“So, all those romances, they—?”
“Fizzled out, perhaps because the draw was a prince they couldn’t have.”
Javi didn’t look convinced. He peered into her eyes as if he could see the lie in her brown gaze. “And you really looked for it?”
She sighed, exasperated. They had a princess to save! “Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m still here, aren’t I?”
And perhaps that was the wrong thing to say. Perhaps that was inviting disaster. Perhaps it was the kind of thing one said only if they weren’t cursed with bad luck. But Risa let those thoughts drift away, because Javi was looking at her as if she were the center of his world, and no one had ever looked at her like that before.
Amina’s brooch compass led them through more empty halls and rooms on the ground floor. At first, they followed the walls with slow, careful steps, prepared for a guard or servant to pop out, eyes vacant and unseeing. Instead, they were met with nothing but an echoing silence that Risa knew had moved into the castle and made a home there for five long years. Eventually, they came to a stop in front of a stone wall covered in soot from the fireplace beside it, cracked logs left in its grate long rotted.
Risa examined the wall, much like Amina had when she searched the cliffside for the entrance to the Underground Pass. Javi joined her and seemed to understand immediately, rapping his knuckles against the stone for a hollow echo until finally, she found what felt like seams.
She pressed against the nearest stone and it split, creating a door that swung open into a narrow, dank space with an even narrower staircase leading downward.
Javi sighed. Risa agreed. It did not bode well for them.
“Stay here,” she directed, because she didn’t think it would be smart to have thembothtrapped downstairs when there was only one way back up. At least he could call down if something happened, or could close the wall and keep them hidden. Or she could run back up and into his waiting arms if something worse was waiting downstairs.
He did not look thrilled. “Shouldn’tyoustay here?”
“Your muscles are purely decorative,” she reminded him.
“But you’re tired from cursebreaking,” he argued, a hand hovering over her face. She held her breath as his fingers ghosted across her cheek to tuck a few strands of hair behind her ear.
No, she couldn’t let him sidetrack her very important mission. “Trust me.”
She left him there, standing guard, and descended by herself. Her hands scrabbled against the walls, footsteps reverberating along the stone passageway. The steps were uneven, and she swore when her foot hovered in the air for a second too long.
“Risa?” a voice called up from the darkness below.
“Amina?”
“Yes!” A small splash echoed against the stone walls. “I’m locked in a cell!”
Risa hurried the rest of the way down, ignoring the working part of her addled brain that told her to be careful. She landed in a puddle and groaned as water seeped through her boots and met with the sand that had made its way in.
“Do you have the keys?” Risa asked the darkness, her eyes struggling to adjust without a single source of light. It would have been a nice change of pace for something to work in their favor, but alas, her curse had other plans.
“Yes,” Amina called out, annoyance tingeing the word. “I have the keys and chose to stay locked in for fun.”
The princess was clearly spending too much time with her and Javi.
“You wouldn’t have happened toseethe keys somewhere around here?”
There was a beat of silence, and then a sigh of disappointment. “I can’t see anything, Risa. It’s dark.”
She scowled in response. Yes, that made unfortunate sense. On her next adventure, were she to have one, she would ensure shepacked some flint. Or, if she ran into a hoarding witch again, ask for a useful gift for the road, like a tinderbox.
Arms out, she began to clamber around blind, hoping to run into something. A torch, a lamp, a door. A copy of the keys, if she was going to be wishful. She got her wish a moment later when she crashed into something that sent a sharp ache of pain up her shin.
“What’s this”—she huffed through her nostrils—“chair doing here?”
Somewhere, Amina banged on the bars of her cell and called out, “The chair leg! We could wedge it into the lock!”