Maze-like turns out to be the perfect word for the tunnels. I acquire some small metal signs embossed with differeers on the ends of short stakes for us to stito soft parts of the floor. They prove useful immediately. The tunnels double ba themselves so many times it’s unreal, and even though the first few interses only fork into three other pathways, interses further down the line have as many as five or even six. Even though Rhys was disappoihe first time I made us turn around, he admits that it was definitely necessary.

  It’s slow going. Every time we rea interse er cavern, plus when tunnels start to curve in ued dires, I have to write notes, record distances, and update my map. Every time we rea interse that we’ve been to before, I have to recalcute my numbers and make sure I have enough room in my diagrams so that it’s clear which tunnel we came from and whie we’re going i. I have to recreate my full map multiple times, because the pencil markings on it get erased and redrawn so many times that even though the final routes get traced in ink, the paper gets too grubby to read clearly in the darkness of the caves.

  The map quickly gets insanely plicated. Some tunnels go under and over each other without crossing and loop back to different interses. There are tless dead ends. We sometimes have to ge the locations of the little signs to more accurately reflect which dire actually takes you back to the entrance quickest. The way the paths interect is much more voluted than I thought it would be going into this projebsp; He doesn’t say it, but I have a feeling ur forays underground make Rhys a little relieved that he didn’t get very far into the caves he explored as a child. Without my incessant aking and our little signs, we would have gotten lost tless times.

  Rhys is having the time of his goddamn life. Despite the repetitive nature of our task and the stant measuring and aking through which he has nothing to do but hang out and doodle in the dirt with the tip of his spear, he is much more expressive than I’ve seen him before. He’s actually smiling pretty regurly, and I even hear him ugh on multiple occasions.

  “What do you think the purpose of this whole maze is?” he asks me one day while I’m sitting on the floor rec our test measurements.

  “Well,” I say. “I’m hoping it’s so voluted because the people who dug these tunnels ected them to the catabs, but didn’t want ao be able to easily get ihe castle from there. Sihe catabs are publicly accessible and there aren’t any locks betweeunnels and the interior of the castle, it’s a pretty gring security risk.”

  “Hmm,” he hums thoughtfully. “Doesn’t that mean that we’re making it easy for the castle to be invaded with all these little signs?”

  I pause in my writing for a sed. He has a point.

  “Yeah, I didn’t really think about that,” I admit, “but I suppose we are. If and when we finally find where these ect to the catabs, we’ll go back through and remove all the signs. By that point we’ll have a finished map anyway.”

  He leans on his spear and gives me an odd look.

  “You know, when you first got here, some people said that since you’re an outsider, you’d be a threat to national security,” he says versationally. “I never actually believed that, of course. Looks like I was wrong.”

  I look up from my writing in shock, uo believe that Rhys would seriously say that, only to find that he’s smirking and staring at me to watch my rea. He’s actually messing with me. Little shit. I throw my pencil in his dire and he ughs when it misses by a wide berth.

  “Pick that up,” I instruct good-naturedly. “I’m trying to work here, and you’re acg me of treason. It’s very distrag.”

  He has to retty far to pick up the pencil.

  “I ’t believe you missed by that much.”

  “Hey, it’s dark and the ntern does weird things with the shadows. I didn’t miss, I just thought you were actually over there.”

  For some reason, the kid is really in his element underground. I wonder if after we’re done here, he’ll e back just to wander around, maybe find some spiders to poke with his spear. Maybe he should think about a career ge and see if he ’t provide some prote to the chemists on their way to, from, and through the caves they traverse fredients. That would be fun for him.

  Once or twice, wheart to get into some ses of tuhat look a little more like natural caves, the choke beetles start to light up and shriek. It’s an eerie sound, made all the more eerie by knowing what it signals. We backtrack right away when that happens, fortunately without i. I y fingers each time that that isn’t the way to the catabs blocked off by poisonous air.

  We run into spiders with horrible frequenbsp; Most of the time, they’re hanging out in the er er caverns, which is unpleasant, but tolerable. Ohough, we hear a horrible scuttling sound eg from far dowunnel deep in the darkness, getting louder and louder at an arming rate. I hide behind Rhys immediately and he readies his spear.

  From the moment that the light hits the eight gssy scutterio the moment they overtake us, there’s only a span of about five seds. I scream and try to climb Rhys like a tree. My life fshes before my eyes. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that this is where I’m going to die, trapped deep within the earth, my guts sucked out of my body by a creature that es straight out of my worst nightmares. I resign myself to my fate.

  Then, it flies right past us, crawling up the opposite wall from where I’m c behind Rhys, stirring up wind iale air as it passes without even toug either of us, disappearing bato the dark as quickly as it came.

  I colpse on my knees onto the floor and cry for about five minutes after that one. Rhys kindly pats me on the back as my body is wracked with violent sobs. He politely waits until my tears have slowed somewhat before asking me if I pissed myself. I ugh harder at that than I should, a choked, hicg sound that bounces loudly off the tunnel walls, and reassure him that miraculously, my pants have remained unsoiled. He agrees to go back early that day, in a different dire than the ohe spider was just traveling in. I insist we take a break for a couple days after that. Also, I practically unch myself into Khysmet’s waiting arms that night.

