Empire of Ash: A Passionate Paranormal Romance with Young Adult Appeal (God of Secrets Book 1)

going.”
I pull my hood back, then shine my flashlight at the first limestone step not immediately seeing any new cracks. That’s a good sign, right?
With both my headlamp as well as the flashlight beam on, the shadows undulate erratically every time I move, but there’s no way I’ll turn either one off.
Okay, here goes. I have a habit of talking to myself, and it helps calm me as I take the first step down.
Two, three… At least I’m out of the brutal elements. I place a hand on the rough limestones as I ease forward, scrutinizing every inch of the roof, then the step, before committing.
Ten, eleven, twelve… twenty… A chill runs up my spine and my body quivers. From the cold. Definitely from the cold.
Gold eye. Silver eye. Gold eye. Silver eye.
“I’d like to request no aftershocks, please,” I ask nicely. If my pretend god is listening, I hope he’ll take pity on me.
Thirty, thirty-one. I inhale, then sneeze from all the chalky dust motes dancing in the frigid air. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath. The dust has grown thicker with each step, and I can barely see four feet ahead; a claustrophobic feeling assaults me. Combined with the disorientation from the two opposing lights, I nearly turn around.
“Stop being a weenie. Just do it,” I tell myself. I clench my jaw and force myself to take another step.
Forty, forty-one… fifty… sixty… seventy. Only twenty-nine more steps, not that I’m counting. Gold eye. Silver eye.
I scour the space for the stone lintel and jambs of a doorway I know to be at the bottom of the stairs. Through it, then around a corner to the left, the deep cistern I seek hopefully still holds a city’s worth of water.
Eighty, eighty-one… Ninety, ninety-one, ninety-two. Again I shine my flashlight up at the ceiling searching for stones out of alignment. Still good.
The doorway. There it is. I sigh as I spot all three parts, the lintel across the top of the two vertical stone jambs, still in place. It’s a thing of beauty. But three steps more and I discover stones scattered beneath it.
Damn. Has the cistern been reduced to a rock pile? Please no. It’s an archeological treasure.
I train my flashlight on the uneven floor as I finger the wall for balance and mount the debris. My boots struggle to find footing on the loose rock that’s scattered about, but I finally succeed, then turn the corner.
And stop.
The cistern’s to the left, but the debris is mounded to the right. Hope bubbles up.
I step over more fallen rock and the rubble thins as I find the wet edge of the cistern.
I hold my breath as I inspect my objective.
My two lights continue casting conflicting shadows and make it hard to tell what’s what, but as I scrutinize every inch of the probably seven-foot-high, and equally deep limestone blocks of the left wall, they appear undisturbed.
My heart picks up pace. Maybe it’s okay.
I trace the right wall similarly, top to bottom, back to front, to the same result. The far wall is harder to make out in the haze, but after several minutes of inspection, its stones also appear strong, with none out of place.
My heart pitter patters. It just might be okay. All of it.
I stare at the cistern’s dark waters but can’t tell what damage, if any, has occurred beneath the surface, but if everything above the water’s intact, my best guess is that only the water has been disturbed.
I exhale. The cistern’s unharmed, and history has been spared, at least as far as the cistern goes. Hopefully the rest of the site is equally whole.
A grating sound, that of rough stone sliding across rough stone, makes my heart nearly stop, and I pivot, then jerk my flashlight up and around, running the light across the ceiling and walls.
Gold eye. Silver eye. Gold eye. Silver eye.
All I need is to find all’s well with the cistern but have this whole section of the wall fall on my head.
My heart jumps into my throat when a huge stone thuds not far away, a second later. The floor trembles as it absorbs the crushing weight.
Gold eye. Silver eye. Gold eye. Silver eye.
My legs beg to dash for safety, but I resist because the haze has thinned as I’ve studied the cistern, the dust drifting up the stairs, and I can see maybe ten feet, enough to take in a gaping hole in the wall that I missed in the thick dust.
Fear gives way to fascination and my pulse accelerates.
Curiosity is strong with this one. The co-opted phrase jogs around my brain. What ancient find might I discover?
I clamber like a mountain goat over the mound of displaced rock, but in my haste, my foot lands unevenly and my arms peddle for purchase to no avail.
“Whoa!”
My palms feel the sting of the rough limestone first, then my elbow and hip land hard, smarting. Call me Grace. Hopefully, I haven’t crushed my phone.
The Maglite shines at me from just inside the gaping hole where it came to rest, as if bragging that it beat me to it, unscathed. I mutter several particularly unladylike words before grunting to standing. I shake my smarting hands, trying to ease the pain. I’ve skinned both and one leeches blood, but I won’t die.
I move my arm in and out, making sure my elbow still functions. It does. Thank god for padded parkas. My hip will have a beautiful bruise, but nothing else seems hurt.
Good thing Irik and the others didn’t witness my fall from grace. I roll my eyes, that’s all I’d have needed.
I unbutton the hip pocket of my cargo pants, then hold my rubber gloves back as I pull out my phone.