“Priest ward?” Eryken asked. "How do you know this when it's the first time you ever came here?"
She looked up at him. "I spent time with Eldara."
Nero huffed. "Who the hell is Eldara? A spy?"
Veda laughed. "She's a dragon."
Nero opened his mouth to ridicule her but shut it just as quickly. There'd been rumors.
“These are old Fenrir bindings, repurposed,” Veda said. “Old magic from when the fenrir wolves governed the territories. They’ll flare if the wolf crosses them. Doran knows you’ll come.” She glanced behind her at Eryken. “Only the wolf-soul and those that have Fenrir blood can progress.”
Eryken took a step forward. “You cannot shift,” he almost spat.
She looked saddened. “I still have Fenrir blood through my line, but he has the wolf-soul, so it isn't necessary.”
"But how did Doran…wait," Nero answered his own question "he hasFenrirblood?"
Veda inclined her head. "Him, certain silver guard probably all progeny of the emperor, and apparently a priest called Enoch."
"But they can't shift?" Eryken pressed.
"No, the blood is too diluted, but it certainly explains his obsession with the silver wolf and the fact he thinks his blood will accept it."
It made horrible sense, Nero acknowledged. “And we can just walk in?”
She met his gaze. “No, but your blood will open the ward.” She produced a knife and Nero extended his palm without hesitation. The blade flashed. His blood fell in dark droplets that smoked where they touched the carved sigil. Veda did the same.
Smoke coiled upward in delicate spirals that smelled of iron and frost-burnt sage. Veda pressed her bloodied thumb into the center of the circle. Her whisper was in an old cadence Nero had never even heard from priests.
The ward shivered.
Nero felt it as a pressure against his bones, a low hum that set his teeth on edge, then a soft, unwilling release, like a clenched hand forced open.
“It will close again within less than a bell," Veda murmured, sending Eryken an understanding look. “You cannot follow."
They dropped down as a ravine opened. Slick stone tried to kill them with every step. The walls rose steeply on either side, swallowing the sky until only a blade of stars remained. Somewhere ahead, beneath, the air changed—cold turning colder, clean becoming foul andwrong.
Nero knew that wrongness; it lived in the walls of the High Temple. It was hate, and he was ashamed to think it had lived in him once too.
“Two sentries,” Veda breathed, when they hit the bottom motioning with two fingers.
Nero’s nostrils flared, scenting leather, oiled bowstrings, and old fear masked beneath incense. He glanced at her. Two nods, and they moved.
The first guard died without understanding that death had come; Nero was on him and then he was nothing but a shadow that smelled of blood. Veda’s hand covered the second man’s mouth while Nero’s blade found the hollow beneath his ear. They lowered both bodies into a cleft of rock, their faces turned toward stone.
No horns, no shout of death. The ravine accepted its offerings in silence.
Beyond a twist in the path, the ravine opened into a basin choked with winter grass and broken monoliths—the fallen teeth of a forgotten god. At its far side yawned a black mouth rimmed in carved wolves whose eyes had been gouged out. The Fenrir Crypts.
Nero’s chest tightened. His wolf pressed against his skin, restless, recognizing ancestral stone. The silver in his eyes sharpened the world: every runic groove, every hairline fracture in the columns, the wet gleam of blood daubed in fresh sigils above the entrance.
“Priest-marks,” Veda said, her voice a thread.
They slid into shadow. The chill deepened to a living thing that stroked the back of Nero’s neck with dead fingers. The tunnel angled down, the air tasting of damp stone.
A sound rose from below, so faint Nero at first mistook it for his own heartbeat: a chanting that scraped like bone against slate. As they descended, the chant thickened into somethingrhythmic and wrong. Male voices layered with the higher keening of acolytes, a percussive beat of palms on hollow bone that made Nero’s hackles rise. The air stank of hot iron and rendered fat.
Veda raised two fingers: halt. Her other hand indicated a narrow alcove where the passage forked. From the left came the chant, stronger now. From the right—a draft redolent of oil and men.
