Page 76 of Serpent and Shadow

If it had, I might have second-guessed the wisdom of falling from such a height, regardless of whether I phased or not. If I’d arrived here going the same speed as my fall, I would have died anyway, just as surely as if I’d landed on the arched roof.

Luckily, that didn’t happen.

It still took me almost a minute of standing there, panting and sweating, completely jacked up on adrenaline, gripping the stone wall in front of me tightly in my fingers, before I could move, or even make sense of where I was.

It might have been fear, too, that kept me upright.

Despite being alive, despite not smashing every bone in my body from the fall, I knew immediately that I wasn’t safe here, either.

Also, I’d been pretty sure I was going to die by the time I got close enough to the roof feel the heat rushing up from the stone, so at least some of my reaction was likely to be from that. I wasn’t dead, I hadn’t wanted to be dead, but now I was in shock that I was somehow still alive. I hadn’t expected to be alive. I didn’t yet quite understand how I was alive.

That stunned feeling mixed with whatever danger I felt instantly where I’d landed.

It blared like an alarm, rippling through my magic like a cold wind.

Death, near death, danger.

Danger. More danger. Still in danger.

Even with those feelings crashing together, that hard, desperate feeling from before still burned in my chest.

I had to find Bones.

It was the thought that finally got my mind moving again.

I could already sense I needed to move. I felt exposed, although I still had no idea where I was, and my eyes swam with spots as I fought to right my vision. Despite that feeling of urgency, I remained where I was for a few seconds more, facing the stone wall where I’d been thrown. I needed to be able to see before I could do anything.

I already knew I wasn’t back behind the wardrobe.

As my vision darkened and gradually sharpened, I looked carefully around.

This definitely wasn’t the crypt.

My hands still pressed flatly on the wall as I focused on the long, opulent corridor in front of me. I was still breathing too hard, my heart thumping with adrenaline and shock. My mind reoriented around the black and white tile, the dark stone walls, the paintings hanging every few feet along one side. I stared at a portrait lit from below in the distance, and a suit of armor not far from where it hung.

Then I turned my head and stared in the other direction.

By then, my eyes had adjusted completely to the dim light.

I stood in a long hallway made up of black and white marble tile laid in a tessellated, chessboard pattern. Everything about the corridor struck me as immediately familiar, although I struggled to locate it precisely for a few seconds longer, definitely longer than it would have taken if I hadn’t still been in shock. I stared at the suit of armor a second time, then focused on the high-set wall sconces with flickering, magical, green and gold flames.

Two arched, stone-framed windows with colored glass pulled my eyes next. They aimed into a shady area of a courtyard garden, framing the dark lines of large oak trees. It was night now, but I remembered the corridor as always being dark, even in the daytime.

Now, the full moon gave it a tiny amount of illumination by the windows. The trees and stone walls kept out most of the light, but small pools of blue-tinted moonlight stuck hazily to the floor and illuminated dust particles in its path.

I knew this. I knew this place.

This wasn’t just some random part of the castle. It was familiar.

The adrenaline was dampening down in me now.

My stomach hurt from where it pooled in my lower abdomen.

That sick, heady feeling of alarm about Bones still made it difficult to think.

It also stretched time. What had probably only been a few seconds stretched into long-feeling minutes, a formless, lengthening pause that only worsened my panic.

You have to get to Bones. Now.