WAR STORM (Red Queen 4// Alternate Version)

Chapter 15

Mare

"An old servants passageway. Sealed it off fifty years ago," Farley elaborates where we are while brushing away spiderwebs that have collected over a series of decades. "Tiberias was nice enough to tell me about it before our departure."

I fight the urge to cough up the dust that my lungs torture themselves with each time I take a breath. Not so much a passageway as Farley describes it, but rather sculpted caverns, massive pieces of rock drilled off to make a narrow walking space. Besides for a couple select feet of path, we journey in a single-file line, catching our jacket sleeves on the jagged formations too often, the accident serving as a reminder to not get comfortable.

The slimness of the caves compels caution, and I doubt we've made much progress in the half an hour the nine of us have been shuffling through the system. Davidson's forearm has been outstretched for all those minutes, balancing a miniature forcefield upon his palm to reveal where the forks in the pathway are. Besides for that, the other purpose for lighting is to scare off any fears of the darkness that any of us possess. Maven used to be afraid of the dark, Cal told me once. Used to.

"Is this environment healthy to be inhaling?" Rafe asks, though he already knows the answer. There's a chance he's simply trying to make light of this situation.

"Hold your breath, if you prefer," Cameron mocks, completely unaffected by the dust and dirt. Afterall, for the majority of her life, she was a Newtown Teckie, accustomed to fumes. I suppose that in that respect, I can be thankful for the ordinary poor red career that I griped on and on about for so long. I wasn't being worked to death or breathing in a mixture of poison and oxygen like Cameron was.

These winding tunnels prompt comparisons to the Treasury's layout, both intricate and deep mazes. We first entered the complex using the Samos' wine cellar, where Ella, Tyton, and I had blasted our lightning through the metal and rock that created the airtight closing. Davidson contained the damage waves with a forcefield and off we went.

If a pathway once connected the Samos's to Whitefire, I would assume that the policy is the same for all of the High Houses, the important ones anyway. Judging by the rawness of the channel, these uneven cutouts of rock must date back hundreds of years, perhaps back to the era of Caesar Calore, when the silver hierarchy was still beginning to stabilize. Sure, their regal abilities would've made constructing this masterpiece hundreds of times easier, yet powers aside, this network had to take months of labor. The King and his minions must've had an awfully good purpose to construct this.

They were terrified, is the only legitimate explanation that my mind can conceive. What other purposes would this serve? Allowing lovers to rendezvous would be petty, and even silvers would think of it as so. They were absolutely stricken with terror, and in case of a premature rebellion amongst the reds of society, they built this, the last resort method of transporting themselves to Whitefire or a hidden bunker that one of these tunnels branch off to.

There had to have been a purpose in locking them up, as well. Fifty years ago, the monarchy was secure, under the protection of a sane king, without hint of an uprise. Either they were bored and wanted something to do, or unwanted guests were sneaking through these tunnels. There could've been too many young boys and girls exploiting these passageways to go off and drink their hearts out with friends. Otherwise, the grid of hewed boulders was deemed unsafe, one pebble bound to slip and start a chain reaction destruction.

"Almost there," Davidson calls from up ahead, the luminous blue spirit from his hand growing a bit stronger and brighter. Now, I can see the ceiling of the cavity of earth that we're in, can see the insects slithering on the wet layers of limestone that rest two feet above my head. A couple of instances, I've felt water drop onto my head; now I pause to wonder what crawls in my hair. I would pull out my hands and rake my hair if I had the luxury of elbowroom.