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Brood mother. Venom. Out. Goose tilted his head and watched me with those strange camera flare eyes.

“Goose,” I said with cautious sternness. “I’m pretty sure we discussed you not being able to talk. I was pretty clear. No talking for you.”

Goose, to his credit, if it was him, did not speak again. My tenuous grip on my sanity thanked him silently for that.

The ghost lights danced above me in a pattern that reminded me of a time, long ago, when I had sat peacefully next to a lake and watched a murmuration of starlings dance over the placid lap of the water. It was beautiful, hypnotizing. They darted in and out, and I hummed softly to them a song that had haunted my mind for as long as I could remember. I didn’t know the words. I didn’t know who had even first sung the song to me, but it had made its way into my mind and rooted itself there.

They flickered, dancing and diving with delight, then darted away to float near the remnants of an old archway covered with a moldering sheet of tapestry.

“Looks like the ghost lights want us to go that way, Goosey. Pretty sure this is going to suck, but it’s either die down here or die in the tunnels.” I cast an eye down to him. He had solidified into his wolfdog shape and was lying flat against the cold rock. Smoke trickled through what looked like battle wounds, like he was bleeding. Neither of us were walking away from this fight unscathed. “They aren’t known to be assholes, are they?”

Goose blew out an exhausted huff of air and disturbed the ink like smoke that served as his beard.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

It took me an untold eternity of agony to push up from the stone floor and another untold eternity to catch both my breath and the room around me as it spun. Fire and torment greeted me at every twitch of movement. I didn’t care how far the surface was or was not. It was going to be hell to get there, but Rule #21 was pounding in my mind as a hidden mantra that kept me shuffling forward.

The tapestry crumbled in my hands when I got to it, revealing a long, expertly worked stonework hallway. At the far end of the hallway . . . was warm torchlight dancing on the opposite wall.

I stared at the dancing of the warm orange-and-yellow light on the wall of the far end of the hallway like it was a mirage, assuming it would disappear at any moment. Assuming, once again, I’d be back in the nightmare that was this expedition.

I didn’t regret it, though. I probably should. Had I stayed in The Raven’s room, I wouldn’t have nearly died. I wouldn’t have had a slowly rotting spider leg impaling my slumping shoulder. I wouldn’t have been dragging my wounded leg behind me as I chased down that mirage. I wouldn’t have been moaning behind my own teeth that chattered with the inner chill that didn’t reach my feverish skin.

I didn’t blink for a single moment, convinced that if I did, the doorway and its precious light I was shambling toward would disappear. I followed it, leaning against the wall, Goose limping next to me and the ghost lights dancing in and out of my haggard hair. I didn’t blink until I was a single step from the doorway. Only then did my lids slip closed as I hoped and prayed that when I reopened them that light and warmth would still be there.

It was.

I turned into the room and stopped.

It was massive, easily three times the size of the throne room. The ceiling was so high I could not even see it, as it disappeared into the darkness out of the reach of the hundreds of candles that happily burned around the room. There were only two walls, though, the one that my tiny doorway pierced and one to the right that must have shared the wall with the spider’s hallway. At the back of the room was an open drop into the same chasm Goose had fallen into, pouring bitter cold into the room the candles battled against.

All along the floor of the platform were letters of some sort, black and glinting metallic in the flickering light. The piece of iron in my hand clattered to the ground as my eyes fixed on the long sweep of dark-golden-blonde hair of a woman watching me from inside of the circle of iron words.

Her skin was the dark burnish of ancient gold. Her eyes a piercing turquoise. She was wrapped in a long satin robe that pooled like broken sunlight at her feet. Her pointed ears were naked, bearing no adornment nor makeup, and I found it strange to find a Fae down here without the glittering jewels and finery I had become so accustomed to seeing them in. And yet she was no less beautiful, radiating a warmth that called to a hidden part of me and summoned me forward.

“Do come in.” Her voice was a song that danced through the air and curled a loving hand around me, guiding me forward. “Careful of the runes. Though I doubt they can bite you, can they?”

I was shuffling toward her without realizing it but stopped at the runes she spoke of, letting my gaze dance from them to her.

“Iron, of course.” She tossed over her shoulder as she took up a thick tea towel and pulled a clay tea pot from the low flames of an open hearth.

I looked to Goose, who stopped at the runes as well and growled at them, chuffing his indignation. The woman’s gaze fell to him, and she smiled like a mother watching her favorite child. It shouldn’t have, but it twisted my guts and made me jealous of the great smoky beast.

“You’ve been a good lad. You found her and brought her to me. You can rest for now, wee éachtach. She will come to no harm with me.”

Goose chuffed, turned to limp back to the doorway where he lay down, and guarded the entrance.

I watched him go and then turned to the woman. “He doesn’t listen to anyone but me.”

I narrowed my eyes on her, suspicion rising.

“And me,” she called over her shoulder in a sing-song voice that curled around her lilting accent.

“And how is it that you can command my failinis? Miss . . .”

I trailed off, hoping she would fill in the blanks.

“Airgetlám. Lady Airgetlám, if you please—for now, at least.” She poured two steaming cups of tea and sat at an ancient-looking table that was starting to crack from the dryness of the wood. “And I did not command him, to be exact. I merely spoke to him as the intelligent beast he is. He chose whether to grant my request, as he always will with someone other than yourself.”