Eden let out a soft cry, panting for breath.

  “Get out of the tunnels,” he called to the others.

  He scarcely managed to say the words, and the grimlock leaned closer with a ragged smile, as if accepting the challenge. A hissing whisper touched the air between them, dancing around the fae’s pointed ears, but he reeled immediately backwards and elbowed it sharply in the face.

  “Do not even start!”

  Together, they tussled and rolled over the length of the cavern—smashing into the sides with violent force as the fae tried again and again to detach. They’d been taught never to doubt him, they’d put their faith in those immortal hands a thousand times before. But it became clear after only a moment of watching, that the fae was no longer the one steering the course.

  “He will not beat it,” Kiera whispered faintly. “It’s going to kill him.”

  Oddly enough, the second she said the words, her own path was suddenly clear.

  It didn’t matter that she was a teenage barmaid, clinging to a fleeting mortality without the hundreds of extra years that bolstered everyone else. It didn’t matter that she had no gift of strength or speed, nothing but the blunted hunting knife in her hand. She paid no attention when the shifter tried to stop her. Neither did she notice the tiny fox standing in the mouth of the tunnel, watching the scene with those piercing amber eyes. She took a single look at her friend, and started running without hesitation over the floor of the cavern. She reached the grimlock a moment later.

  She threw herself onto its back.

  “Kiera!”

  In hindsight, she didn’t know which of the men had shouted her name. Probably both of them. Jesse was still trying to catch her, and Eden was on the flat of his back—staring up at her with equal parts dismay and surprise. It scarcely mattered. Without doubt, the greatest surprise belonged to the grimlock itself. That shadowy cloak went momentarily still, then it twisted to meet her gaze.

  The small one?

  She could practically feel its rippling confusion. She was the slightest, the weakest, the easiest of them. It’s why the creature had targeted her first. She was not even wielding a proper sword.

  But I have this.

  With an anger that surprised her, she drew back the hunting knife and plunged it into that writhing mass of darkness. Again, and again, and again.

  There were more shouts, ringing from all over the cavern. There was a good chance she was shouting herself. Splashes of brackish blood flung into the air, striking her in the face and coating her arms in a thick, mottled slime. She closed her mouth, but kept swinging. The blade was short, only a few inches long. If she wanted to do any lasting damage, she must persist at all costs.

  But she was no longer fighting alone. Her friends had joined her.

  With a mighty shout, Eden pushed himself from the ground and grabbed hold of the grimlock’s cloak—smashing it with every remaining bit of strength into the wall. The cavern itself seemed to quake with the force of it, but the grimlock’s troubles had only begun. There was a slight tearing of fabric, followed by the pad of quick feet. A second later, a snarling wolf entered the fray.

  It was difficult to remember clearly after that.

  Many times had the friends fought back such monsters, but never had they done so together, all three of them standing shoulder to shoulder, working as a team. Again and again, the grimlock tried to rise and spirit away—skittering up the side of the tunnel like smoke—again and again they drove it back, pressed against the stone wall, tearing into those shadows with everything they had.

  The one thing Kiera did remember was the labor of it. It had always seemed effortless, those silver-tipped blades flying in wide crescents in her friends’ hands. But it took strength to wield them, strength to keep the movements precise. Even her small blade was an effort. Before long, she was panting with exertion, ripping it out of that sinewy flesh once—and then a hundred more times.

  There seemed no way the grimlock could still be breathing—if creatures of the shadows actually did breathe—but just to be sure, Jesse paced backwards and leapt upon it one final time.

  He would spend the rest of his life wishing he hadn’t.

  There was a quiet crack from the earth deep below them. A profound shifting, something much bigger than a squabbling fight against the wall. The friends paused for a split second as each one of them, even the grimlock, froze in silence—then lowered their eyes to the ground.

  Nothing happened. Those heads lifted again.

  Then the ground vanished beneath their feet.

  THERE WAS A FEELING of weightlessness, as though Kiera had wandered into a dream.

  She reached out vaguely in front of her, sucked in an icy breath, then struck the ground with enough force to dispel any kindly notion that she might have been sleeping. A scream burst from her, unlike any that had come before. It took all breath and sense of equilibrium. She lifted her head only once, then let it drop back where she lay. The image flickered, lit only by a distant torch.

  It was strange, the things that began to come back to her—creeping into the edges of her vision, like setting the stage for a play. She was not the only one to have fallen, the others had tumbled after her as well. Jesse was the lucky one, caught on an overhanging crop of rocks. His eyes were closed, but his body was arched in such a way, she could tell he was breathing. The only noise in the cave was the steady drip of blood as it spilled from a tear along his temple.

  She stared a moment, watching it pool on the ground, before widening her gaze.

  The fae had not been so fortunate. While she and the wolf had landed higher, he’d fallen straight through the opening and dropped a hundred feet onto flat ground. His hands struck first, trying to gentle the fall, but his face cracked a moment later—making a little dent in the stone.

  He was still for so long a time, Kiera believed it might have killed him.

  Then his eyes fluttered open in a daze and peered over the side of the stone. He’d landed right on the very edge of a jutting slab of granite, his long hair spilling into the chasm below.

