The Level Below
1898 Words
The stairs are made for a child.
My shoulders brush the walls. Damon has to duck. The black veins at his throat pulse with each step. Slow. Heavy. Like they are counting down.
I keep the blade. The one with the blue runes. Pointed at his back. Not touching. But close enough he feels it.
Kira walks behind me. Her blade is out too. Not at me. At the dark.
“No lights,” Damon says. His voice is raw from the black blood. “He never wired this level. Said eyes that work in dark don’t need them.”
“He,” Kira says. “Your father.”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Kira says. “I’m tired of saying his name.”
The air changes. Cold turns to colder. The smell of ash fades. Replaced by something else. Paper. Old ink. Salt. Like a room that was sealed before the war and never opened.
The stairs end.
A door. Steel. Smaller than the one above. No handle. Just a palm plate. Scratched. Like someone tried to claw through it.
Damon puts his hand on it. Hesitates.
“Problem?” I ask.
“If I’m wrong,” he says, “we die down here.”
“If you’re right,” I say, “I might kill you myself.”
His mouth moves. Not a smile. “Fair.”
The plate reads his palm. Gears turn. The door opens.
A war room.
Smaller than the one above. Older. Stone table. Maps on the walls. Yellow. Cracked. The North before the fire. Before the lines were redrawn in blood.
One file on the table.
No dust.
Someone was here. Recently.
Kira crosses to it first. She does not touch it. She reads the cover.
“Subject E,” she says. Quiet.
My stomach drops.
She flips it open. Her eyes scan. Fast. Military. Then stop.
“Located,” she reads. “Age sixteen. Collared. Stable. Recovery denied. Priority: Throne Stability.”
The air leaves my lungs.
She turns the last page. Holds it up.
A signet stamp. Wax. Black. The crown with thorns.
Damon’s.
Or his father’s. They used the same.
“Your signet,” I say. The blade goes to his throat. Touching now. “Your word. Denied.”
Damon does not move. Does not pull away from the edge. “I didn’t write this.”
“You didn’t,” Kira says. She is not defending him. She is dissecting. “Or you did. Or someone who had your signet did. Three options. All bad.”
“Four,” Damon says. His eyes are on the date. “I wrote it. But denied wasn’t my call.”
“Explain,” I say.
“If I’d come for you at sixteen,” Damon says, “we’d both be dead. Marcus would have sold you to start a war. The Council would have burned the North to stop me. You lived because I stayed away.”
The words are ice.
“I lived in a cage,” I say.
“You lived,” he says.
That is his defense. Not I tried. Not I failed.
You lived.
Like that should be enough.
Maybe for a king it is.
Not for me.
Kira moves past the table. “There’s more.”
Beyond the war room is a hall. Doors on both sides. Cells.
Small. Clean. No beds. No toilets. Just stone. And drains in the center.
The first three are empty.
The fourth is not.
Scratches on the wall. Tally marks. Groups of five. Lines and lines.
I count without wanting to.
Seven hundred and thirty.
Two years.
And a name. Carved deep. Over and over. Not ELI.
DAMON.
The letters are jagged. Like they were made with a fingernail. Or a claw.
I step back. Into Damon. He catches my arm. I rip it away.
“Was she here?” I ask. “Or were you?”
Damon stares at the wall. His face is blank. Not empty. Wiped. Like someone took an eraser to him.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“You don’t know,” I repeat.
“I don’t remember this level,” he says. “I didn’t build it. I didn’t know it existed until now.”
“Then how do you know the way?” Kira asks.
Damon’s hand goes to his head. Like it hurts. “I don’t. My feet do.”
The smoke screams from above.
It cannot come down. It hits the ceiling of the safe room and stops. Like there is glass there. Like this level is warded.
“Don’t let him see!” it shrieks, using my mother’s voice. “Don’t let him remember!”
Kira looks up. “It’s scared.”
“No,” Damon says. “It’s desperate.”
“Of what?” I ask.
He looks at the cell. At the name. At the tally marks.
“Me,” he says. “Or what I’ll do if I remember.”
I step into the cell. The air is colder. The drain in the center is stained. Brown. Old blood.
On the floor, under the dust, something glints.
I crouch. Brush the dust away.
A collar.
Not mine. Smaller. Older. The metal is black. Not silver. The runes are different. Not control. Not silence.
Binding.
Kira is beside me instantly. “That’s a match.”
She pulls my sleeve up. My scar. The circle. She holds the collar next to it. Same size. Same curve.
