CHAPTER ONE
Acurse wasn’t enough to deter Terena Luca. She would stop at nothing to find her parents, and the fabled artifact she hunted now was worth the risk if it led her to them.
She’d tracked the legend to Agraboda, the once beautiful city decimated by a plague now lost to time. Terena was grateful to find the ruins undisturbed centuries later, feeling in her bones what she sought was still there.
Terena lifted her hand, shielding her eyes against the late afternoon light that glinted off the scattered remains of marble columns.
It’d be dark soon; they’d have to stop for the night.
“Can we please just admit defeat already?”
The whining plea came from her right, and Terena craned her neck to see her brother standing atop a ledge. He posed to look like the horned beast with large fangs and half a leg—the rest wiped away by time—from the wall beneath him.
She tossed a pebble at him. “It’s here,” she called back.
Terena wiped her brow and returned to her work. She dropped a red cloth into the marked off area before stepping outside of it and looked back up at her brother. “This would go a lot faster if you helped, Croak.”
Croak waved her off. “I’m here, aren’t I? I just don’t thinkit’shere.”
Terena pursed her lips, stretching out two more markers, then stepped inside the area and dropped to her knees. She ran her fingers over the cold stone, wiping away some debris and dirt with a small brush. “It’s here. For the thousandth time, it’s here.”
Croak mumbled something she didn’t care to hear and dropped from the ledge. Terena heard his shuffling steps as he came close.
“Maybe you got it wrong this time.”
A corner of her mouth lifted, but Terena just shook her head.
“You know, ithasbeen known to happen,” Croak said.
When she still didn’t reply, he came closer, bending over and sneering. “Even the all-knowing and fabulous Terena Luca can be wrong.”
He rose to his full height and Terena glanced up to see him throw back his head, dark brown locks shifting in the breeze. He raised his arms up, his fur-lined cloak flapping back as he bellowed to the sky, “O how the gods wept the day Terena the All-Knowing’s power of foresight failed her and she did not find the Towel of Destiny! Now mankind is doomed to never seeing its dirty likeness ever again!”
“It’s not a towel, idiot,” she replied with a grin, shaking her head again.
“A doily?”
“A shroud.”
“Shroud,” he said, stretching out each letter until the word was barely recognizable. “Sounds weird.”
“You’re weird,” Terena grumbled, then sat back on her heels, her hands at her hips. “And not helpful!”
She reached out and pulled her tool bag closer, blowing on her icy hands before rummaging inside. Pulling out a few markers, she tossed them at him. “Be helpful and mark some areas on the other side of the square. If you can find?—”
“This is boring!” Croak yelled up to the sky, dropping his arms with a swoop as he stomped in a circle behind her. Terena sighed and closed her eyes, shaking her head once before turning back to her work.
“Why the fuck would the shroud be here, anyway? And why does Duke Aurora want someone’s death laundry?”
Terena smothered a grin; she did not want to encourage him. “I don’t care why he wants it,” she called out. Her brother continued his stomping dance. “I care for the coin he’s paying me to find it.”
“Aye, all right,” Croak mumbled. Terena busied herself once more with pressing her fingers into the ground, searching for gaps or a seam, something that would reveal a hiding spot large enough?—
Her brother yelped a second before a loud crash sounded behind her. Terena jumped to her feet; her brother disappeared beneath a cloud of dirt, billowing up to hide his whereabouts. Terena surged toward where he’d been standing, batting away the dust, coughing as she screamed his name.
Dropping, her knees cracking on the ground, and she cursed, pain shooting up her thighs.
Terena got down on her belly and slithered forward, feeling her way to where she’d last seen him, her hands finding the edge of a hole. She peered into the darkness.
