Escape (Chronicles of Hart) by Kat Murray Read Free Book Online

began searching for a dial. A grin spreading across her face as she realized that she was finally close enough to safety to relax in a moment, just as soon as she got the dial set. Heavy breathing was growing closer, Grace paled as she felt her safety slipping away. She traced the wall frantically searching for the dial until finally her hand made contact with the circular protuberance. She started spinning it wildly, hoping to land on the right number by luck as she randomly stopped it trying to push in before resuming with spinning again. The breathing was right behind her. She froze in the middle of a spin of the dial as something hit the wall heavily beside her.
    “Ugh.” Ethan groaned as he fell beside Grace.
    “Thank goodness it is you and not the guards, I see you have finally caught up .” Grace chided breathing out heavily as she calmed down from the excitement, “I can’t find the numbers on the dial.” She pointed to the wall, not realizing that Ethan couldn’t see her in the dark.
    Ethan stood, blushing in the dark cavern. He was almost glad for the lack of sight as he reached into his pocket and retrieved his flashlight. Clicking the button, he squinted, his eyes adjusting to the dim light again.
    Grace blinked twice quickly to clear her eyes as she frantically turned the dial to seven and pushed it in with as much force as she could muster. With a slight clicking noise the wall began to lift before her. She watched as it disappeared into the ceiling leaving only a foot of the original wall dangling with the dial sticking out near the top. Grace ducked under swiftly, stepping over the gap in the floor where the wall had sunken in leaving a deep trench swelling with water from an underground stream. “Switch it back off,” she whispered to Ethan urgently, watching as light approached from the distant hollow of the tunnels.
    Ethan reached up pulling the dial back out and giving it a quick spin before diving under the wall. He nearly got caught in the trench under it. Luckily the wall was slow moving or he would have been one foot short of a pair as his sneaker caught perfectly in the groove. Slowly the wall lowered back to the ground with a damp click, sloshing stale water at them in a shallow wave as it locked in place.
    Taking a quick break on the other side of the wall, Ethan and Grace relished in the fact that they were finally safe from the guards. Slowly their hearts settled back into a natural rhythm as the pressure and terror of the situation died back down to a simmering roar. From here on out, they could take their time as long as they made it out before they starved that was. Ethan couldn’t help but feel guilt at the fact that they were now travelling without supplies and he was unsure of what the trek ahead of them held. All the research he had done had been ambiguous. The tunnels were said to be a myth and the books that had acknowledged them as fact had little to no information regarding their magnitude. They were running blind with nothing to carry them though. Although he worried, he couldn’t let on to Grace just how dire their situation was. She needed to have hope. She didn’t deserve more to worry about, so Ethan kept his lips sealed.
    “How long is this maze?” Grace asked, looking around the small opening they had entered.
    “My source said it could take a while, I had supplies...but,” he trailed off apologetically, realizing that she was worrying about the length of the tunnel. He smiled at her through the dim green glow of his flashlight as it glowed around them, “shouldn’t be too bad,” he added, trying to lighten up the situation by being cheerful.
    “Hey, don’t worry about that...” Grace began, chuckling lightly as Ethan held the light at his chin making a goofy face into the beam as it shone across his face. The light etched in strange shadows that gave him the look of a ghoul, childish, but she had missed his humour. Grace continued to stare at him as he