The Cursed Deal ✓

Chapter 15

On the third floor of Silver Willow's base, wooden doors with black metal handles and matching hinges shadowed a long stretch of hall. Some had knockers of all arraying monsters and others did not. Each sconce on the wall held two candles beyond the wooden plates and metal arms reaching out at sharp angles.

Down each stretch of hallway, around every turn and corner, was a fraying rug that had seen better days. Age faded the design; it had once been of dark roses and tree branches that now appeared to be dead and wilting compared to the original form of threading wool fibers together to create such a design.

They passed rooms with propped doors, those that led into libraries, community bathing rooms, a washroom, an unmarked door that when Faine pretended to trip and press her hand on it, didn't open to anything. Locked shut and bolted. Only the boss of Silver Willow had the keys; Ilian let that information slip when Faine asked where all the doors led to. Private chambers, closets, servant residences. Apparently, Celestia had a key that matched every lock.

The base belonging to Silver Willow was much less complicated than Rising Eternity's. This one resembled a base, with straight hallways and hardly any windows. And if they did have them, they were up high and inaccessible unless someone lifted Faine up so she could see through to the outside world. There were secret passageways, and she suspected them to be any number of places, whether nestled behind a hallway table holding a candle arrangement or behind doors that posed as closets.

Ilian wasn't planning on giving all his secrets away right when she'd arrived. There was still plenty to learn about Silver Willow and giving that information away to a stranger came in sprinkles or dollops. Not an overload. Ilian was smarter than that.

In Faine's head, a complicated mess of routes bound itself together. She knew that once they walked up the straight staircase that led towards the third floor, the first thing they saw was a closed door and a lion head knocker. Depending on how many times the servants changed the candles, wax dripped down the walls and had pooled on the wooden floorboards.

They passed that and took a right, then a left around the corner, then another left. The third floor appeared to be a square and in the middle were different residences for each individual member of Silver Willow.

Only the highest ranked in Rising Eternity received private chambers. It was the lesser spies and thieves that shared rooms together and slept on bunks for adequate space. When Faine first started, she'd been in those rooms. Although it had quickly transpired to staying with Kaspar, she kept all her belongings in that shared room in case something ever happened to him. The fear of losing another hung over her head for years until finally, one day, she realized she didn't worry about it anymore as she once did.

By that time, she had her own residence inside the base and could come and go whenever she pleased. Zebulon said she was lucky.

Faine followed Ilian around the corners until she spotted that dripping wax and lion-headed knocker. The staircase leading down was on the other side of the hall, dimmed except for the glow of flickering torches, and she stopped in her tracks. "We've already been here before," she deadpanned.

"Your first test. Passed," Ilian joked, turning around to smirk at her. "Come on, I'll take you to your residence now."

He walked with a confident stride even after she caught his bluff. It was in her blood to observe every little detail for later use; Carlton taught her that when they first met. At a tavern in the middle of Isflean, not in the Palace District or the slums, but in the residential area where middle-class businesses thrived. She had thought nothing of the piece of advice until he said it again and it soaked into her blood like intoxication.