ice magic again. It came to me as easily as before, and I upped the intensity of the flames burning on my spider rune scars until I could see well enough to walk on. Around me, the stone muttered, sharp, angry, and hurt from all the upheaval it had seen today.

“Sorry,” I murmured to the rock. “I didn’t have a choice.”

My voice bounced against the stone and echoed back to me. The sound made me shiver, and I moved on, using my hands to light my way. The passageway grew narrower and narrower, until I had to turn sideways to shimmy through it. But I kept going. It wasn’t like I had a lot of other options. There was no going back. Only moving forward.

The passageway opened up again slightly, allowing me to walk through the area square on, instead of twisting from one side to the other. But twenty feet later, it narrowed again. I gritted my teeth and slipped sideways.

And so it went. Sometimes, I could walk through the corridors with ease. Sometimes, I had to turn sideways.

Other times, I had to suck in my stomach and force myself through passageways that were little more than a foot wide. But I kept moving. Despite my many injuries, despite my broken jaw and throbbing skull, despite the strange influx of magic coldly burning in my veins, I kept going. To stop would be to rest, to sleep. Who knew if I would ever wake up?

There could be some noxious gas down here already killing me slowly. Some form of carbon monoxide or something equally lethal. No, I didn’t dare stop. Not to rest, not to cry, not for anything. If Fletcher Lane had suddenly stepped out of the shadows and offered to tell me all the secrets he’d kept from me, where Bria was and what she was like, I would have walked right on by the old man.

So I trudged along in the blackness, with only the magical silver glow of my palms to light the way. Time ceased to have any sort of meaning. There were only rocks to navigate around, through, over. Sharp rocks pricking my feet. The smell of my own blood. And the murmur of the stones around me.