Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass #2) by Sarah J. Maas

What was this place?

She descended the stairs. It was so silent. As if the very air held its breath.

She held her torch high, Damaris in her other hand, and approached the first iron door. It had no handle, the surface marked only by a single line. The door across from it had two marks. Numbers one and two. Odd numbers on the left, even on the right. She kept moving, igniting torch after torch, brushing away the curtains of cobwebs. As she walked farther down the hall, the numbers on the doors rose.

Is this some sort of dungeon?

But the floor held no traces of blood, no remnants of bones or weapons. It didn’t even smell that bad—just dusty. Dry. She tried opening one of the doors, but it was firmly locked. All of the doors were locked. And some instinct told her to keep them that way.

Her head throbbed slightly with the beginnings of a headache.

The hallway went on and on, until she reached the door at the far end, the cells on either side numbered ninety-eight and ninety-nine.

Beyond them was a final, unmarked door. She set her torch in a bracket beside the last door and grabbed the ring on the door to pull it open. This one was significantly lighter than the first, but also locked. And unlike the doors lining the hall, this one seemed to ask her to unlock it—as though it needed to be opened. So Celaena sketched the unlocking spell again, the chalk bone-white against the ancient metal. The door yielded without a sound.

Perhaps these were Gavin’s dungeons. From the time of Brannon. That would explain the Fae depictions on the staircase above. Perhaps he’d used these iron-gated cells to imprison the demon-soldiers of Erawan’s army. Or the wicked things Gavin and his war band hunted down …

Her mouth went dry as she passed through the second door and ignited the torches along the way. Again, the light revealed a small set of stairs leading down into a hallway. Yet this one veered to the right, and was significantly shorter. There was nothing in the shadows—just more and more locked iron doors on either side. It was so, so quiet …

She walked until she reached the door on the other end of the hall. Sixty-six cells this time, all sealed shut. She unlocked the end door with the Wyrdmarks.

She entered the third passageway, which also made a sharp right turn, and found it to be even shorter. Thirty-three cells.

The fourth hallway veered right again, and she counted twenty-two cells. The slight throbbing in her head turned into a full-on pounding, but it was so far to her rooms, and she was here already …

Celaena paused before the fourth end door.

It’s a spiral. A labyrinth. Bringing you deeper and deeper inside, farther belowground …

She bit her lip but unlocked the door. Eleven cells. She increased her pace, and swiftly reached the fifth door. Nine cells.

She approached the sixth door and halted.

A different sort of chill went through her as she stared at the sixth portal.

The center of the spiral?

As the chalk met the iron door to form the Wyrdmarks, a voice in the back of her mind told her to run. And though she wanted to listen, she opened the door anyway.

Her torch revealed a hallway in ruin. Parts of the walls had caved in, and the wooden beams were left in splinters. Cobwebs stretched between the broken shafts of wood, and tattered scraps of cloth, impaled upon rock and beam, swayed in the slight breeze.

Death had been here. And not too long ago. If this place were as ancient as Gavin and Brannon, most of the cloth would be dust.

She looked at the three cells that lined the short hallway. There was one more door at the end, which hung crookedly on its one remaining hinge. Darkness filled the void beyond.

But it was the third cell that held her interest.

The iron door to the third cell had been smashed, its surface dented and folded in upon itself. But not from the outside.

Celaena raised Damaris before her as she faced the open cell.

Whoever had been within had broken loose.

A quick sweep of her torch across the threshold revealed nothing save for bones—piles of bones, most of them splintered beyond recognition.

She snapped her attention back to the hallway. Nothing moved.

Gingerly, she stepped into the cell.

Iron chains dangled from the walls, broken off where manacles would have been. The dark stone was covered in white marks; dozens and dozens of long, deep gouges in groups of four.

Fingernails.

She turned around to face the broken cell door. There were countless marks on it.

How could someone make such lines in iron? In stone?

She shuddered and quickly stepped out of the cell.

She glanced back the way she had come, which glowed with the torches she’d lit, and then at the dark, open space that led onward.

You’re near the center of the spiral. Just see what it is—see if it yields any answers. Elena said to look for clues …

She swung Damaris in her hand a few times—only to loosen her wrist, of course. Rolling her neck, she entered the gloom.

There were no torch brackets here. The seventh portal revealed only a short passageway and one open door. An eighth gate.

The walls on either side of the eighth door were damaged and claw-marked. Her head gave a violent throb, then quieted as she stepped nearer.

Beyond the portal lay a spiral staircase that led upward, so high that she couldn’t see the top. A straight ascent into darkness.

But to where?

The stairwell stank, and she held Damaris before her as she ascended the steps, taking care to avoid the fallen stones that littered the ground.