NO!” THE WORD PUNCHED OUT OF ME, AND I LURCHED FOR THE CLOSING
exit.
I knew it was Kane who yanked me back by the middle before I could get myself squished trying to escape.
“It’s going to be all right,” he whispered against my hair. No, no, no, it was too late. We were sealed in.
The path Mari had left— My light in the darkness—
We’d never find a way out now.
My heart pounded violently in my chest, like the wings of a hummingbird. Out. It was all I could think. I needed out right now.
Out, out, out—
I backed up into stone and slid down, cool rock jagged against my loose blouse. Sucking in air by the gallon, I heaved—
Tears.
There were tears slipping down my face.
Pungent salt on my lips when I sucked in one huge breath after another.
I screwed my palms against my eyes, and when that offered little relief, held them to my stomach as if I could still the nausea or make myself breathe or even calm the trembling of my palms, but nothing was working, nothing was helping—
Some part of my hysterical, frenzied mind could hear Griffin and Mari attempting to move the slab of stone. Their bickering and frustrated grunts
only intensified my fear.
We were trapped. Preserved in here. Like insects in resin. No, no, no—
Kane crouched down in front of me and pried my hand from my chest, where I was attempting to physically press my heart into slowing.
He held my palm in his, rubbing it soothingly. “Don’t breathe too deeply. Sip the air, Arwen. Like water.”
Adrenaline as shocking as lightning shot down my legs. I was having a heart attack. I couldn’t sit still, shifting and shuddering and shaking. My throat was constricting—so tight I couldn’t talk.
“What’s wrong with her?” Fedrik asked, hovering over me.
“Nothing’s wrong with her. She’s panicking. She doesn’t like to be confined.”
“You’re fine, Wen,” Fedrik said warmly. “I doubt we’ll be down here for long, and we have plenty of food and water if we are stuck.”
Oh, Stones.
Please, please, please, I begged to no one and nothing. I need to be free, please.
“That’s not helping,” Kane hissed at him. “Leave us before you make it worse.”
Fedrik hesitated, looking down at me. “I’m sorry, Arwen. I—”
“Now, you dolt. Tell the rest of them to keep walking. We’ll catch up.” Scolded, Fedrik backed off, his eyes swimming with remorse.
I would feel awful about that later. But I couldn’t think right now. About anything other than the overwhelming, raging urge to be out of these caves and breathing again.
“You’re,” I said between heaves, “so harsh.” Another gasp. “With him.” Kane chuckled roughly. “He deserves it.”
“He’s a kind person.” I gasped in more air. “Far kinder than you.” “But isn’t it such fun to watch him writhe under my thumb?”
“So cruel. I can’t believe I ever tolerated you. Let alone kissed you.”
“I can’t believe it, either,” he said, still swirling his unhurried thumb against my palm. Then up and down my wrist. Up. Down. Massaging my
fingers until my hand became jelly in his. “What was our worst kiss? Interrupted in Peridot?”
But I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to be unconscious.
Anything but this—
“Alas, now that you’ve realized what a bad idea we were,” he continued, “I’ll have to go back to Amelia’s bed. I hope she’s kept it warm for me.”
Rage, bright and hot, swarmed in my vision.
“Good,” I spat. “You two fickle demons deserve one another.”
“She’s quite the demon, indeed. Sometimes I’d leave her bed with bite marks.”
“I hope she bites your head off.” My anger surprised me. So much so, I could barely think. I breathed in and out evenly to quell my fury. So what if he was revolting? A revolting, nasty prick. He could do whatever he pleased.
Kane assessed me, eyes raking up and down my face, my throat, my chest. He held my wrist in his hand like it was the most fragile flower and pressed his thumb to my pulse.
“Ah,” he said. “Much better.”
And with that he stood and offered me his hand. “Come on.”
I shook my head. Had he— “Was that . . . like that first night in the cells?”
“Anxiety lives only in the mind. If your thoughts are elsewhere, you can’t panic. It used to work well for my brother.”
As soon as he said it, both our expressions shifted. My heart rate slowed further.
“You have a brother?” I placed my still-shaking hand in his and took another slow inhale.
“Had,” he said.
“I bring pain wherever I go. I hurt people. Often those I care about most.”
“They’re dead, Arwen. Because of me.”
My heart ached at the memory of us in my bedroom in Shadowhold.
“He used to dislike heights about as much as you dislike being confined.”
I wanted to know more, but it didn’t feel like the right time to probe him about his family. Not when I had just snapped at him over a woman he hadn’t slept with in years. And while, once again, he was helping me quell my panic. I didn’t know how to explain that my jealousy had more to do with me than with him or Amelia.