  Another few feet in any direction, his friends would have never seen him again.

  Eden.

  She tried to speak, tried to call his name. But a numbing ache was creeping up the side of her body, and she felt certain that part of her jaw was broken. A rush of blood filled her mouth, bitter and metallic. The air itself was filled with the same heavy stench, too thick to properly breathe.

  Eden lifted his head a few inches, unable to tear his eyes from the abyss. Of all the emotions to have settled on his face, she was surprised he looked sad. Not hurt, or frightened, but sad. As if that dark was not such a strange thing, as if he’d been staring into chasms just like it his entire life.

  A shiver swept over him, whispering across his skin. Then came another. He tilted his face to the side in a way that reminded her of an animal, flashing a look over his shoulder.

  Then a mottled hand wrapped around his throat.

  NO!

  She stared in horror as the grimlock—the grimlock she was sure was dead—rose from the ashes and took the fae along with it, holding him a length above the ground with a hand at his neck.

  There was nothing but silence between them. Silence, and a hint of surprise as Eden blinked away the ether and tried to come back to himself. A different day, he would have simply forced his way free. With just the distant flickers of torchlight, his eyes could pierce through the dark. But he was broken already, more than he knew. Even now, he was bracing against the grimlock’s hand.

  The creature looked pleased with itself, vindictive. With a twisted smile, it tightened its grip on the fae, swinging him like a doll. Then, with deliberate care, it leaned towards him.

  There was a silent gasp, and the world stood still.

  Kiera wasn’t close enough to hear what the grimlock was saying, she wouldn’t have been able to understand even if she was. But it was enough to see the change come over the fae. The look of pure, inconsolable desolation as those ocean eyes lost themselves in the abyss.

  There was the searching, and there was the feeling that came after searching was done. When every hope had been torn away, when every future had been lost. It crashed over him in waves, taking a little more each time, until all at once, the grimlock leaned back with a trace of satisfaction.

  Eden had stopped fighting. There were tears in his eyes.

  No one in the cavern was precisely sure what was supposed to happen next. Grimlocks had claimed many prizes over the years, whispering tales of madness, before spiriting them away into the dark. But it became clear now, the creature intended to eat him. Those skeletal fingers tightened with such abrupt severity, the fae gasped in spite of himself and a frightening pallor came over his skin. His leg twitched once involuntarily, but the rest of him was frozen in suspension. When the grimlock drew him closer, his eyes were wide and blank. Its mouth opened with a rattling hiss.

  There was a breath of silence, like a single pulse in the dark.

  It was long enough for Kiera to realize what was about to happen, her cheek still resting upon the bloody stone. It was long enough for the grimlock to savor the moment, thrumming in anticipation of immortal blood. It was long enough for another creature to spirit up the side of the ravine, appearing suddenly on the ledge behind them. Eden could see nothing, his eyes might as well have been closed. But they cleared to sudden attention as the grimlock lurched abruptly back.

  ...what just happened?

  It still held him, but the grip was loose and slack. They stared at each other, then lowered their eyes to the gaping hole that had appeared in the creature’s chest. It fell backwards into the abyss, never to move again. Eden dropped from its hand, landing on both knees upon the stone.

  He coughed violently against the ground, the air rushing back into his lungs, every part of him trembling from head to toe. In the quiet that followed, a pair of cool fingers lifted his chin.

  “...are you all right?”

  Evander stood on the ledge beside him, a shining pillar in all that darkness, so completely motionless and steady, it was like he’d been standing there all along. When it became clear the fae couldn’t rise, he sank immediately to his knees, that outstretched hand lowered slowly to his side.

  He waited a moment, almost afraid to breathe.

  “Eden?”

  The fae blinked slowly, staring back without a shred of expression. Nothing happened for a moment, then he reached silently between them, the tip of his finger grazing the vampire’s cloak.

  Maybe he thought he was dreaming. Maybe he thought he was dead.

  Before he could decide, there was another great rumbling beneath their feet, as those slabs of stone they’d displaced wavered precariously in their new perches, before falling into the chasm.

  They took the friends with them, pitching them into darkness once again.

  Chapter 2

  It wasn’t as great a fall, yet, it was somehow even more painful.

  There was a terrible cacophony of sound—rock smashing into rock, startled voices crying out in pain—as the cavern shifted, then resettled. The strong limestone and granite pillars that had been holding up the higher levels tilted to the side—piercing through the adjacent wall like a knife poked through the curve of an apple. They spilled into the opening, choking on a cloud of dust.

  ...are we alive?

  There had been many times, over the course of the last few months, that particular string of words had made its way through Kiera’s head. She’d thought it during fights and storms, when some new monster bore down upon them, or in the aftermath of the fae’s questionable cooking. It had never seemed more relevant than it did that very moment. But the answer wasn’t exactly clear.

  Her eyes fluttered open to a world that wasn’t as it should be.

  The color was off, too much. Wrong, she realized a second later. The tunnels had looked exactly as one might expect—endless repetitions of the same drab nothingness, torches bleeding into endless night. But this place was different. This place...everything was silver.

