Alethea has always been awkward - eccentric, even. On a typical day she spends her time cloistered inside a tiny apartment hiding from the world she doesn't really understand. When her therapist encourages her to push herself outside her comfort zon...
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I held my breath as I peered down into the cavern below. Roran eased down beside me, his bright eyes the only thing I could see in the darkness surrounding us.
"This is foolish," he whispered to me. "You should have stayed in the cave."
"No way," I argued as quietly as possible. "I only have five or six days to find a way out of here and I'm not going to waste time just sitting around."
"Thea, you can't even see what's going on down there. If something snuck up on you, you'd never even be able to defend yourself."
I patted his arm and whispered, "That's what I've got you for."
He huffed and rolled his eyes, but let it drop. I turned back to the cavern and squinted in my attempt to make out any kind of shapes.
"What's going on? Is he down there?" I asked.
"No, but it wasn't likely that he would be. Moroi never stays in one place for very long. Other creatures are constantly trying to kill him."
I frowned. "So what now?"
Roran stood and offered me a hand up. "I know a few more places Moroi might be hiding. Well check those out before we do anything else," he said.
As of yet neither of us had been able to come up with a definite plan, but I figured if we could watch Moroi for long enough he might lead us to a way out. Roran wasn't keen on me tagging along on Mission Impossible, but his arguments were no match for my stubborn willpower.
I kept a firm grip on the back of his shirt as he led the way to another one of Moroi's possible hideouts. Despite having had a significant amount of time to acclimate myself to the blackness of purgatory, it never seemed familiar. On the contrary, it was overwhelmingly suffocating. How Roran had managed to hold onto his sanity after spending so long here was a mystery to me.
He stopped walking abruptly and I plowed into his back face first. "Mmph, Roran-"
"Quiet!" he hissed back to me. "There's someone a few yards ahead of us."
I immediately froze on the spot, trying my best to use my other senses to be aware of my surroundings. I couldn't hear anything, but my gut was telling me to be on guard. When Roran began backing me up against the closest wall and shielding me with his body I knew something bad was about to happen.
"You're pretty far from your nest aren't you, phoenix?" A deep rumbling voice echoed out of the darkness.
"I'm just passing through, Nicolai. I'd appreciate it if you and your friends let us pass," Roran said, far more calmly than I thought the situation called for.
Friends? Just how many of them were there?
Nicolai's voice seemed closer this time and I heard him say, "See, we were going to let you pass. We don't have any problems with you, Roran. You stay to your little nests and never bother us. But..."