Kane spared me the attempt, pulling me from the ground with ease. We walked cautiously down the cool stone tunnel, following after the rest of the group. I inhaled slowly through my nose, even when the rustle of wings somewhere above us spurred my legs faster, and Kane kept pace in silence. I preferred the glowing yellow eyes or the strange carvings of symbols on the walls to any of the eerie sounds. I’d rather see whatever was lurking in the cave with us than be forced to imagine it.
When my breathing had truly calmed enough to speak, I peered up at him. “Thank you.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
He kept his eyes on those paving the way for us, plodding forward as they shared stories and dropping back to peek at the map. More gemstone stalactites overhead. More twiggy, bioluminescent critters scampering at our feet. Antennae and shimmering wings.
His silence was making my chest ache.
“I’m sorry for my behavior back in Citrine,” I said. It was a start. “For stripping, and goading Crawford and . . .” And throwing myself at you.
“I don’t give a damn about any of that. Only your safety. The rest was a sight to behold.” Kane gave a tilted smile at the memory. “When you told Trevyn he’d be cleaning his loved ones out from under his fingernails for weeks.” He laughed, low and rough. “That one was dark even for me.”
I laughed, too, and allowed myself to look up at him. “Maybe we could try something new.”
Kane’s eyes twinkled in the varied torchlight. “And what might that be?” “Whoops, wrong way,” Mari called from the front before turning on a heel and passing us. We fell to the back again and I tried to remember
Kane’s instruction to sip the air like water.
I willed my voice to be casual. “Friends?”
Hurt flickered in Kane’s eyes, there and gone in an instant. But he jerked his chin in casual agreement. “Whatever the bird desires. I could always use more friends. I’m very lonely, you know.”
“Do you mean that?”
Kane breathed out evenly through his nose. “A little.”
Always so cryptic. I wanted to open his head with a pickaxe and crawl inside.
“What’s that look?”
“I was thinking about taking a pickaxe to your brain.” I flushed. It sounded so much more absurd out loud.
“Dear Gods, I’ve broken her.”
I cocked my head. I had heard the phrase before at Shadowhold, but never growing up in Amber. “Is that what you worship? Gods?”
Kane scratched at his jaw. “It may be more information than you can handle right now, bird.”
I sighed. How much more could there possibly be? “Try me.”
He scanned the dark expanse around us, contemplative. “In Evendell, legend says nine stones, each one a kingdom’s namesake, formed the continent’s core. You worship them, the Stones. Have temples built to them, curse them, pray to them, and on and on.”
I nodded. Amber was the most devout kingdom, with more temples, priests, and priestesses than any other kingdom, except maybe Pearl. I had grown up studying the Stones in all my classes.
“The Fae, my people—our people—believe in Fae Gods. Immortal beings who created our realm, and all the others, including Evendell.”
I wasn’t as shocked as Kane expected me to be. Maybe because to him, this was a great truth—the creation of his world. But to me, it was just a story.
“So the Fae don’t believe in the Stones at all?”
“No, we do. We believe mortals mistakenly refer to the Fae Gods as the Stones they created. There were nine original Fae Gods as well. The Blade
of the Sun was hewn by them, and they are the ones who infused the hilt with their nine stones.”
“Original gods? Now there are more?”
“So they say.” Kane shrugged. “It’s not as if they walk among us in Lumera, and I’m not quite as knowledgeable on deity lore.”
The Fae history and folklore—my history and folklore—fascinated me. Almost as much as hearing Kane speak of the antiquities he loved so dearly. I wondered how much of this he learned as a boy in his classes, and how much came from his big, dry books.
The unmistakable smell of decaying human flesh hit me like an ocean wave and I dry heaved before clasping a hand over my face. Kane strode faster for the group before us. Everyone had stalled before . . . something. Without a torch of my own I couldn’t see what it was in the assaulting darkness.
But I could hear.
The slithering of their scaled bodies. The bloodcurdling screech they produced—
And smell the putrid remains of whatever they had killed. “What is that?”
“I have no idea,” Mari murmured, which was always disconcerting. “They’re reapers. Hence the name of the cave,” Niclas said.
Fedrik grunted. “And what is a reaper, exactly?”
“Why does it matter?” Niclas snipped. “They won’t stop us.” He made to push toward the undulating, screeching sounds.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Kane said. Kane, a man I had never heard caution anyone—except me—against anything dangerous in his life. The least risk- averse person I had ever met.
Niclas scoffed. “We make it this far, and your balls shrink to grapes at the sound of some lizards?”
My eyes widened at his vitriol.
Not one to pick fights with those he deemed beneath him, Kane said nothing. Niclas appraised the rest of us, but no one dared to move.
