Selene stepped up beside me. “Maybe the way through is hidden.” She began to hum a familiar tune, the magical notes of her siren detection spell. Within seconds, the golden outline of a door appeared.
Selene looked at me, and I nodded, the message clear—aim for the center and blast it open.
“One, two, three!” We both hit it with spells at the same time, and the stones exploded outward revealing another passageway beyond as well as a steep staircase leading up. I stepped through and charged up the stairs, but Selene soon called for me to slow down. Eli and Paul were having a rough time. Paul was so exhausted and the stairwell so narrow, Eli could barely help him at all.
Still, we managed it, climbing several stories upward until we reached a passageway on the ground floor leading off to the right. Faint but natural light leaked in through the high windows overhead. The sun must be close to setting.
I extinguished the fire in my hands and headed down the passageway. The first door I came to, I stopped and forced it open, but it only led into an empty room. I moved on, stopping at the next couple of doors only to find more rooms, some empty, some furnished, but none of them providing the escape we needed.
Finally, the last door opened into another narrow passage. I followed it, eventually arriving in a place I recognized—the grand entryway of Senate Hall. Another tremor hit the building, this one stronger than the ones before. One of the pillars on the side of the entryway split at the top and came crashing down, flooding the room with dust.
I coughed and squinted, trying to see a way through. Selene appeared beside me, and she worked some kind of spell that helped to clear the air. It was enough we could see a small side door leading outside. We raced to it, Eli and Paul managing to keep up as the danger of being crushed by the falling debris spurred them on.
Although the entryway had been deserted, the outside lawn of Senate Hall was a mass of people in various states of panic. Most of them seemed to be trying to flee the giant fissure that had split across the lawn in the place where the first pyres had been in Eli’s dream. Fire, pieces of earth, and even water were bursting out from it all at once. I gulped, wondering how many people had been standing there when the ground split. As it was, there were far too many people lying unmoving in the grass, either unconscious or dead.
Guilt pressed down on me as I wondered if we could’ve prevented this if we’d turned in the cell phone. But right away I understood that if we’d tried, Titus would’ve stopped us sooner. We’d been trapped from the very beginning. And the scale of his plan was so large and Titus so determined, it seemed impossible that anything could’ve stood in his way. Even still, the understanding brought no relief.
The stone pavilion, so beautiful inside Eli’s dream, had been reduced to rubble, and the four of us had to climb our way through. As I reached the top of a large boulder, I froze, stunned by the sight of a body lying on the other side of it. The man was clearly dead, although I couldn’t tell how. There was no blood or sign of trauma. But I knew who he was—Consul Vanholt. It seemed this part of Titus’s plan had worked successfully.
Gritting my teeth, I moved on, ignoring the shocked comments from the others. There would be time to process the consul’s death later. For now we had to do what we could to stop the rest of Titus’s plan from coming to fruition.
Selene turned right when we reached the lawn, heading in the direction most of the people seemed to be running. I moved to follow her, but Eli shouted from behind me.
“That’s the wrong way!”
I turned around. “How do you know?”
“The Terra Tribe’s practice. They lit the pyres clockwise. There’ll be more fissures that way already.” As if his words had been a portent of doom, the ground trembled again followed by the distant sound of an explosion and then the groan of a foundation shifting.
That was all it took to get us moving in the opposite direction. Eli continued to help Paul along, but Paul seemed to be doing better now that we were out in the open. We reached the twelfth pyre moments later after two more explosions. There was panic and chaos here, too, but it was more contained. We could see two of the pyres and both of them were still burning. A group of people surrounded each one, working some kind of collective spell—one intended to stop the Telluric Rods from ripping the final holes through the island, I hoped.
I spotted Lady Elaine among the nearest group and dashed toward her. Her presence bought a rush of relief. She would know what to do to stop this thing.
But then I spotted a couple of men in the familiar red and black tunics of the Will Guard. What were they doing here? Didn’t they know that their captain was planning to sink the island? Or maybe they did, and they were here to ensure it happened. They might be working against the spell to stop the rods, even now.
Lady Elaine turned and saw me coming. “What are you doing here, Dusty? You’re supposed to be at Arkwell. Go now. That way. They’re moving people off the island.” She pointed to somewhere off toward the sea in the distance.
I shook my head. “You’ve got to listen to me right now!” I leaned into her, lowering my voice for fear one of the nearby Will Guards would hear me. “Magistrate Kirkwood is behind this. Captain Gargrave and his men are working for him. They killed Consul Vanholt, and now they’re trying to help sink the island.”
Disbelief flashed in her eyes.
“It’s true. Kirkwood cursed Eli’s wand to block our dream-seeing. But we found out anyway and he captured us and brought us here to let the island kill us. How else would we even be on the island?”