“The glow of the moon changes its position,” Dante stated after some time, drawing Violette's attention back.
“What?” She rounded the statue.
“When viewed from this angle, the moonlight is split into two stripes by the wings and appears to be pouring from the eyes,” he explained.
“The angel's tears…There's phases of the moon inside the cup,” she remarked and Dante caught her sight.
He swayed to the side and a little more forward, bowing his head – the moonlight tears had flowed straight from the angel's eyes, streaming down into the snow. Dante rubbed the spot where the light fell; His fingers groped a cold marble tile with an eccentric symbol depicted on it, the same as on the angel's cup. He pressed it and the symbol fell down into a small hole, then he turned the bulge to the side and a loud creaking sound of a working mechanism shuttered the peace of this place.
A secret passage with a staircase, leading into darkness, opened at their feet.
“Light your wand, Little Witch.” Dante suddenly appeared behind her, making her flinch.
“Afraid of the darkness?” He bent over her.
“I'm afraid of unknown deep chambers that no one has gone down to for years,” she pressed.
Dante glanced at her again and walked forward.
“Don't worry, if I see a spider, I'll warn you,” he derided and started down the steps.
Violette bit her lip before taking out her magic wand and lighting it up. She followed Dante, carefully moving her feet step by step. And she couldn't say if the stairs were too steep, or there was less air as they descended deeper and deeper into a full nothingness.
Chapter 13
WHERE THE GREAT LOVE LIES
Finally, Violette's feet reached the stone tiles of the floor. Arches built around and inscriptions on the walls indicated that this was someone's burial, as well as a foul odor curling the air.
“Well, of course, this is the entrance to the crypt,” she muttered. “Why do secret passages always lead to a crypt? Why not somewhere less creepy?”
“Calm down, Little Witch, when we're done, you can go down wherever you want, even to the magical library absorbed by sunlight.”
“I don't need sunlight, I'd just like something that doesn't involve dead people and spiders…” She shuddered.
“It's better to let these dead people lie in coffins than walk on the ground.”
It seemed his words sounded slightly ambiguous, but she decided to not bother herself with it and simply moved forward after him.
The darkness had wrapped around their bodies, each step echoed eerily. And except this sound, nothing more. The dark corners of the crypt were evoking obscurity, sucking the very breath. The goosebumps pricked Violette’s arms, she tried to not lag behind Dante.
He picked up a torch on the wall and handed it to her to light. One touch of her magic wand to the top and it was aglow with a bright fire, illuminating the small part of the empty hall.
The echo of their footsteps distorting through the room caused the hairs to raise on the back ofViolette's neck. For a second she had thought she saw something moving across the floor, which made her quicken her pace. She wasn't afraid of the dark before and thought it was because she was a wizardling and her magic wand was a powerful weapon that could cope with any obstacle, but now she began to wonder that perhaps it hadn't scared her because those places were simply familiar to her – it was herhome. Now she was in a place foreign to her, in a crypt with corpses, and lastly, her companion was a bloodthirsty vampire. The situation was not going well for her. It was damp, eldritch, and the only source of any sound around was her accelerated heartbeat and their footsteps.
Stop being a coward,her inner voice had busted a little confidence in her, at least she wanted to believe in it. She squeezed her wand tighter.
Dante walked forward silently, not looking tense, on the contrary, he looked well put together. At some point, he stopped and looked around, pointing the torch first to the left and then to the right.
“What are we looking for?” The words slipped off Violette's tongue as she was uncertainly peering into the darkness.
“Do you feel something?” he asked.
“Me?” She goggled at him.
Dante didn't turn his head towards her. “Traces of magic, for example?”
“No…Wizards rarely feel magic in rooms, only its complete absence, which is a very bad sign.”
