PROMISE

CHAPTER 26

Lilith stopped before the door, leveling him with an intense look.

"Promise to remember that none of this is magic."

"Is this another clockwork room?" Hain stepped back from the door, his eyes flitting down the hall they'd just come from. "Bless the End Day, it is, isn't it."

Lilith's icy-blue eyes shone with amusement. "I've never heard someone scream so loudly over absolutely nothing."

Hain's voice was all indignation. "I wouldn't call being jerked up and down over a dark chasm of death, nothing."

Lilith rolled her eyes. "It's an elevator, Hain. Going up and down is literally its entire purpose."

Hain feigned a shudder, though inwardly he felt glad for this new lightness in the mood between them. Arguing over Sam and Aedan had thrown a pall over his mood, but poking fun at Hain's reaction to the clockwork room–or the ella-vaytor, as Lilith called it–had worked at easing the tension.

"Seriously though," Lilith said as she gained the upper hand on her smirk. "I need to know that you understand that what I'm about to show you definitely isn't magic. I don't care if you know how it works. Only that it does."

Hain thought about that. Even with her explanation that the ella-vaytor moved on the same principles that drove any sort of clockwork, the fact that it existed at all still amazed him. Gears and sprockets were easy to wrap his head around, but an entire room sliding through a darkened shaft with nothing but iron thread holding it aloft? Believing in He Who Returned might have been an easier sell for him.

And yet, he'd seen it. Felt it. And, he thought regretfully, Lilith was right. He didn't need to be a clockmaker to know that a clock functioned. Watching the seconds tick past was proof enough.

"I get it," he said, and he mostly believed it. "Not magic. Just clockwork."

Lilith looked doubtful.

"Really. I understand," Hain said again, this time with what he hoped sounded like confidence.

"Alright." She shrugged. "That's all I ask." She gestured to the door with a tip of her head. "Ready?"

He puffed his cheeks out as he blew out a breath. "As I'm going to be."

Lilith reached down to the door's handle, turned it, and pulled it toward the hall.

Hain swallowed, stepped forward, and felt familiarity seep from his vision into his brain. His canvas clad feet scraped the ground as he turned on the spot.

"This place," he said quietly. "I've seen something like it before."

His eyes scoured the room. Gleaming walls curved about him in a perfect circle, lending the place an air of being carved rather than built.

Metal walls. Enough to forge an army's worth of swords. Maybe even the shields to go with them. Ridges scored every inch of the surface in swirling patterns. Overhead he found more of the same–a vaulted ceiling etched in the same way.

"Not possible," Lilith said as she came up beside him. "As far as I know, this is the only working Memory unit that still exists."

"No," he said. "I have." He walked to a wall, letting his eyes follow the lines. His hand drifted over the etching, rough beneath his fingers. He turned to face her. "This is exactly like the other one."

"Other one?" Her eyes became intent on him. "Which other one?"

"Near the coast. When I followed the Vrai." His fingers traced over ridges. "It was just like this. But, you know, older. The roof was broken, and the walls were all stained with rust."