Free Venus City 1 by Tabitha Vale Page B

brushed a grimy wall, and Braya moved closer to it, hoping to follow it. Someone had obviously knocked her out earlier, and she had no idea if she was still in the same place as before, but she wasn't going to wait around for whoever it was to come back.
    If they hadn't moved her, she would still be close to the stairs and she could escape. She knew where the twins were hiding now, and she could go home and tell her mother about it. Then she'd be rewarded and live happily ever after.
    That thought made her feel a little better. She crept along the wall at a quicker pace, and cried out in surprise when she tumbled into a corner. This couldn't be right.
    Braya followed the intersecting wall and several feet down she grazed over something wooden. She frantically ran her hands over the surface, yelping at the splinters she collected in the process, and felt something sinister sink to the bottom of her stomach when her hands collided with a metal handle.
    She was in a room, which meant that someone had put her there. Braya didn't want to imagine the dozens of other things the unknown people could have done to her when she'd been unconscious. Had it been the twins? Had they lured her here for a reason? If that were the case, Braya couldn't imagine it'd be to discuss tea.
    She wrenched at the handle. Surprisingly, it opened easily. Light leaped into the room and Braya ducked away to shield her eyes. Once her vision was adjusted to the light, she peered out the door and into what appeared to be a corridor. The light that had burst through the door had only been dim candlelight, but Braya was grateful that she could see again.
    She entered the hallway somewhat hesitantly. If those twins had known this underground structure well enough to throw her in some room they would surely know how to return to the room. And who knew? Maybe those foreign green eyes enabled them to see in the dark. She wouldn't doubt it.
    The candlelight wasn't enough to illuminate every nook and cranny along the corridor. Great shadows swarmed along ledges, inside corners, and down intersecting halls. It didn't matter, though. Braya had to get out.
    She wandered through the corridor. She continued down the same one since most of the others that rose up to the left or right were swallowed up in complete darkness. She shuddered each time she passed one.
    Braya couldn't be sure since it was swathed in black, but the ceiling seemed to be very tall if the echoing of her footsteps on the stone floor was any indication.
    The passage was wide, cold, and smelt like soil. At the end of it, she found another passage leading to her right. It was brightly lit with great, bulbous lanterns of blue and gold propped up in rusted brackets. She could see the high-reaching arcs of the ceiling clearly now. Tall pillars of cracked marble lined the walls, random spots of the floor were eaten up by overgrowing roots—some were thick enough to be tree branches—that curled up across the stone, and the heavy scent of fresh soil lingered in the air.
    That was the strange thing. Packed around every pillar, into every ledge, and through every cracked stone was fresh soil. Placed in the soil were various kinds of flowers, beautiful in the lantern-light, all tangled together in a way that made it look like it was the flowers that had overgrown the corridor. It was impossible, though. Someone had planted them.
    A few yards down the flower corridor, Braya encountered two large doors with many large locks nailed into its surface. All of them were unlatched, and, even though she had a feeling it wasn't the exit, Braya gently pushed them open.
    She emerged in a chapel. That's what this underground place was, she realized. The vaulted space she tentatively stepped into was slightly narrow, but in no way small. Pews were lined up in front of her, stretching so far forward that she guessed more than five hundred people could attend service there. Hollowed archways as tall as the great entrance doors