It took two trembling steps for the sun to vanish.

Camila held her flashlight in one hand, a dagger in the other. The cave was silent as a grave and just as cramped. The walls of the tunnel pressed in on her, the space so narrow her shoulders scraped sharp rocks from the stone walls. It sloped downwards at a steep angle.

Her hands shook. Muscles she'd spent years training were weak and trembling, struck with nerves. One wrong step, Rosa had warned her, and the whole cavern could collapse.

She walked with terrified precision.

Camila wondered how long Rosa, Zora, Alex, and Declan would wait for her. A week? Maybe two? She had enough water for the first ten days if she rationed.

Without the sun or a watch, she couldn't track the passage of time. Camila began to count her steps. They were less careful now. She figured if the cave was going to collapse, it would have already.

She was starting to feel bored when the ground vanished beneath her. Her arms windmilled, she stumbled, fell, and for one, terrifying second, her body hung suspended in the air.

And then her hand closed around the jagged edge of the cliff.

Camila hung there, legs scrambling for purchase on the pockmarked rock wall, letting her breathing slow to its normal rhythm. With her werewolf strength, her body felt light as a feather.

"Fuck," she cursed aloud. It echoed across the cavern, a pale imitation of her own angry, frustrated voice. No one responded.

Which, admittedly, was probably a good thing.

The cave was perfectly spherical, as if someone had taken a giant ice cream scoop and dug into the raw earth. The tunnel opened in the center of a curved wall, built from stone so dark in color it was almost black. Faint crystals glittered dully in the pale glow of her flashlight. Far below her, so distant Camila wasn't entirely sure it was real, there was the inky hole of another tunnel lurking at the base of the cavern.

Camila sat down. She dug through the backpack, looking for a rope, a grappling hook, a bedsheet, anything she could use to lower herself into the ravine.

Maybe, with her new werewolf strength, she could climb to the bottom of the cavern. But what if she couldn't get back up? Camila pictured herself, alone and cold, starving to death in a deep pit at the bottom of an underground cave.

She winced.

"Need a hand?"

Camila jumped.

Where before there had been nothing but air and stray specks of dirt, a young woman sat. She dangled her bare feet over the edge, looking up at Camila with eyes as black as oil.

"...How can you help?" Camila set her backpack down. She braced her hands against her hips, a mere inch away from the leather-wrapped handle of her dagger.

The girl moved slowly, like she was underwater. Her pale hair fluttered in a breeze that wasn't there and her moon-white skin glowed softly.

"I'll make a deal with you." Her eyes were wide in innocent curiosity. "Your knives for safe passage."

"And if I don't agree?"

"Then you'll die here. Forgotten and alone." The girl offered Camila her hand. The fingers were small, thin, and white as bone.

Something about the girl sent shivers crawling down Camila's spine. It wasn't the unnatural flow of her movements or the eerily beautiful blond hair, the soft glow of her skin or the way she didn't seem to breathe. It was the empty eyes, the sharp tilt of her smile. Something about her felt malevolent.

Don't make deals with ghosts. Declan's words echoed in her mind.

"I'll think about it," she said, smiling politely.

The girl hissed, a rough, slithering sound. When Camila looked back, she was gone. Someone behind her laughed and Camila whirled, daggers ready-

There was no one there.

She shook herself. The chasm yawned in front of her, endless and hungry. Camila tucked her knives safely into the backpack, placing the flashlight in the side pocket usually reserved for water bottles, and, holding tight to the cliff edge, let her body swing out over open air.

Her grip was strong, bolstered by years of training and her newfound werewolf strength. Camila lowered herself, one hand at a time, until her fingers burned and bled faster than her body could stitch the skin back together.

Her fingers fumbled for another hold on the rock wall. Her body swung like a pendulum, back and forth, stomach scraping against jagged stones. Her right hand collided with an outcropping of stone and she grabbed on.

She didn't see it happen, but she felt it.

Her backpack lightened. There was a soft rustling noise and the faint whoosh of something falling. Darkness swallowed her as her flashlight plunged to the ground.

The rock she was holding on to slipped.

Camila gasped, clinging to it. She couldn't see anything, could only hear her rapid, uncontrolled breathing. She closed her eyes—it made no difference in the suffocating darkness—and tried to calm herself.

You can do this.

But all she could think about was how wrong this was. How had she gotten into this mess? What happened to a future as a political bride? She pressed her forehead to the cold stone, squeezing her eyes shut.

Her arms shook.

Camila grasped blindly at the stone. She found a crevice, dug her fingers in, and lowered herself another foot.

Failure wasn't an option. Not if she wanted her parents to live. 

She found another crevice. Lowered herself another arm-length. Every scrap of energy she had went to her fingers, slick with blood and sweat.

Where had everything gone wrong? Images flashed through her mind: the smell of smoke as the vampires stormed the ballroom, the snap of the mating bond as her eyes collided with Declan's, Rosa's thin hand clamped around her shoulder onboard a plane, the shock of realization that Dragomir held her parent's lives in his bleach-white palms.

Her feet brushed against something hard. Solid. She found another fissure in the rock, lowered her body once more, and stumbled to the rocky, sloping floor of the cavern.

Camila sat.

Every movement was clumsy, difficult with the lack of light. She ran her fingers along the ground, hoping for the flashlight. No luck.

She fumbled for the zipper on her backpack and searched the contents. Her fingers brushed the soft cushion of the sleeping bag, the cold plastic of her water bottle, the hard metal of the dagger, and—finally—the sleek screen of the iPhone.

The burst of bright light burned her eyes and she closed them reflexively. Camila blinked, spots flashing across her vision, and scanned her surroundings. She was struck again by how massive the cavern was, the ceiling so far above her head it wasn't visible. The ground stretched out before her, an endless sea of stalagmites and sharp crystals.

She glimpsed a crumpled mess of bones, yellowed with age. A small animal, maybe, or a ribcage, Camila wasn't sure which.

She looked away before she could find out.

Was that what she would become if she couldn't make it out of here? An unidentifiable pile of dried out bones? Camila shook herself. Dwelling on death wouldn't bring her luck or satisfaction.

She started to walk.

By the time Camila reached the tunnel, lactic acid coursed through her calves. Her thighs were scraped and bloody from the serrated edges of stalagmites the size of tree trunks. Dirt streaked across every inch of bare skin: her palms, her face, her ankles.

She shone the phone's flashlight into the tunnel.

The darkness absorbed up the light, leaving the tunnel as inky black as before. When she reached out a careful hand into the tunnel, the air felt strangely solid.

That's not worrying at all.

Camila took one last look behind her. The cave was all jagged edges and sharp drop offs, but at least it was familiar.

She had to do this, Camila reminded herself. No one was coming to save her. She stepped forward.

At first, she felt nothing.

The world was an expanse of darkness, completely void of color. Her toes, her fingers, her arms and legs, chest and thighs—she couldn't feel any of it. She heard her heart thump twice in her chest and stop beating. 

Like little needles pushed into her skin, sensation rushed into her body. Camila opened her eyes and gasped.

She was in the ballroom.

It was empty, except for one woman sitting on the throne, her fingers caressing the golden armrests. She was tall, raven-haired, with porcelain skin and piercing black eyes.

"Hello Camila," Her voice was a song, a melody, every syllable rich and layered. The kind of voice a singer would kill for. "I hear you're looking for my heart."

Whew! This is kind of serious chapter! Thanks for spending some time with it and I promise the next one's a bit less intense!  

-Harley