Journey to the Center of the Earth

*Rowan*

Adjusting to working with another person is going to be a challenge. I’ve had to work as a team before, especially with Dean, but I’ve always maintained some sort of control in those situations. Something tells me Hezzlie’s hold over me is going to be quite different than anything I’ve ever experienced before, and now that I’m also marked, I can feel her even more intensely than I could before.
Which means refusing to do what she wants me to do is going to be tough.
Waiting to go beyond that door and walk into the depths of darkness to see what the hell someone was trying to hide and lock behind a magical ward wasn’t easy, but I will have to learn to listen to her better, to make sure we are on the same page.
Because fighting her isn’t really an option–not anymore.
Hezzlie’s fingers wrap tightly around my hand as we venture behind the magical door. It’s dark down here, even with the door pushed all the way open. The light from the top of the stairs barely reaches the bottom step, let alone this space, which appears to be a tunnel. My wolf eyes flare to life, collecting as much light as possible so that I can see where we are going, but even they have their limitations, and I can’t see more than ten feet ahead of us.
“Maybe we should go get a flashlight,” Hezzlie mumbles. She’s not as in tune with her wolf as I am, so it’s probably more difficult for her to adjust to the lack of light.
“I can see,” I assure her, even though that’s not quite accurate. I can see… some. I can make out that we are walking down a narrow tunnel that angles down fairly steeply. I take my time, keeping my free hand on the wall, and keep her behind me so that if she stumbles, she’ll bump into me and not tumble down the passageway.
Hezzlie lets out a sigh and raises her hand that isn’t grasping mine out in front of her. A faint golden light glows brightly enough to illuminate the area ahead of where my eyes had failed me, and I see that the tunnel is even steeper than I thought. “Good grief,” I mumble. “Why didn’t they continue the steps?”
Hezzlie doesn’t respond because she doesn’t have an answer for that. I worry that she’ll start to get tired again since she’s using her powers and hope that the tunnel isn’t that long. Thankfully, it’s not.
But when we reach what appears to be the end, there’s another door.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
Hezzlie snickers. I don’t think this one has magic around it,” she says. She moves her hand to the door handle, keeping her magic in her palm, and pulls the door open.
In front of us is a darkened chamber. Even with the glow from her hand, it’s still hard to tell what I’m looking at. I do what any normal person would do when they walk into a room. I turn to the wall and look for a light switch.
I’m shocked when I see that there is one. I flip it, but nothing happens. Not at first anyway. It takes a moment before we hear lightbulbs above us sizzle to life. They reveal ancient fabric wires hanging above us with the sort of lightbulbs I’ve seen in historical photographs.
It’s like we just stepped back in time a hundred years or more.
“Holy hell,” Hezzlie mutters, but she’s not looking at the lightbulbs. She’s looking at the rest of the room.
We’re in a vast chamber, I was right. I could tell by the way the air moved around us when we walked into the space. It appears to stretch well beyond the perimeter of the mansion above us, and there are several other doors along the perimeter, which I assume lead up to the other tunnels we found in the yard.
Scattered around the room, we see several carts with wheels. They sort of remind me of old mining carts from the gold rush I read about in Hezzlie’s land from the past, but they’re not on tracks. They are able to be wheeled around at will.
At least, they would be able to if they were in working order. A lot of them look to be in pretty bad shape. Whether that’s from wear and tear or from a lack of use, it’s hard to say. I estimate there are twenty or thirty of them.
And then, in the middle of the room, there’s a gaping hole.
“What the fuck?” I mumble. I don’t let go of Hezzlie’s hand as we move forward. There’s no barrier around the opening, so one false step could meet with disaster. I don’t want to take the chance of losing her, so I grip her more tightly.
We stop on the edge and look down, and Hezzlie and I both gasp at what we see.
Deep down, maybe a hundred feet or more, large purple crystals protrude from the ground. It’s hard to see them from up here, but they have a soft glow about them, like a cloudy moonlit night. All shapes and sizes, they jut up from the ground and the sides of the opening in strange angles, like they fell from the sky millions of years ago and continue to sit where they landed.
“Wow,” Hezzlie whispers. “Are those moonstones?”
“I guess,” I say with a shrug. I’ve only seen one or two alleged moonstones in all my years, and those were in my mother’s jewelry. I had no way of knowing for sure if they were real or not.
