Page 34 of Fated to the Fang

Celeste's hand closes around his sleeve. "That isn't here."

The voice comes again, closer now, wet and pleading. "Sienna. You left me."

The guard makes a sound too raw to be fear alone. Grief, panic, recognition. His body tilts toward the passage where the screaming peaks.

"What is that?" I ask.

"Echo debt," Dorian says, low. His face has gone stone-white in the beam of my lamp. "They seeded the walls with stolen fear. It doesn't just scare us. It looks inside us."

The guard jerks hard enough that Celeste slides half a step in the silt. "I heard her," he says. "Under the water."

"No," Celeste says, sharper now. "You heard what they buried here and connected your guilt."

The water seems to rise along the stones, black and fast, licking higher than my boots. My heartbeat thumps uncontrollably.

"It isn't rising," I say.

Dorian's eyes cut to me.

"The tide's going out. I read the table this morning. And the silt there hasn't moved. No ripples. No fresh wash line."

Celeste follows my lamp, then swears softly. "Collapsed run."

The guard lunges toward the screaming. Dorian catches him before he makes another step, one hand locked into the rear of his coat, and hauls him back with enough force to crack stone under both their boots. The guard fights him. Actually fights him.

"Let me go," he snarls. "She's there."

"She's not," Dorian says, close to his ear. "That voice is bait."

Celeste points where the screams are loudest. "They packed the sound around the dead passage. Anyone who runs toward it hits the collapse and goes under."

I swing my lamp to the low side passage. Foam gathers in a thin trembling line, moving steadily away from us.

"There," I say. "Water's still moving through that side. That's the opening."

Celeste looks once, then nods. "She's right. Follow the outflow."

Dorian does not release the guard until Celeste forces his eyes onto hers.

"Sienna is gone," she says. "This place is wearing her voice. Do not give it your body too."

The guard's face breaks, then shuts again. He nods once, ruined and furious.

Dorian turns to the low passage. "We follow Avery's waterline. No one listens to the dead."

The low passage opens into a chamber the rogues used and left in a hurry. Crates. A cot. Delivery bags gone brown. And on the far wall, scored fresh into the rock, a mark Dorian stares at.

"Lucien," he says.

I photograph everything. The guard watches, and says nothing.

Daylight is gray when we emerge from the tunnels, Celeste stares at me like a sample. Almost as though she's not decided how to label me.

"You were right. And you didn't run. That's two points I never expected to give. I don't trust you. But I'd rather have you in the room than divulging our secret."

"Warmest thing anyone's said to me all week."

The corner of her mouth moves. Not a smile, but close.