“Fine. I’ll go alone.”
He inched forward, and the group parted to accommodate him, granting me a better view of the torchlit scene.
A vast pit extended before us. The expanse was bisected by a single plank of stone, like a thin bridge, that could only fit one foot placed in line after another. A deadly balancing beam to the other side. I couldn’t see into the depths, but I could smell the rotting flesh of those who had not succeeded in crossing it. And hear the creatures that had no doubt torn them apart.
But beyond the thrashing, seemingly bottomless pit was the only reason for Niclas’s bravery. In the distance, on the other side, was a rocky archway, lit from inside with scintillating, luminous light. Light that clearly reflected off pure gold, diamonds, and jewels. Sparkling, glittering, radiant.
The treasure. Just out of reach. “You can’t,” I breathed.
“Watch me.”
“Nobody wants what’s through that passage more than us,” Fedrik said. “But it’s not worth your life.”
Niclas considered Fedrik’s words, eyeing the creatures that slithered through the pit.
Griffin cut a sidelong glance at Kane. “So what now?”
Kane’s jaw stiffened. “Take them and find a way out the way we came.
I’ll go on my own.”
“No.” My knees buckled beneath me.
Kane gave me a pointed look as he lifted a shoulder, and I remembered that he would not need to cross the narrow bridge on foot.
“No way I’m letting you bunch take what’s mine.” Niclas shrugged Fedrik’s hand away and, despite our shouts urging him to wait—to please listen to reason—stepped onto the narrow bridge. He inched along, one foot after the other. When he teetered, Mari nearly shrieked and twisted Griffin’s arm into a vise grip.
“Holy Stones,” she whispered. “I’m going to vomit.”
Niclas narrowly righted himself and somehow continued walking. All the while, the snaps, slithers, and screeches of the scaled beasts below
echoed off the cavern walls.
“Fifty coin says he drops before he makes it halfway.” Kane smirked. “I’ll take those odds.” Griffin’s eyes were glued to the wobbling sailor. “You’re both sick,” I hissed.
Niclas was making good progress. He was fast enough not to sway, but slow enough to be deliberate. I wondered if years of balancing on an uneven boat deck had granted him great steadiness. Maybe he would make it to the other side, find his ledger. Maybe even the blade . . .
And then what? Kane would probably pluck it from his hands and toss him to the reapers himself.
“That’s fifty coin to me,” Griffin muttered. Kane only grunted his response. Niclas had nearly made it to the end. The man was clearly disturbed, but I was rooting for him. I thought we all were, standing there watching him place one careful step after another.
Until his left foot landed wrong.
And that was all it took. He tried to course-correct—hands lunging out for support that wasn’t there, flailing through the air like ribbons—before he disappeared into the writhing pit.
I got one look at a reaper in a dim shaft of torchlight as it sailed up to meet him. Sleek, agile body of an enormous snake, flexible and fluid. But that face . . . like a piranha. Ferocious, serrated teeth—layers of them—and rabid, oily red eyes, sunken deep into a face that hadn’t seen daylight in likely millennia—
Then, the violent gnashing of teeth ripping Niclas into chunks as ebony reptilian skin mingled seamlessly with the pitch-black shadows of the pit. Mari squeezed her eyes shut and glued her hands to her ears against the gory sounds as Fedrik looked away, wincing. Niclas’s death was instant—a savage, instantaneous dismemberment—and I thought it was a mercy that he had felt little pain, but that didn’t stop me from retching onto the cavern floor at the sight.
Kane rubbed a comforting hand down my back but said nothing, no witty barb or gallows humor, and I thanked the Stones for that. I wouldn’t have been able to stomach it.
Before any of us could comment on the horror we had just witnessed, the ground beneath us rumbled once again. My hand slung out to Kane’s and clutched, so tight his fingers would have been pale white had I been able to see them in the darkness.
Would the stalactites above fall like heavy spears? Would another moving partition crush us into paste?
Two twin slabs of stone jutted out from the walls that bordered each side of the pit and moved inward toward the bridge Niclas had tried to cross. The rocks scraped and groaned, the shuddering reverberating in my teeth and bones until the slabs met each side of the bridge, sealing the pit completely. What had just been a pond-sized expanse was now flat ground. No more pit, no more reapers, no more Niclas.
“How . . . ?” Fedrik tried, but words seemed to fail him.
I could still hear the faint gnashing and shrieking of the reapers underneath the stone floor. Kane pushed past Mari and Griffin gently and placed a tentative foot onto the fresh ground. My breath hitched in my lungs
—but when the stone didn’t give way under his weight, he strolled elegantly across and turned to face us from the other side.
“Come on in, the water’s fine.”
