Transmigrated Into The Body Of The Cursed Prince Wife-Chapter 224: Lucian...

Stepping out of her room, she was met with a silent, dim hallway that was illuminated only by the moonlight coming in from the open window at the end of the corridor. Ave could hear the fierce beating of her heart as she walked up to a table where a vase of flowers was kept and took the dimly burning lamp there. She increased the flame and began to walk down the corridors of the chambers to see if she’d find Lucian in one of the rooms.

Whenever Lucian was in close proximity to her or was somewhere around her, her heart automatically picked up, and she felt a thrilling feeling in her body. Thus, she decided to rely on that feeling as she passed by door after door. If she had that feeling, it would mean he was in one of the rooms. However, even after walking to the end of the corridor on the floor of her room, she didn’t feel anything. ƒrēenovelkiss.com

He wasn’t here, she thought as she decided to look in another part of the palace. The palace felt so empty with no servants or anybody in sight that she knew without a doubt there was no one around. That gave Ave the confidence to move around without hiding herself, with her lamp posed up in front of her face.

Ave walked around the castle for hours, yet she felt no presence of Lucian or anyone. Her frustration at not finding him and the fear of coming across a wolf made her begin to doubt if he was even here. Could it be that they had taken him to another place to get treatment for his sickness? If that was the case, then she was looking in the wrong places.

If he’d been taken away from the palace, it wasn’t going to be easy knowing where they’d taken him because no one was going to tell her even if she were to ask, not to mention she had no intention of asking those werewolves anything. The thought of them shifting still terrified her more than she wanted it to, and she didn’t think she could face any of them without flinching or giving herself away that she knew their secrets.

The best thing to do now was to go back to her room and think of a way to find out from Zane where Lucian was taken. He was her only option now, Ave thought with a resigned sigh as she’d looked everywhere she suspected he would have been in the palace but couldn’t find him. She turned to make her way back toward her room when she stopped short in her tracks as a voice rang in her head.

"Aveline..."

She heard her name, and she recognized the voice calling for her. It was so faint that she wouldn’t have heard it had she not held her breath for a moment. Lucian! He was calling for her. She could feel it!

Ave turned away from the direction of her room and looked back at the other direction she was about to walk away from. It led to a place she had not dared walk to before or even now that she was looking around because she knew there was no reason for her husband to be down there.

It was a deserted corridor at the depth and far from the brightened part of the polished halls that seemed to lead to somewhere unknown to her. The day she was looking around the palace out of boredom and had stumbled upon the wolf’s portrait, she’d passed by here, but because it had been so dim despite it being day, she had avoided the part and gone on with her business. But now that her heart seemed to be pulling her in that direction and the voice of her husband echoed in her head, she found herself walking towards it.

It was completely absurd that Lucian would be anywhere around a place like this, but she still couldn’t stop her curiosity from finding out where the double doors at the end of the isolated corridor led to.

Gripping her lamp in one hand, she reached out a trembling hand to turn the doorknob of the double doors. It was locked, she realized, when it didn’t open. Ave knew she should turn away now since the door was locked, but a nagging and persistent feeling in her heart kept her rooted in that spot. She must see what was behind this door before she’d be able to be at peace.

Not knowing how she did it or what even made her do it, but then her instinct led her, and she reached out for the doorknob again. Ave closed her eyes and turned the knob. A faint light emitted from her palm, and there was a clicking sound that made her quickly retrieve her hand, and she watched as the door softly cracked open by itself in astonishment.

She looked down at her hand in surprised disbelief. She had no idea how she’d done that, but she didn’t dwell on it and hesitantly walked into the unknown door. She stopped, shocked, at the entrance. The door didn’t lead to a room; instead, it seemed to lead to an endless narrow darkened path where even the light of the lamp in her hand wasn’t enough to illuminate the end of the path. It looked like a dark path that led to hell or something ominous.

The place was cold and held the smell of wet earth. The walls were built with dark rocks, and if the endless darkness wasn’t a clear indication for her to quietly turn back, close the door, and go back to her room, the stillness and the dead-drop silence were enough to tell her that there was probably nothing down there for her to see. She had no reason to get curious about what was at the end of the tunnel, but the thought of leaving without at least checking it out made her heart twist in ways she couldn’t pinpoint.

"Just a quick peek, and I’ll come out," she told herself as she turned to look back at the polished hall of the palace, then at the unknown darkness she was about to walk into. What if there was nothing to see there and she just wasted her time because of her curiosity? Ave thought as she took her first hesitant step forward into the narrow path.

The moment she walked away from the door, it closed behind her, and she jumped at the banging sound and swirled around. This was no different from burying herself deep in the ground, Ave thought as she stared at the locked door. However, knowing she would be able to open it again like she’d done a while ago, she turned and continued to walk down the path.

The deeper she walked, the colder and damper it got. She could feel gooseflesh breaking out on her arms from the cold atmosphere. Why the hell was she going down a path she knew she was probably not going to see anything there? What could be at the end of it that seemed to be calling her?

Lucian was a guest here, and the royals of Nazia have no reason to put him down here, nor did she have any reason to be snooping around here as well. She should be thinking of ways to make Zane tell her where they had taken Lucian, but here she was going down here because her heart had led her to it.

Ave walked and walked until her legs began to hurt without any signs of the path coming to an end. It was just like she’d thought—it was a bottomless and endless path that would take her to nothing, but yet she kept walking. The more she walked, the more she felt like the little space was closing in around her and like she was going down the devil’s den.

"Aveline, this should serve your curiosity," she told herself, panting for breath. "You should go back now; you’ve seen enough to know there is nothing down there." She told herself, but yet she kept walking.

At long last, after walking for what seemed like eternity to her, she walked to an open space that was darker and bigger than she could imagine. The space was so big her light wasn’t enough to light it up; she could only see no more than a meter away from where she stood.

"So this is where it leads to? An open darkness," she muttered to herself in disbelief. After walking for that long, she had found nothing. Wait, what did she even expect to find in the first place? Her husband locked up down here? The absurdity of that thought made her scoff dryly and turn on her heels to leave, but she stopped in her tracks as she felt something amiss in her surroundings.

She could feel a pricking at the back of her neck, like someone was watching her. She wasn’t alone down here, she realized. Someone or something was down here with her, and that made her blood run cold as she could tell by the sudden suffocating and overwhelming air that it was something ominous and dark.

Ave turned to the direction she felt the presence, with her hand holding the lamp slightly trembling from the blood-colliding fear that consumed her. She was far away from where anyone would hear her if something were to attack her down here.

She heard a low inhuman growl that made her knees turn to jelly. The growl started off low before it seemed to echo as whatever was in the darkness rose from its resting place. Ave knew she should run, but God help her, her legs couldn’t move when she noticed two pairs of burning eyes in the darkness that stared down at her soul and paralyzed her in place.

Ave blinked twice to see if she were seeing things. Those eyes looked so inhuman, but as she stared into them and they stared fiercely down at her, the eyes of her husband were what came to her mind. She knew there was no reason for whatever this was to be Lucian, but she didn’t know why she was seeing his face in her mind as she looked at the eyes.

"Lucian..." She muttered the name with an ache she didn’t recognize in her voice, and the moment the name left her mouth, the thing in the darkness growled loudly, and she heard the sounds of rustling chains as it leapt in her direction without warning.