UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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Meira
HANNAH?I TRY,and my magic sparks the slightest flash of cold.Tell me he’s wrong.
But the emotion that radiates from her is the opposite of what I expected: amazement. Awe. The same winded shock that descends over everyone else.
We were so close,she gasps.The Tadil, all this time—we were so close . . .
Her words fade, but I know what she means.
Before Angra overtook Winter.
The miner shoves to his feet, wordlessly leading me on. Sir lets me stumble after him without protest, trudging along behind me as if he’s being dragged into the mine against his will. We’re trailed by Theron, Garrigan, Conall, and a handful of Cordellan soldiers.
The morning sun lights the first few paces inside the mine shaft, but farther in, when the ground starts to slantaround serrated rock walls, everything is coated in darkness. The miner picks up a single lit lantern, most likely the one he carried as he ran out to us, and the rest of us take a few from a pile, strike flames to life, and follow him.
The cave flashes into view, tools littering a corridor two arm lengths wide and little more than a full man’s height tall. Silence ensnares us the moment we enter the tunnel, the only noise the muted shuffling of our feet as we take cautious steps into the shadows.
Fingers brush my wrist, a delicate touch that grows bolder when I pull up a weak smile for Theron. He doesn’t say anything, though I can tell by the way his mouth pops open that he wants to. What is there to say, though, beyond murmurings of disbelief?
I squeeze his fingers and tug him forward, leading him into the darkness.
More shafts open along the way, but the miner at the front of our group leads us past them all, plunging into the deepest tunnel in the Klaryns. The air smells of ancient, musty grime, coating my skin in thin layers that feel, somehow, just as Winterian as snow. That does little to abate the tension coiling in my gut when the tunnel before us ends at an opening.
The other miners’ lanterns light up the puckered wall, clearly an unexpected expansion by the way rocks sit in haphazard clusters of debris along the ground. The remaining Winterian miners seem uninjured, which easessome of my worry. They all stand in the tunnel, gaping at the crack in the wall, too afraid to move inside, too awed to pull away.
When they see us, they step back, all eyes snapping to me. But I’m just as afraid, just as awed, the lantern trembling in my grip, light pulsing in dizzying flashes.
Someonemadethis space. Beyond the opening, perfect diamond cuttings turn the gray-black ground into a marble-like floor. The walls around the room are the same jagged rocks as the rest of the mine—but even that seems intentional, as it draws all focus to the back of the room, where the stone has been flattened into a smooth wall.
In that wall stands something that makes me gasp with astonishment.
I slide forward, past the crumbled heaps of rock, depositing my light at the threshold since the lanterns behind me brighten this new space. The moment I step into the room, the air crackles against my skin, a jolt like the electric charge of a thunderstorm preparing to unleash cascades of lightning. I shiver, bumps rising along my arms.
The air hangs heavy and humid with magic.
And I think . . . I think I’m looking at the door to the chasm.
Theron touches my elbow and I start. I didn’t know he’d followed me into the room, but he seems the only one brave enough—or stupid enough—to venture after me. Everyone else remains pinned in the entrance, gaping in shockedhorror at the same thing that draws my attention like a gnat to a flame.
A door towers over us, massive and thick, made of the same gray stone as the rest of the room. Four images are carved in the center of the door—one, a tangle of flaming vines; another, books stacked in a pile; another, a simple mask; and the last, the largest one centered above the smaller three, a mountaintop bathed in a beam of light with words arching over it,THE ORDER OF THE LUSTRATE.
I step closer, my boots tapping against the stone floor.
A beam of light hitting a mountaintop.Where have I seen that before?
And who is the Order of the Lustrate?
Theron hisses. “Golden leaves.” He slides forward a step. “Are those . . . keyholes?”
I grab his arm, keeping us both from going too far into the room. This place feels dangerous, like it’s waiting for something, and I don’t want to find out what.
But he’s right—in the center of each of the three small carvings sits a narrow keyhole.