  The ground was coated in it, the walls were glinting with it, the ceiling shimmered as though it had been dusted with a batch of stars. The air itself prickled and glittered, tickling the back of her throat, heavy with the same metallic stench that had been casually choking her in the caverns above.

  She blinked in amazement, digging her fingertips into the floor. It was soft, like a fine sand.

  What is this place?

  In the middle of all that glamor, there appeared to be five massive bees. Not bees, she realized, but dwarves. Each of them was wearing the same inexplicable clothing—weighted tunics with thick gloves—while each of their faces were hidden by strange, hooded masks. Only their eyes were visible, enlarged to comedic effect behind rounded panes of steamed glass.

  They seemed to be angry about something, shouting at the ceiling and waving their hands, but it was hard to say for sure. She couldn’t hear anything over the constant buzzing in her ears.

  Maybe they’re bees after all.

  The others were stirring, coming around just as slowly as she’d done herself. They were hurting, that much was clear. Hurting very badly. But it seemed a secondary concern.

  A shock of pain rippled across Jesse’s face, as he blinked very quickly, then kept his eyes fixed on a single point on the wall. They stayed there a moment, focusing, then drifted slowly across the length of the entire room. They ended on the bees—the dwarves. They widened in confusion.

  Eden was beginning to wake as well, both arms stretched on the ground in front of him. A violent bruise was already spreading across the length of his neck, and his knuckles had been scraped bare, but the rest of him was painted in the same shimmering glow that hovered all around them.

  She remembered thinking, with a detached sort of amusement, that it didn’t look as strange on him. The fair folk had always favored lighter colors and had a tendency to glow.

  The vampire beside him was a different story.

  Evander’s eyes opened slowly, then all at once. He rose halfway to his feet, that impossible strength coming back to him quickly, before pausing just as fast and kneeling beside the fae. His hand reached out, but he seemed reluctant to touch him. His eyes flew around the room a second later, finding each one of them, before coming to rest upon the angry dwarves.

  He stood up slowly, unsteady on his feet. “...what is this place?” he managed.

  The dwarves stopped their shouting long enough to look at him in surprise. They appeared to be conversing for a moment, before one by one, those absurd-looking hoods were removed.

  “It speaks!” one in the middle cried. “I’ve never heard one speak before!”

  The one beside him reached back, then pulled a fearsome instrument from the wall. It was something between an axe and an icepick. Something that would amount to the same thing.

  “I believe we’ll be the ones asking the questions, vampire.” The blade hefted into the air between them, lending added weight to the words. “Starting with why, in the seven hells, you thought it was a good idea to trespass into a dwarven mine.”

  Kiera’s eyes flew back to Evander, trying to keep pace.

  If she’d had even an ounce more composure, she might have felt sorry for him. The vampire clearly didn’t think it was a good idea to have trespassed into a dwarven mine. Moreover, he’d clearly have given a rather large piece of his eternity, not to be standing inside one now.

  But that composure had vanished several hundred feet above, and she was having trouble following along with the conversation. Truth be told, she was having trouble staying awake. The mere effort of opening her eyes was already pushing all limits, and to stand felt insurmountable.

  Even the vampire was looking uncharacteristically helpless—his eyes flicking uncertainly between them, as shimmering drips of silver leaked slowly through his black hair.

  “I can answer that, though I can’t believe it’s necessary.”

  The final dwarf removed his hood, revealing the grisly copper beard that had been stuffed underneath. He took a single look at the friends before fixing his gaze on the fae lying in the middle.

  The second Eden raised his head, he leaned down and began to shout.

  “Half a day in a straight line! What part of that was too much to understand?”

  The fae stared back at him, then blacked out.

  KIERA WOKE UP SLOWLY, she hadn’t realized she’d been asleep.

  The cavern was gone and they were somewhere brighter, somewhere cleaner. Another tavern, she realized. She could hear the creak of wagon wheels and hum of conversation outside.

  How is that possible?

  She twisted slowly in the bed, trying to get her bearings, when a warm hand slipped suddenly into her own. The mattress creaked and Jesse sat beside her, eyes twinkling in the soft light.

  “Good morning.”

  She blinked up at him, hoping very much it wasn’t a dream. “...it’s morning?”

  The sun had risen into a clear new day, pouring through a window overlooking the road. It was plain glass with no curtains, as dwarves had no patience for such things. Neither did they believe in wash bins or mirrors. The handles on the door were placed lower. The furniture was oddly sized.

  “You were asleep for a long time,” he murmured in reply, threading their fingers together and smoothing back a stray lock of hair. “It’s been almost full day since they took us from the mountains. I woke up just a few hours earlier myself.”

  And shifted.

  It was something she would have never guessed before a dragon crossed her skies, but now, it was clear to see. There was a flush to his skin and a glow to his cheeks, that only came in the breathless moments following a transformation. His eyes were bright. Most of his wounds had already healed.

  ...unlike her own.

  “Seven hells,” she mumbled groggily, trying to lift her arms. “Parts of me are still there.”

 

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