“If your father performed the rite,” she says, “this would be the other half. The one that goes on the bound. The one he cuts to sever.”
She looks at Damon. “If this is real, he bound you to her. Then he collared the bond itself. Then he broke the collar.”
“Would that kill the wolf?” I ask.
“Might,” Kira says. “Might explain yours dying the same year she vanished. Might explain hers never waking. Severed bonds rot. They take the wolf with them.”
“Might,” Damon says. “Or it’s a prop. Left here to make us think that.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because someone wants us to think the bond was real,” he says. “And broken. And that I’m the reason.”
“You are the reason,” I say. “Signet says denied.”
“Signet says a lot of things,” he says. “Doesn’t make them true.”
Kira moves to the back of the cell. There is a shelf. Carved into the stone. On it, another file. Thinner. No dust.
She opens it. Goes still.
“What,” I say.
She holds it up.
A signature. Elegant. Looping.
Luna Celeste.
My mother.
Dated two years after she died.
The room tilts.
“That’s not possible,” Damon says.
“Nothing on this level is possible,” Kira says. “Yet here we are.”
She reads. “Subject E: Relocation approved. Asset will be moved to secondary site. Glamour holds. Memory edit successful. Asset believes primary attachment is deceased. Proceed with Phase Two.”
Primary attachment.
Damon.
“Memory edit,” I say. The words taste like metal. “They made me forget you.”
“Or made you forget someone else,” Kira says. “And replaced him with Damon.”
The smoke above goes silent.
Then it whispers. “Smart wolf.”
Damon takes the file from Kira. His hands shake. Not from the black veins. From rage.
“Phase Two,” he reads. “What is Phase Two?”
The last page is torn out.
Kira touches the collar on the floor. “If this is real, and if your mother signed this after she died, then either she isn’t dead. Or someone who writes like her isn’t. Or the smoke isn’t the only thing that can wear a face.”
I look at the tally marks. 730 days. Two years. You’re not my father.
“Who was in this cell?” I ask.
Damon drops to one knee. Not from weakness. He presses his palm to the stone. Like he is listening.
“I was,” he says. “I think.”
“You think,” I say.
“I dream it,” he says. “Since I was sixteen. A room. No windows. Scratching the wall. Counting. Waiting for someone who never comes.”
He looks up at me. Gold flickers in his eyes. There and gone. “I always thought it was guilt. A dream. Because I failed you.”
“What if it wasn’t a dream,” Kira says. “What if it was a memory. And the glamour made you think it was hers.”
“Then who was in the room above?” I ask. “Who was I keeping out?”
Damon stands. Unsteady. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know,” I say. “That’s your answer for everything.”
“It’s the only one I have,” he says.
“Then find better ones,” I say.
The smoke speaks again. Soft. From the ceiling. “He can’t. Because if he remembers, he breaks. And if he breaks, I win.”
“Who are you?” Kira shouts at the ceiling.
“I’m the reason,” the smoke says. “I’m the denied. I’m the Phase Two.”
Damon goes to the cell door. He touches the name. DAMON. Carved over and over.
“Eighteen years,” I say to his back. “That’s your sin. Not the broken jaw. The years.”
He does not turn. “I know.”
“You knew I was alive,” I say. “Didn’t you.”
The black veins pulse at his throat.
“Elira,” he says.
“Didn’t you,” I say.
He walks out of the cell. Past me. Past Kira. To the war room. To the file with his signet.
He picks it up. He does not look at it. He looks at me.
“If I say yes,” he says, “will you believe I had a reason?”
“No,” I say.
“Then there’s no point in saying it,” he says.
He drops the file. He walks to the stairs. Up. Toward the smoke. Toward the thing that wants him to remember.
He stops. He does not turn.
“Stay here,” he says. “It can’t reach you on this level.”
“You’re leaving,” I say.
“Someone has to be bait,” he says. “Or it will find another way down.”
He goes up the stairs. Into the dark.
He does not answer.
Because he did know.
Or because he wants me to think he did.
Or because the truth is worse than both.
Kira picks up the second file. The one with my mother’s signature.
“You want to hate him?” she says. “Fine. Hate him tomorrow. Today we find out who wrote this. Because dead women don’t sign orders.”
She looks at the collar. At the tally marks. At the name on the wall.
“Unless they aren’t dead,” she says. “Or they aren’t women.”
The smoke laughs from above. “Keep digging, little heir. You’re almost to the bones.”
- Writer
