Crescent

10

With the foggy image of the key practically burned into her mind, Vera plopped herself into the desk chair, relishing the chance to get off her ankle which was screaming in protest at every move she made. She had gotten used to the gray layer of dust on everything and hardly found it irritating when it flew into a cloud around her this time. She zeroed in on the six drawers built into the desk around the empty space for the chair and her legs. All of them were bland, constructed of the same smooth wood as the desk and furnished with a rusted handle that smelled coppery when she leaned in. The handle was loose on the bottom left hand drawer, and it stuck as she tried to pull it open. It was empty, however. Vera's heart sank. Finding the key was going to take much longer than she would like.

She went through every drawer one by one, each dustier than the others. One housed a collection of letters that had been eaten through by some hungry bug or smudged beyond readability. The final drawer on the top right side hardly looked promising, but she opened it with a sigh.

The moment it slid open, a huge white spider skittered out and crawled onto her hand. Vera shrieked and jumped back before smashing the back of her hand onto the desktop. Sticky spider guts exploded beneath her, a mix of pale yellow and sickly blue. Disgust roiled within her; she stood frozen, shaking with adrenaline as images of the oozing mounds of flesh in the room above flashed through her mind. When she finally moved, all that remained was a smashed corpse, thin legs curled inward over its crushed abdomen. Vera cringed and wiped the slime onto her pants.

The prisoner's movement behind her caught the corner of her eye. He was watching with a devilish smirk on his thin lips, leaning against the glass pane casually. Being snow white himself, he was almost as striking as the spider. Her face burned as his gaze flitted between her and the spider she had brutally murdered. Eventually, he shrugged and inclined his head in some sort of gesture of acceptance.

She heaved a sigh, desperately trying to calm her racing heart. Her skin was still crawling with unease, and his playful manner only irked her further. Desperate to look at something else, she put her back to him and held her breath as she examined the drawer that the spider had crawled out of. It, too, was empty—and her shoulders sagged in relief as she let out a breath—save for a large web in the back corner where several fat flies were tied up. A few were still full of life, struggling against their bonds and fighting to free their tiny wings. Others had already met their fate, and all that remained was a stray leg or half-eaten body. Like her, they were grounded—trapped—by a monster they could not defeat.

The comparison twisted her insides and dragged her gaze back to their captor, the monster she had slayed so easily. The spider had once been an undefeatable foe, it seemed, until something more powerful had come along. To her, it had been as simple as swatting it away. It never stood a chance, though it was in its own territory and no doubt brimming with confidence, a predator that feared no prey.

She thought back to the fae-killer's slow walk, the way it meandered after her and cornered her so easily. It came for her when she was weak, and it was only defeated by a power greater than her. She was nothing more than a fly to it. That was what she needed: a weapon that was better suited to crush her monster.

She had to find that key.

"Do you have a better recommendation?" she snapped, glancing at the prisoner again. His smug look had faded, now replaced with genuine curiosity. "Where's the key supposed to be?"

His lips pursed. Every time she asked a question, she could see the gears turning behind his eyes, calculating his response—or perhaps how to convey it when the glass prevented him from speaking. Shoving away from the wall, he put his palms together before opening his hands again so that they were face up. He repeated the gesture several times, always staring directly at her, waiting for her to put the pieces together.