The White Rose by Amy Ewing Read Free Book Online

I turn the paper until I find our location. “We need to go . . . that way,” I say, pointing to the left.
    Ash shines the flashlight down the tunnel and we move. But we haven’t gone more than a few steps when there’s a sickening crack under my foot.
    “What was that?” I whisper. Ash grabs my elbow. The beam of his flashlight falls on a strange-looking cage protruding from the ground. Its bars are curved, blackened and burned, and it has no visible door.
    “Why would someone throw a cage down here?” I whisper.
    “Violet,” Ash says slowly, “I don’t think that’s a cage.”
    As I stare at it, the image clicks into place. It’s a set of ribs.
    Raven tugs my arm and I jump.
    “Everyone is dead,” she says.
    “Not us,” I say. “We’re alive.”
    Raven looks at me as if the thought had never occurred to her. What did the Countess do to her? Who is this shell of the friend I used to know? I don’t want to think about why there were so many scars on her skull. I have to get her to safety. That’s all that matters.
    Then I remember that she’s pregnant. Is there any safe place for Raven anymore?
    She slips her hand into mine, and I push those thoughts away. Right here, right now, she is alive. And she needs me, like I needed her at Southgate. I remember the day when she helped me learn the first Augury, how she refused to leave my side until I was able to turn that stupid block from blue to yellow. I won’t leave her side now.
    Ash stays right by my elbow, and the three of us make our way down the tunnel. I gnaw on my lower lip, wincing every time I hear the crack of bone beneath my feet. I wonder if this is where they incinerate the surrogates’ bodies, after their cold stay in those awful metal compartments. I could be walking on the surrogate of the Lady of the Glass. I could be walking on Dahlia.
    It seems to take forever, but finally we make it to a point where several other tunnels branch off. The air is dank and smells like spoiled food, but I’m grateful to be on a solid surface again.
    “Which way?” Ash asks.
    My hands are shaking as I study the map. “Left,” I say, keeping my eyes trained on what’s ahead. I clutch Raven’s hand firmly in my grasp.
    We start down a tunnel whose floor is covered with aninch of what I can only imagine is the filthiest water in the Jewel. The beam of the flashlight reflects off its murky surface. No one speaks. Occasionally, I hear the tiny squeaking and scuttling of rats. Ash shines the light at intervals on the map to check we’re going the right way, but unfortunately, there aren’t any markers on it besides Lucien’s red line, so I find myself wondering whether it’s this left or that left, or which fork is which. Twice we take a wrong turn, find ourselves at a dead end, and have to double back.
    “Do you think it’s this way?” I ask after studying the map for the sixth time and deciding on a different tunnel.
    I can’t see Ash’s expression in the darkness. “I don’t know.”
    “Do you smell that?” Raven says.
    “The sewer?”
    “No,” Raven replies, with an almost normal Raven-like air of impatience. “The light .”
    I look toward where I think Ash’s face is with an incredulous expression.
    “The light?” I ask hesitantly.
    “Violet, don’t tell me you can’t smell it,” she says. “It’s so clean . Come on.”
    I have no idea what she’s talking about. Who can smell light? But she tugs on my hand and starts to lead us down a different tunnel with more enthusiasm than she’s shown since she woke up. I barely have time to glance at the map before she’s taking a left and we’re at another dead end.
    “Oh, Raven.” I sigh. “We’ve gone the wrong way.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” Raven says, and again, I’m startled by how much she sounds like her old self. “Now we go up.”
    Ash’s flashlight trails the wall, where a series of metal rungs form a ladder up into the darkness and out of sight. High