Fierce Winds and Fiery Dragons (Dusky Hollows: Book 1)

  Chapter 11

  Following a princess deep into the bowels of the earth was a hugely bad idea, as Carrie told herself again and again. They were walking in utter darkness. Minerva had taken Carrie's hand, and the feel of those strange bony fingers under hers gave Carrie the creeps. Not to mention stepping on slime. The girls would be walking on rock one moment and stepping on slime the next. Carrie imagined slugs and worms and all kinds of disgusting things under her bare feet, but she couldn't see a thing. The deeper they went, the more she wished for the cage she'd just escaped.

  “How much further?” Carrie asked.

  The princess tightened her grip and Carrie's fingers felt crunched, “Did I not say that you may speak only when spoken to?”

  “You might have mentioned it, but you're just a kid like me.” Carrie said.

  The princess huffed with an exaggerated air of importance, “From birth I have been raised as royalty. You are common.”

  Carrie let go of the princess’s hand. “Fine, maybe I'm common, but I still got you out of that room. And I don't care who you are. You go that way. I'll go this way.”

  “Well!” The princess grumbled as she walked away from Carrie.

  Carrie's pride had gotten her into trouble on more than one occasion. Even though she knew she needed the princess's help to see, Carrie didn’t care. Alone in the dark, and completely and utterly lost, she kept walking. She wouldn't be treated like she was some loser just because a snotty girl was raised to royalty.

  With a hand on the rock, Carrie followed the path back the way they had come. The princess could see quite well without light, having lived all of her life in darkness. Carrie, on the other hand, was blind.

  She reached a fork in the pathway. Originally they had come from the left, but Carrie didn't even see the passage or the fork. Without knowing, she went the wrong direction. She was taking each step while she trailed her fingers along the rock, praying for light, praying at each step that she would reach the stairwell. And each step took her deeper into the mountain and further into darkness.