His words died, and when I followed his gaze upward, everything inside me died too. Another wave of spiders were coming, falling upon us.
I batted them with my sword, panicking and forgoing the moons of training Vale and his friends had poured into me.
It turned out, the training wouldn’t have saved me anyway, because as the spiders fell, silk wrapped around our arms, our legs, our torsos.Fighting for our lives, we pushed higher until the moment a shower of silken strands captured our wings, binding them together. We fell, and heart-pounding seconds later, I hit the rock but somehow remained coherent enough to shimmy over to Vale. I could tear the silks binding him with my teeth. We could still fight . . .
Four arms hauled me up and suddenly, I was staring into the milky eyes of the largest spider yet. Behind its bulk, my friends and sister scrambled on the ground.
“Not her, Falagog,” the Shadow King said. “Nor the black-haired female faerie. They are mine. Eventually, they will see that. Eventually, they will do as I wish.”
“Which can we have, Master? My children are so hungry. Always so hungry,” the spider spoke in a voice so dark it must have been born in the depths of night.
“That one.” He must have pointed, and I could not see who he singled out. “Be a good girl and save the red-haired elf-blood and the prince for last.”
“Very well, Master,” Falagog said. “Shall I keep their eyes open?”
“Do. However, before you feed, patrol the mountain. More may have entered after the princesses.” The Shadow King paused before adding. “Magnus froze the village so there are corpses to be found. You may gorge on those to your liking.” A dark gleam filled his eye, making my throat spasm, though no words came out. Nearly everyone, if not truly everyone in Eygin was dead, but there were manyrebels who weren’t. If the ice spiders went into the village, they’d find them.
The spider picked me up, and the next thing I knew, I was spun up in silk all the way to my shoulders and being carried by Falagog through a tunnel.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness as Falagog entered a small cave. Corpses and skeletons of rats and some larger animals littered the ground, but otherwise, the cave was empty. The mother spider propped me up against the wall. Bound by her silks, which may as well have been steel, I could not move my limbs.
My friends struggled within their binds, but they made no headway. We were all the same. Trapped. I stopped trying to escape and noticed that some of my friends had fared far worse in the fight with the spiders. Slashes and bites marred many faces. Was the silk hiding worse? Would someone bleed out or lose vital organs before we attempted to escape again?
Screaming stars, how will we do that?!
The spiders carried Thyra in last and placed her next to me. Directly across the small cave, I stared at Vale and Thantrel. Spiders crawled excitedly in the middle, pinchers clicking, legs moving in the most revolting way.
I feared they’d start eating someone right away, but the Shadow King seemed to have complete control over them because the spiders began finishing their job, encasing the others’ heads in silks. I wanted to scream as silk climbed up Vale’s face, his eyes drinking me in until the moment his head was completely covered.
Falagog herself wove her silks around Thyra’s head,although for my twin, she left eye slits. Finally, the mother spider turned to me and applied her silk to my face, once again leaving those slits to torment me.To make us watch as they killed and ate the others.
“We’ll return soon,” Falagog said and disappeared from my range of vision.
I heard the sounds of spiders scuttling from the cavern, leaving my friends and I in a dark cavern, entombed in white silk.
Interlude
PRINCE THORDUR, HEIR TO BENEATH THE ROCK, THE ANCIENT KINGDOM OF DERGIA
The Prince of Dergia’s heart pounded as he and the dwarven forces pushed their horses down the snow-covered road.
Their small but fierce army, one hundred soldiers and twelve healers strong, had started their ride north an hour after Neve called to warn them that the deadly cold might come for Dergia. That the same cold had already taken over Eygin and killed many. It was a blow to the Kingdom Beneath the Rock. Those in Eygin were friends and confidants of the dwarves, just like the Falk princess.
The dwarven forces had been nearly about to exit the mountain passages when Neve used the enchanted mirror again—this time to call for help. Now they were not just rushing to Eygin to help the villagers who had kept their existence a secret for so long, but forher. Their ally.
Would they be too late?
Riding leisurely, the gates of Eygin were a half an hour from the hidden mountain tunnels. They’d attempted to cutthat time in half by urging the horses to go ever faster, but Neve had already been fighting ice spiders when she spoke to the king. And though his father claimed to know exactly where the Drassil in the mountain by Eygin grew, it was deep within the rock, a part of the mine set aside for prayer and solitude thousands of turns ago. How much longer would it take to delve so deep?
The gates surrounding Eygin came into view, and Thordur stiffened. Ten people stood just beyond the village gates. He knew from previous trips to Eygin that the old mine’s entrance was right by the gate. From how one person pointed in that direction, he could guess that they were considering entering.
“Those are not our allies!” Thordur yelled over the pounding sounds of hooves.
“I can see that,” the king replied, his voice muffled beneath his helmet, the largest and most grand of them all.
“Are we ready for our secret to be widely known?”
“The day has been coming since the Falk heir entered Beneath the Rock, son.” The king looked askew at his heir. “It’s time for Dergia to stop hiding. To take a stand against those who wished to bend our knees and backs. If we help her, if she takes her kingdom back, she will allow us into the open air.”
