An alliance sealed by a kiss

Chapter 7

Cynthia had long been exhausted, and with the last vestiges of her sanity, she barely managed to push the door closed and slid to a sitting position, coughing violently for a while, almost coughing up her stomach, before her frightened out-of-body soul slowly returned to her body.

She finally realized that she had intruded into an unfamiliar hall. The interior of the hall was dim, and the lamp in her arms that was about to go out was the only source of light.

This place, it seemed, hadn't been inhabited for a long time. The furniture was covered with red silk cloth, and thick ash had accumulated on the gilt door handles, on the floor tiles, and on the handrails of the stairs. On the far wall hung a huge oil painting, and behind the heavy snow-white cobwebs was a portrait of a handsome, majestic man with blond hair and blue eyes.Cynthia froze in recognition for a long moment, then remembered the chains outside the door, and finally realized with hindsight that this appeared to be the previous king's palace in the palace where no one was allowed to enter or leave.

Once her legs had regained some strength, Cynthia knew she couldn't waste any more time, and after giving herself a pep talk, she reached out and lifted the oil lamp, hesitating for a moment and turning back to make sure that there was no sound from outside the closed doors of the temple before lifting her feet and walking towards the temple.

She didn't dare to sleep tonight, she just wanted to go in and look for any candlesticks that could still be used, to transfer the flame before the oil lamp in her hand was completely extinguished, so that if there were any accidents, she wouldn't be defenseless.

Unfortunately, after searching around in the dusty cupboards, the wicks of the candles that I could find were all damp. Luckily, there seemed to be a few oil lampstands set into the walls deep in the palace, so perhaps they could still be used.

Cynthia pursed her lips and tried one by one, standing on tiptoe and feeling for its lamp base.

When she reached the first few, she immediately realized that something was wrong; the stone, which was supposed to be motionless, could be pushed! Not wanting to invite trouble, Cynthia immediately retracted her hand, but the stone's rotation didn't stop.

Sooner or later, with the sound of chains twisting, the tiles below her cracked in half without warning, and Cynthia was caught off guard, falling downward, her shoulder blades hitting the stone wall hard, and a foul taste of blood rising in her throat. A tidal wave of darkness poured in, sweeping over everything and drowning her sanity.

After what seemed like a century, Cynthia regained consciousness with a splitting headache, doubled over slightly, and ground a low moan mixed with blood foam from her throat. A memory of the scene before the fall came up and washed viciously over the aching temples, and the eyelids, heavy with mud and stone, finally lifted upwards.

She remembered that she had inadvertently turned the lamp holder mechanism on the wall, and the next thing she knew, she was caught off guard and plummeted through the cracked bricks to the ground floor of this abandoned palace. It was at least three stories high from the ground. She had rolled down through the curved slope, which was considered a great fortune amongst misfortunes. If she had smashed directly onto the ground without any obstruction, she was afraid that her brain would have crumbled out.

How much time had passed since she fell?

Where exactly did she fall into?

In Kadan's royal palace, secret chambers had also been dug and repaired underneath the king and queen's palaces, as well as underneath the palaces where their children lived. It could be used to hide treasures as well as for the royal family to take refuge in case of special circumstances. Could it be that there was a similar construction in this late king's palace in Abil?

Cynthia sat up and stroked over her limbs and body inch by inch, making sure none of the bones were broken, just a raw pain from the shock between her ribs, presumably still bruising her insides, which could be the worst possible condition to be in. She bemoaned the situation, and then touched a smudge of congealed dried lumps on the back of her shirt, uncovering them with her fingernails and rubbing them on her fingertips before they turned to crumbs and flew off in all directions.

Because it was so dark, Cynthia couldn't be sure what it was, and when she put the finger that had touched it under her nose, she caught a whiff of a time-worn, slightly pungent odor, and only guessed that it was dried pigment that had rubbed off on her clothes from rubbing against the stone so sharply when she had rolled down a few moments ago.

The oil lamp was nowhere to be found, but then, it was never sturdier than a man. Even if it could have been found, it would have shattered long ago.Cynthia covered her vaguely aching ribs and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness underneath before realizing that the place wasn't completely devoid of light; the walls and stones were coated with something that eerily emitted a ghostly, unsettling, dark, greenish phosphorus glow.

Overhead, the so-called ramp or exit had long since disappeared, replaced by a crumbling, coarse, uneven, stone-topped ceiling.

Cynthia stiffened, and had an extremely bad feeling. Assuming that after she fell, her body still rolled for a while due to inertia, it was unlikely that she would be too far away from the spot where she fell. That meant that the passageway that connected to the outside world had automatically closed. If it couldn't be opened from here, then she was left with only two choices, find another exit or be trapped to death here.

This was a long corridor that couldn't be seen to the end, and even the faint phosphorescent light at the far end couldn't be seen, completely hidden in the darkness of the ultimate silence, and no one knew what horrifying things might be hiding in there.

If there really were any monsters, they would have come and eaten her long ago during the time she was unconscious, Cynthia told herself three times in her head before she stood up, holding onto the wall and taking small steps to her left.

Hopefully this place really was as similar to the Kadan Palace as she had hoped, then the construction wouldn't be too complicated. As long as she didn't go off on a tangent, she might be able to find another exit to the surface.