“To locate her, you’d have to break past my runes. Which is impossible.”
My heart hitches. “You know where my sister is?”
Essi nods. “She’s well. And safe.”
Relief heaves a weight off my chest. Like Bulder himself has been sitting on me for much longer than I care to admit and only just stood up. “But the moonfalls—”
“She’sdeepbeneath, in a city of caverns engineered to withstand the impact of any fall.”
Fuck.
For a moment, I don’t know what to do. How to sit or what to even look at.
I heard Dothea disappeared. Though I’d hoped for the best, some deep part of me assumed this was a recovery mission. That Cadok had finally done the thing I’d feared the moment I watched the two meet eyes across the colorful dance floor so many phases ago, well before I was forced to yield any claim to the stone throne.
That he’d broken my beautiful, naïve, too-trusting sister beyond repair.
“I’m hoping to get back there soon,” Essi says softly. “You could join me if you like?”
Her sweet offer churns my gut so much it’s like I just shoved past those regurgitating runes again.
I push the feeling down. Force my features into a mask of nonchalance. “How soon?”
“Not sure.” She hands me Grihm’s blade, twirling a curl around her pinkie finger. “I’ve been working on something I need to perfect first. It’s safer for me to do it up where there’s less folk around.”
I’ve dealt with Roan’s antics for long enough to know what that’s code for:
Whatever she’s working on is dangerous. Less folk around equates to less possible casualties if shit goes awry.
“Well then.” I drop my gaze to the stripped loin and blow out a sigh. “We’re gonna need more meat.”
Our journey through the dark, dusty tunnels and caverns is plagued with too much silence, buffed only by our muffled steps. Such unfortunate, necessary silence that there’s not much else to do but walk, blink, breathe, and …think.
Too many times, my thoughts turn to Essi and her big, miraculous mind. Of how she spoke of these tunnels with the unsettling familiarity of someone who’d made too much peace with the darkness.
Too many times, I push those squirming thoughts away. Refocus on the placement of my feet, my steady breaths, and quietly wrestle through each honed slice Sereme graces me with—the persistent bitch.
We pass through a lofty chamber knobbed with fossilized dragon bones protruding from the walls, presumably a flush of bloodstone once. The resting place of a perished beast who didn’t make it into the sky—didn’t have the chance to so much as curl up and solidify—its ancient remains so heavily mined the cavern resembles a tooth cavityriddledwith nooks and crannies. Thousands of hiding spots for nesting predators. And though I can’t see more than the odd glint of eyes peering out from the dark, I feel their attention like soft scratches on my skin.
They don’t advance. Not one creature prowls down from the shadows or shows any sign of intention to hunt us. Something I’d find strange, were it not for the volcanic energy rolling off the large, formidable male constantly three steps behind me, carrying Ahvi on his back.
These creatures are survivors. I have no doubt most of them are hungry, but survivors know what to spend their energy on. Know the difference between a potential meal and a definite death. As someone who’s come face-to-face with many of the beasts that dwell this side of the wall, I’ve seen that decision weighed more times than I have the energy to count.
We move down the throat of a tight tunnel threaded with a brisk, south-born breeze that nettles my skin and turns our breaths milky.
The tunnel begins to lighten.
I slow, hand poised on the hilt of a dagger as we round a corner, coming to a cavern flooded with moonlight shafting down through the collapsed ceiling. Snow sprinkles through the jagged clefts above our heads, tilled by the twisting wind that plays with my hair and tousles the filthy hem of my cloak.
My heart kicks hard and fast as I scan the familiar surroundings in all its frosty detail.
The path ends here. Perhaps a skybridge that once stretched from one side to the other, swallowed by the collapse.
My gaze plunges all the way down a tumble of snow-covered boulders and old shattered dragon bones to the bottom of the gaping cavity, a dark hollow wedged between the stones, shaped a bit like a crisscross that lost an arm. Entrance to a lower shaft that weaves beneath the collapse like the stretching roots of a tree.
Though the angular hole looks small from way up here, I know from experience that it’s big enough to climb through without a single command to Bulder.
“This is the right place.” Clode takes my voice and bounces it around the cavern’s many jagged edges. “That gap between the stones right there,” I say, pointing, “that’s where we need to be.”
