A sound drifts on the night air, low and barely audible. The melody is old, older than this place. A song from Underhill.
Serath. She used to hum that song when we rode to battle, a habit she never broke. Hearing it loosens the knot in my chest. I breathe deep, hold it, then release.
As much as I want to storm the cages now, I can’t. Not yet. I force myself to pull back from the cage yard, before I’m seen.
I need somewhere to hide and prepare. The route they marched me along is the only part of this place I know. Everything else is unfamiliar ground, but there will be somewhere forgotten. There always is.
It takes some time, but eventually I find myself outside the grain store. It’s set apart from the other buildings, and I circle it slowly, looking for a way in that doesn’t involve the locked door. Around the back, I find what I need—a gap where the foundation meets the earth, just wide enough to squeeze through. The space is dark, cramped and stinks of rat droppings and mold, but it’s perfect for what I need.
I lower myself to the ground and inch my way through the gap. Inside, the darkness is absolute. The floorboards of the building above me are inches from my face, and the ground beneath me is cold and damp. Things skitter in the darkness, rats and bugs disturbed by my intrusion. I pay them no attention anddrag myself forward until I find a spot where the space opens up slightly, where the ground dips and gives me room to lie flat without my nose pressed against the boards. Something runs across my hand, and I let it.
I’ve slept in worse places. This is nothing.
From here, I can no longer see the cages, but I can feel the wards humming at the edge of my awareness. Lifting one hand, I will silver light to life. It dances between my fingers, little flames of moonlight lighting up the darkness.
Four days ago, I couldn’t have managed this. The iron had drained me so completely that lighting a candle would have been beyond me. But the power is waking up now. Still weak and sluggish, growing stronger by the hour.
Soon.
I let the light fade and settle into the darkness.
Let the humans relax, let them believe that now the princess has been returned, they can hunt and kill the beast at their leisure. Let Cowen sleep peacefully dreaming of the money he’ll make once hunts resume.
He has no idea that death has already slipped through his defenses.
For three hundred years I’ve waited.
I can wait a little longer.
FIFTEEN
ALLERIA
The walls are closing in.I can’t move. I can’t do anything except lie here while earth presses up from below and the foundations of a building press down from above. I can smell the wood and mildew with every breath I take.
I’m lying on my back in a space so narrow that when I turn my head, splinters catch in my hair and scratch across my forehead. Tiny legs, too many of them, pick their way across the back of my hand. I try to jerk away, except there’s nowhere to go, and my body ignores my demand. I have no choice but to stay where I am while the thing explores my fingers, my wrist, before moving up my inner arm.
I open my mouth to scream, and nothing comes out. There’s no air, only the overpowering smell of rat droppings, rotting wood, and damp earth.
I’m going to die here. Buried alive in the dark with vermin crawling over my skin, and no one will ever find me … no one will ever know.
I wake, gasping for air and clawing at blankets that have wrapped around my face.
For one long, terrible moment, I don’t know where I am. Embers pulse red in an unfamiliar hearth. My nightgown clings to my skin, soaked through with sweat that’s already turning cold. My heart is slamming against my ribs so hard, I can feel it in my throat.
The Dell. I’m at the Dell. In a bed, in a room, with space around me, and air to breathe, and light bleeding through the shuttered window.
I’m not buried, or trapped, or dying alone in the dark.
I sit up slowly, pushing damp hair away from my face with hands that won’t stop shaking. The dream is already fading, but the feeling won’t let go of me. That horrible crushing fear that I would never get out. Even now, with firelight flickering against the walls and the soft sounds of the Dell waking outside, I can’t shake it.
It was a nightmare. After everything I’ve been through, it shouldn’t surprise me.
I wrap my arms around my knees and rest my chin on top of them, making myself as small as possible. Outside the window, the sky is lightening from black to gray. Dawn is coming and I’ve barely slept.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his face. Not the gray-green creature with antlers sprouting from his skull, or the glamour he used around people, but therealone. Those golden eyes watching me, the sharp angles of his jaw, and the black marks he said showed his rank and victories on his skin.
What rank? What victories? What did he mean by that?
