Chapter 52
Zara’s POV
Darkness should not glow.
Yet the staircase beneath the fortress was lit by silver fire that burned without heat, threading through the walls like veins beneath skin. Each step downward echoed too loudly, then not at all, as if the tunnel kept changing its mind about acoustics.
I hated it immediately.
Greyson walked half a pace ahead of me, sword drawn, shoulders tense enough to crack granite.
“You know,” I said, “for someone who agreed to come, you look deeply opposed.”
“I agreed to accompany you.”
“That is not the same thing?”
“No.”
Fair.
The stone door had sealed behind us the moment we entered. No handle. No hinges. No comforting possibility of retreat.
I looked back anyway.
Still a wall.
“Excellent. Love being trapped.”
Greyson glanced over his sho
