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But Bryce didn’t smile. “These carvings are like the ones in Silene’s caves. Different art, but the storytelling style is similar.”
“It’d make sense,” Tharion said, running his fingers over a thrashing, drowning horse, “considering that the art’s from the same time period.”
“Yeah,” Bryce muttered, and pressed on, her starlight now flaring a beam through the mists. Pointing straight ahead. There was no privacy to corner her and ask what the Hel she was really thinking—certainly not as something shifted in the shadows to Hunt’s left.
He reached over a shoulder for his sword, lightning at the ready. Or as ready as it could be with the gods-damned halo suppressing it—
“Ghouls,” Baxian said, drawing his sword in an easy motion. The shadows writhed, hissing like a nest of snakes.
“They’re not coming any closer,” Sathia whispered, her fear thick as the fog around them.
Hunt wrapped his lightning around his fist, the sparks making the damp walls glisten like the surface of a pond. But light flared from Bryce, and the ghouls shrank back further.
“Benefits of being the Super Powerful and Special Magic Starborn Princess,” Bryce drawled, sashaying past the nooks and alcoves in the stone where the ghouls teemed. “Ruhn said they ran from his starlight during his Ordeal. Looks like they’re not fans of mine, either.”
Sathia inched past the nearest cluster of ghouls, keeping a step behind Bryce.
A scabbed, jet-colored hand skittered from a deep pocket of shadows, its nails long and cracked, digging into the stone—
Before Hunt’s lightning could strike, Bryce’s starlight flared again. The hand fell back, a low hiss skimming over the rocks. “Super Powerful and Special Magic Starborn Princess, indeed,” Hunt said, impressed.
But Bryce turned toward the lines the ghoul had gouged into the rock, running a hand over them. She rubbed the bits of dust and debris between her forefinger and thumb, sniffed it once, then slid her gaze to Hunt. “Flynn’s right: I don’t like it here.” She licked—fucking licked—the dark substance on her fingers and grimaced. “Nope. Not at all.”
Sathia, still a few steps behind Bryce, shivered. “Can you feel it, then? How … dead it all seems? Like there’s something festering here.”
Hunt had no idea what the Hel either female was talking about, and from Tharion’s and Baxian’s baffled expressions, they didn’t, either.
Bryce only moved on into the dark and mists. They had no choice but to keep pace with her, to stay in that protective bubble of starlight.
“There’s water ahead,” Baxian said, his advanced hearing picking it up before Hunt could detect it. “A river—a big one, from the sound of it.”
Bryce slid Hunt a look. “Good thing we’ve got two hunky dudes with wings.”
And there it was again—that gleam in her eyes. There and gone, but … he could almost hear her brain working. Connecting some dots he couldn’t see.
“Stay close,” Bryce murmured, leading them deeper into the cave. “I’ve spent a disgusting amount of time underground lately, and I can tell you there’s nothing good coming our way.”
* * *
Flynn and Dec left to grab everyone lunch, and Ruhn resigned himself to working in silence with Lidia, only the rustle of paper and slamming of fruitless drawers for sound.
He found nothing. Neither did she, he concluded from her occasional sighs of frustration. So different from the contented, near-purring sighs she’d made in his arms that time their souls had merged, as he’d moved in her—
Cousin.
Ruhn slowly, slowly turned toward the towering open doorway. No one stood there. Only the gray day lay beyond.
On your left.
Seamus leaned against a nearby stack, arms crossed. A dagger was buckled over his broad chest, just as it had been all those decades ago. As it had been then, the male’s dark hair was cut close to his head—to avoid an enemy getting a grip on it, Ruhn knew. And if Seamus was there, then that meant—
On your right, Duncan said into his mind, and Ruhn glanced the other way to find Seamus’s brother leaning in a mirror position on the opposite stack. In lieu of a dagger, Duncan carried a slender sword strapped down his spine.
Ruhn kept both of them in his line of sight. What do you want?
Instinct had already kept his mind veiled in stars and shadows, but he did a quick mental scan to ensure his walls were intact.
Duncan sneered. Our uncle sent us to make sure the female was behaving herself.