I wheezed out a breath and tried not to think that Niclas had somehow offered a sacrifice necessary to cross the reapers’ threshold. We followed after Kane, heels echoing on the stretch of fresh, new stone, until all five of us stood on the other side and faced the dazzling, glittering reflection in the corridor entrance.
“Shall we?” Kane offered, before taking a step toward the stone arch.
But a sinister feeling sank through me, and without thinking I flung my hand out in front of his chest to stop him.
“No,” I gasped out. “Don’t.” “What is it?”
“Something isn’t right.” My gaze swept the space. “The passage is a fake. A trap.”
“It’s too obvious,” Griffin added.
“A catchall for anyone who makes it through the reapers,” Fedrik tutted. “Horrific.”
“There!” Mari’s voice bounced off the cavern walls as she dropped to her knees beside a hole in the stone to our left, cobwebbed and tucked out of sight behind a jagged rock. Too large to be a creature’s den, but too small for a grown man. Some kind of tunnel.
“No, witch—”
But Griffin’s warning was too late. Her small frame, illuminated by our now fading torches, disappeared into the tight entrance with ease. My stomach seized at the sight. My worst nightmare come alive.
“Someone needs to go after her,” Griffin said, crouching down. His broad shoulders would never make it through.
“Holy Stones!” Mari’s voice was muffled through the rock. “What is it?” I called.
Griffin nearly jammed his entire body into the solid stone.
“The treasure . . . It’s . . . it’s all here.”
Fedrik dropped to a crouch beside Griffin to inspect the narrow passage.
There was almost nothing across the continent I could want to do less than this, but . . . if the blade was in there, it would call to me.
Kane’s eyes fell to mine, my intention clearly plain across my face. “You can’t. It’s too tight.”
“I’m the only one the blade will speak to,” I said quietly, Fedrik out of earshot.
“Fine,” Kane said, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “I’m right behind you.” But we both knew none of the men could fit.
Only me.
In my own little tomb.
I knelt and squeezed past Fedrik and Griffin, my elbows and knees scuffing against the dirt and dust. My head swam with the earthy stench: clay and mildew and decay. My heart beat like a drum in my ears, my brow beading with sweat. So tight. So narrow. And all submerged in stark, pitch- blackness. I was shaking now, not from the cold but from the fear. I nearly
gagged on it. This would be the single most miserable way to die, trapped in here, left to suffocate.
No, no, do not think like that.
I scraped and slinked, but the tunnel was only constricting the deeper I crawled, and we were so far under the ground, and air was escaping me. With each heave, I lodged myself farther, and farther still—until I turned with the angle of the stone and saw where the tunnel would deposit me. Hurrying my elbows against the floor, I clawed and crawled and slid through to the other side, landing in a room where everything was glimmering.
A sparkling room, lit with candles—and laden with gilded treasure. “Arwen,” Mari said, overcome.
My eyes squinted to adjust to the glow. To take it all in.
Stacks and stacks of copper and silver and gold coin. Life-sized marble statues of virile men and women cloaked in gauzy bedsheets. Bejeweled tiaras and serpentine scepters. Jade votives and ages-old scrolls now petal- thin. Fierce, glinting weaponry. Beads and vases and crowns.
So much my eyes could barely devour the small, overflowing room. They swept up to the ancient wrought-iron candelabra implanted in the stone of the ceiling. The light that flickered there—enchanted pillar candles that had probably been lit for centuries.
“Arwen?” Kane’s voice called through the tunnel. “Yes,” I called. “The treasure—it’s here.”
“The blade?”
I drank in the four walls shrouded and bloated and filled to the very brim with riches, my eyes assaulted by the flickering glow and sparkle. I pored over every inch. None of the longswords, daggers, or scimitars had a hilt with all nine stones. No song that sang only to me. No blade.
“I don’t think it’s here,” I called. I heard Kane curse. “But I’ll keep looking.”
“There is so much history in here,” Mari said, voice soft. Awed. “Stories and scrolls and books from eras and eras ago . . . I could weep. Am I weeping?”
“Just don’t touch anything,” I murmured, my eyes greedily gobbling up an entire wall of resplendent, glittering bejeweled spears.
Despite Azurine being the most lavish place I’d ever visited, and everything in that palace—even the little golden soap dishes adorned with fine pearl latticework—likely worth more than my whole home back in Abbington, nothing, nothing I’d seen there could compare to the wonders that filled this room.
“Oh, my Stones,” Mari whispered. I whirled. “You found it?”
“It’s the ledger . . . just like Niclas said. With all the names in it . . .”
Before I could caution her against it, Mari reached her hand out and closed it around the book’s dust-flecked leather, and every candle in the room winked out.