  I’ve e to actually appreciate Khysmet’s evening visits. He doesn’t e by every night, so I still have a reasonable amount of aloime and don’t feel smothered or anything. He also doesn’t try to sleep with me every time he es by. I wouldn’t pin if he did – he’s a very attentive lover, and the sex is amazing – but it’s sort of hat some nights he really does just want my pany. I find myself tending to head to bed arou almost every evenie professing my hatred for that request. However, I do make sure to deliberately stay out running around the castle at least twice a week, just to keep him from getting pt. On more than one such occasion, I find him waiting in my bedroom when I return. Those nights are fun.

  About a month in, I feel like we must be getting close to having mapped most everything. The chart is so intricately tangled, and we're running out of loose ends. It's taking longer and loo get to interses we haven't fully explored yet, and Khysmet's time straint is being an actual problem impeding our progress. I don't know how much farther we're going to be able to get since we have to worry about going there and back within four hours. At this point we're averaging ounnel per trip.

  One day, after hiking the hour and a half it takes to get to an unexplored path, we pick our unnel and head down it like always. Only this time, rather than going a little further down to a new interse, it keeps going. And going. And going. It twists and turns, but doesn't branbsp; For the first time in a while since we started ing down here, I feel my heart start to race with excitement. We're actually going somewhere. But where?

  We're past the point of urn time-wise, but I look Rhys in the eyes and see my same excitement reflected there. He nods. We keep going.

  tless twists and tur caverns, one snack break, and three hours ter… there it is. A sharp turn up ahead. y degrees. Squared. Different from the gradual twists and natural caves that have characterized the tuhe whole way before now. My heart stops. Is this it? it possibly be?

  We round the er and find an angur, paved corridor lined with stone caskets. Bones scatter the floor. The corridor tinues in a straight line as far as our nterns reach, with some archways that indicate other paths brang off at y degree angles along the way. Intricate. Undeniably man-made. There's not a doubt in my mind that we've actually made it to the catabs.

  I don't scream. I don't jump up and down. I don't hug Rhys. I don't even cry. I just fall to my knees and sit on the ground, exhausted, speechless, overwhelmed.

  Rhys is the one who speaks first.

  "I don't believe it," he says in a detached yet reverent tone. "We actually made it."

  "Yeah," I say, my voice hollow. "We did."

  We stay there like that, frozen in shod awe, for maybe ten quiet minutes. I've been walking for five hours. I don't know when I'll be able to get up again and make the trek babsp; Maybe we should try to find a and go back by a more direct route?

  Before I express this se, I hear a noise. Not just any noise, but a voice.

  "Lights out," I and immediately. Rhys takes a mio process my words, but before he , I have grabbed the ntern from his hands and blown it out, pulling us back around the er we just came from and peeking around it ever so slightly.

  It's not long before we see a light ing from down one of the brang corridors up ahead. The voices are getting louder by the sed. Right when I think they're about to e into view, I pull bato the tunnel pletely, tugging Rhys with me, so her of us are i all. We listen silently to their versation.

  "Do you think this is a good pce to paint it?" one voice, deep and male, asks.

  "It's as good a pce as any," another voice, warm and melodic with ierminate gender, replies. "I wish we didn't have to ge location all the time. It's impossible to find anything down here."

  "I know, I've missed so maings just due to getting lost. Where do you think I should put it? Behind that casket?"

  "It's a little too hard to see there. Just put it on the casket instead."

  "Yeah, okay. Good idea."

  "It's not like most people would even know what they're looking at. We don't o hide it that well."

  There's a few moments of sileerspersed with some ss of small talk, but nothing of any note. Aually the two unseen people move on, their ntern light disappearing gradually until we are once more in plete darkness.

  Once I'm sure we're safe, I exercise my practiced ability to light our ntern in the dark. O's lit, I tell Rhys to stay right at the tunrance so we don't stand a ce of losing it somehow and go looking for the painted symbol. It's still wet and glistening in the light, so it's very easy to find. I pull out my sketchbook and copy down what I see, which appears to be a small circle with a little vertical line in the ter, like a reptilian eye, inside an upside down triangle surrounded by a rger circle, with a horizontal liting all the way across the symbol through the bottom tip of the triangle. Five lines radiate out from the circle above the horizontal line. I have no idea what it means. I take the drawing back to Rhys, and he doesn't kher.

  "I did hear the word 'meetings' though," he says. "Seemed pretty secret. Looks like your theory might have been correct."

  "Yeah, it sounds like they switch rendezvous locations frequently, though," I say. "We got unbelievably lucky to have seen what I'm guessing is where their meeting is going to take pce, but it's not like we'll be able to stake it out and listen in. By the time we get back here, it may very well be over already. It's a long walk. Ohat we should start ba right now, because it's going to be after ten by the time we get back to the castle."

  "We at least know that there are meetings. Iabs. Like you thought there would be. That's not nothing, Miss Catarina," Rhys says encingly as we start the lourn trek.

  I sigh deeply. "It's not nothing, but it's not mubsp; I don't even know where to go from here. The meeting locations could move all over the city for all we know. We might never get this close to finding them again."

  "We got lucky onbsp; It could happen again. You never know."

  Our walk back to the castle is exhausting and uful. Ten fug hours round trip is insane. We didn’t paough food for such a long trip either, so we’re both getting dizzy from hunger by the end. Thank the gods we have enough water, at least. I'm practically walking into walls by the time we've reached the exit. I say goodnight to Rhys and plod bay room, desperate for a bath and to just go to bed.

  Naturally, though, when I open the door to my bedroom, Khysmet is pag the room waiting for me. And he does not look happy.