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And for once, I meant it with every fiber of my being. I needed to know more about what Dr. Peterson and Dr. von Keller were doing, and I desperately needed to stop them, but I would not break my word to Ruan again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHTA Stony Secret

THERE was an odd sense of finality in promising Ruan I wouldn’t do something utterly reckless. I gathered my knees to my chin in a mirror of his position, staring across the bowl of fast-moving water when I spotted a dark cleft in the limestone. There was an opening there. Not a large one—but an opening all the same. Had I been staring at the answer the whole time…?

A maze of caves beneath the priory. That’s what Dr. Peterson had told me the other day when he regaled me with the history of this place—they’d been used by the resistance during the war. I blew out my breath. What if the caves were how the patients were able to escape? If so, it would bring them here—a stone’s throw from the woods.

The priory loomed high on the rocks above, electric lights glowing unnaturally bright in the twilight. I slipped from the rock down onto the stone edge around the basin to investigate. “Wait here … I have an idea…”

“What in the gods’ names are you doing now?” Ruan scrambled to his feet and started after me.

“Keeping my word.” I continued across the cold slippery rocks. “Wait here while I see if this cave leads back toward the priory. Dr. Peterson told me the caves were used by the resistance. What if this is where my mother has been hiding?” I could not disguise the hope in my voice, nor did I want to.

Ruan made a strangled sound in his chest before shaking his head.

I huffed out a breath, resting my chin on the rock where he stood. “I promised not to get locked into the hospital, I made no assurances about caves. Besides, I won’t go in the water. I’m simply going to look about. There’s no harm in it.”

He folded his arms across his chest, expression mutinous. “I don’t like this.”

“I don’t either.”

Ruan pressed his lips together into a thin line. “Be quick. Don’t get yourself lost or killed. Twenty minutes, Ruby Vaughn.” He pulled out his dented silver half hunter pocket watch, confirming for himself the time before sinking back down onto the damp stone, his legs over the edge. “No more than that or I am coming after you.”

“I’ll be quick.” The cold water licked up on the slippery stones beneath my feet as I made my way around the edge of the pool toward the crevice in the stone. Moss and lichen grew on the rocks. There was something foreboding about the place, echoing deep into my bones and warning me to stay away. Yet at the same instant another voice beckoned. A soft and gentle urging in the recesses of my mind to go further. I reached the far side of the bowl, took a final deep breath of fresh air, turned sideways and slipped into the rock cleft in the wall. Little more than a trickle of water entered the cave the way I did—not nearly enough to explain the violence of the pool outside, but the sound of rushing water echoed from somewhere deeper inside. There must be another entry point into the caverns. Here in the darkness, the air was thick and warmer than the rapidly cooling world outside. Back pressed flat against the wall, I carefully edged along the path, that odd sense of warning growing with each step I took. An ancient reminder this was not my place. I didn’t belong here.

The darkness swallowed up the meager glow from my flashlight as I descended deeper into the earth. I wrapped my fingers tight around my flashlight, lest I drop it or break the thing. A thought that didn’t bear dwelling upon.

Something fluttered by me. A bat most likely.

Lovely.

Flying rodents.

I was quite comfortable with the natural world. Rocks. Bugs. Snails. All perfectly unobjectionable—but flying creatures I could not see? Those were a bridge too far. I held my breath to slither through a particularly narrow pass. The stones were close enough Ruan could not have made it through.

I was right. The caves were leading me somewhere, but I hadn’t a clue as to whether it was beneath the priory or in the other direction. My bare feet had grown numb from the cold damp rocks beneath them. Did I truly think I’d find my mother sitting by an underwater river waiting on me? Stupid. Stupid girl.

How many a newspaper account had I read detailing people swept away by rising waters? A fitting end to my life. Disappeared in a cave on the hunt for a murderer. I let out an irritated harrumph—almost ready to turn back when the narrow pass opened into a great round chamber. Great and towering stalactites and stalagmites dotted the path ahead. Glittering natural sculptures in my artificial light. Artistry made by water and stone and time. I looked around to get my bearings. This room had been carved out by the river for centuries. Millennia even. There were hundreds—thousands—of names and messages and drawings carved onto the exposed stone walls. I was not the first to traverse the path, nor had it been long since another had been here. The damp air bore the scent of recent woodsmoke—but whoever had set the campfire was gone now. I must be a good twenty to thirty feet below the basin of water that had gathered on the surface. Flicking my light up, I saw a great fall of water where it drained down from the pool above, before charting its course here in the underground.

The warning in my bones rang like a claxon urging me to leave but I could not. I was close now. I knew it. Two old camp beds sat along the far wall of the cave, stacked with layers of blankets. I crept closer and found some dried flowers, braided grass bracelets, and woven crowns. The sort I used to make with my mother when I was a child. Grief lodged in my chest. My mother and Manon had to have been hiding here. They had to be.

Two cots. Not three.

I ran my hand over the blankets, searching for some clue. Something at all. A thick jacket lay beneath the layers. Beneath the cot I found a pair of work boots far too large for my mother. I drew closer sniffing the jacket. It smelled stale and sour. A man’s jacket. Not my mother at all.

I rocked back onto my heels. Djhan perhaps? Was Mrs. Wauters’s son staying with the girl? But there were only two cots here … where was my mother? The pounding in my head grew worse as I laid my hand upon the side of the cave to steady myself. The stones hot to the touch.

What the devil?

I snatched my hand away. What sort of place was this?

I stumbled backward into the remnants of the campfire. Crouching down, I ran my fingers through the still warm ashes. I had to get back—to tell Ruan what I’d found. I scrambled to my feet, hurrying across the cavernous chamber when I heard an echo of someone else in the cave. The sound barely audible over the rush of water. I moved toward it.

“Ruby?” Ruan called out. The daft man didn’t even have a flashlight.

“Stay put before you get yourself killed!” I shouted back. My voice sent bats scurrying as it echoed off the walls. The path out was safe enough as I’d not encountered any forks on my way here, nor had I encountered any precipices, but he didn’t know that.

“We have a problem…”