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

spoke to her softly, bringing the light between them brightening them both up like they were in a bubble of light together in the dark of the earth.
    “I was supposing to charge in like a knight in shining armour to save you from your tower.” Ethan began quietly. “It was suppose to be chivalrous you know.” He raised a brow, looking up into Grace’s smiling dirt covered face.
    Grace chuckled, “Ethan, you are ridiculous ,” she concluded, giving him a light shove in the chest. She was so relieved to finally have someone to talk to, she couldn’t stop smiling. She pulled him in for a hug, knocking the light tumbling ahead of them into the tunnel. She missed the look on his face as she embraced him tightly for a moment before he darted ahead to catch up with the flashlight, heart pounding.
    The path continued on through a series of winding tunnels. Low ceilings in stone arched caverns left them crawling through sections and kept them on their toes, awaiting new obstructions and challenges along the way. Collapsed walls sent them climbing over debris just as they had gotten accustomed to the falling arches at their sides. Along the walls in even intervals were candles in delicate brass hinges, most looked as if they hadn’t been used in hundreds of years. Cobwebs clung to the dry wax drips, dangling from the holders as though the candles had burned through unobstructed by human life. It was like they were left to warn those who chose to use the tunnels after their purpose that they had once been a place busy with life. Names carved into the wooden pillars decayed into gibberish, crumbling as the lives they represented had long forgotten this place. Gloom crept through Grace as she wondered if anyone had ever been trapped in here, not knowing the next number in the sequence, stuck forever in a forgotten maze. She shuttered and stopped looking down, just in case she came across a straggler.
    Ethan was struggling as his shoes caught in the rubble. Sopping wet, they squelched as he took steps, slipping on rocks and catching in crevasses. Grace, barefoot, seemed to have better luck scaling the small mountain. She brushed carefully under the ceiling and down the other side. Her feet were cracked and peeling from the mud, slowly drying in layers and falling off. The walls were dangerously unstable in this section, providing little support to the drooping ceiling. Grace and Ethan hurried through with desperation to find someplace safer to slow down.
    “What were these tunnels for?” Grace asked, curiosity finally taking precedence over her silent struggle with the pile of debris laid out before her.
    “Back in the civil war,” Ethan huffed, keeping up so he could keep his voice low “They were a safe way for the southerners to escape with their family through the church...not everyone got to pick their side...” he scoffed at the dampness “kind of like you and I...” he trailed off darkly, covering it up with an awkward forced laugh.
    Grace bit her lip, imagining the families fleeing through these dank tunnels searching for their freedom like Ethan and her. Struggling through the tunnels like their very lives depended on it, she could relate and it made her feel even more depressed at the state of the tunnels. The real reason why they were one way; so they could never go back. The thought of leaving a loved one behind and never being able to retrieve them opened up a wound in her heart that she had been healing for years.
    It had been forever since her and Ethan, best of friends in private school, had shared secrets with one another. She didn’t know how much Ethan knew of her capture and the circumstances surrounding it, only that she was locked up to keep certain things hidden. She didn’t want him to know either. Ethan would hate her if he knew. Maybe he already did. He was the thing she had left behind, never to return and with no way of turning back. She was not willing to throw away a second chance with him,