Now, I’m thinking they must’ve been.
When I turn to look at Hezzlie, her mouth is open in surprise, and so is mine. We hold one another’s gaze for a long moment before either of us can speak.
“What are they used for?” she asks me.
“I’ve heard they hold power,” I tell her. “But I honestly don’t know. I’ve only seen the ones in my mother’s necklaces. I definitely never saw anyone use them for anything of consequence.”
“Well, there must be something special about them because, otherwise, my father wouldn’t be doing so much to try to get his grubby hands on them,” she points out.
I nod in agreement and step away from the opening. She chuckles under her breath. “What?”
“Nothing. I just didn’t know you were afraid of heights,” she says with a shrug.
“I’m not!” I say defensively. “It’s not me falling I’m afraid of.”
“Oh? You think I might fall?” she asks, taking a step closer to the hole.
“Knock it off, Hezzlie.” I tug on her hand. “Don’t screw around and plummet to your death.”
“What?” I can tell by the lilt in her voice that she’s not done agitating me. “You think it’s dangerous for me to lean over the hole? Like this?” She does just that, the top half of her body floating over the opening.
“Knock it off, Hezzlie!” I pull her to me, and her body collides with mine, but I have a steady grip on her.
She looks into my eyes, and she’s not laughing anymore. “Damn. You don’t joke around.”
“Not when it comes to you falling in a fucking hole,” I tell her. I brush her hair back away from her face. Even the idea that I might lose her hits me deep in the gut. I can’t even fathom it.
“Sorry,” she mutters, and I know she means it. “I’ve just never been afraid of heights.”
“I’m not afraid of falling either,” I clarify. “I imagine it’s the landing that’s the troublesome part.”
She chuckles under her breath and wraps her arms around me. “I’m not going anywhere, Rowan.”
I draw in a staggered breath and hold it. She sees me better than anyone I’ve ever known before. It’s terrifying and relieving in ways I can’t quite explain. But I know if anything ever happens to this woman–my mate, the woman who is intended to be my wife and my Luna Queen–well, there wouldn’t be much keeping me anchored to this world. I’d probably lose my fucking mind and go on a killing spree.
And I’d start with her father.
“We should go,” she suggests. “I have no idea how any of this equipment works to get the moonstones out of the ground. It looks like maybe they were lowering each other down there or something, like the fucking seven dwarves.”
“Seven dwarves?” I don’t know what she’s talking about.
She rolls her eyes. “Never mind. We’ve got plenty of time to figure that out. For now, let’s go back up to the land of the living and discuss this with your advisors. You do have advisors, right?”
Again, I want to be offended. “Of course, I do.” I swallow hard and say, “There’s… Dean… and James.”
She’s chuckling at me again. “And my brother now, right?”
“And your brother.” I suck in a deep breath and say, “I’m not used to relying on other people, Hezzlie. After my father died, there really wasn’t anyone for me to trust.”
“I know.” She’s not looking at me with sympathy in her eyes, like one might expect. Instead, she looks even more determined than usual. “You have people you can count on now, though, Rowan. You have me. And I’m not going anywhere. Even if I fell in the hole, I’d be able to float out of it.”
I want to believe that’s true, that she’s not as fragile as I think she is, but it’s hard for me to believe I might finally be in a position to be happy one day–after I kill her father.
“We’re going to figure this out together, Rowan.” She lifts up on her tiptoes and presses her warm lips to mine.
“I know,” I say again. And this time, I almost believe it.
She lets out a sigh and starts walking over to the door–which I realize is now closed. I didn’t close it, and neither did she.
We stare at one another for a second, and she mumbles a curse word under her breath. When she lifts her hand to pull it open, an arch of purple light spreads from the handle toward her hand, and her own golden light flares to life just in time to keep from shocking her.
“Fuck!” I pull Hezzlie away from the door. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she assures me, holding her palm. “But it’s safe to say the magic is back.”
I nod in agreement, but I’m not worried. In a few minutes, she should be strong enough to pull it open, so I’m not worried.
Not until we hear a whirring sound behind us and turn to see purple light glowing from deep within that hole, and the longer we stare, the more evident it becomes that the light is intensifying.
“Shit,” Hezzlie whispers.
“Shit indeed.”