Chapter 32 · The Second Lock

The crypt door slams behind me and I'm already moving. My boots hit stone and I can smell it—blood, old blood, the kind that's been sitting in sanctified silver for four hundred years. Drake's blood. The pact mark on my wrist is burning hot enough that I have to clench my fist to keep from scratching it open.

He's down here. I know he is. The second lock, the one my mother's voice told me about in that message, it's not in the monastery records. It's in the witness chamber. The place where they used to chain Darkborn and make them watch the sun through a slit in the stone until they burned from the inside out.

I take the stairs three at a time. The air gets colder the deeper I go. There's no light except the torch I grabbed from the wall upstairs, and the shadows are moving wrong. Not Darkborn wrong. Worse. Like something's watching and it's been waiting a long time.

I hit the bottom and there's a hallway. Narrow. Wet. The stones are carved with names—hunters, all of them, dated back to when this place was still operating.