Grimm leaps up on my shoulders. “I only serve myself,” he sneers. “But I’ll accompany you to the end, if need be.”
“Let’s go then.” Thiago reaches out and smears his blood across the glyph that will take us to the Black Keep. The Hallow hums, the earth staring to vibrate beneath our feet. The Hallow snaps shut around us, spinning me into nothingness.
An instant that seems like forever.
And then I slam back into my body as we finally arrive in the foothills above the Black Keep.
Right into the middle of a pack of unseelie warriors armed with banes on leashes.
Chapter Thirty-Five
There’s blood on the snow. Blood on my clothes.
I can feel it hot on my cheeks and wet in my hair.
And even though they’re dead—even though they’re all dead—something inside me howls for more blood.
There’s no way directly inside the Black Keep—the Hallow there is on an unconnected ley line that doesn’t cross any others besides this one—so the nearest Hallow is here, in the foothills of the Dragon’s Teeth mountain range. It’s the main source of transport for Angharad’s troops, and there were over twenty stationed here before we arrived.
I didn’t know that until Eris tortured it out of one of the guards.
Thiago slowly lowers his sword, breathing hard. “Are they all down?”
Eris moves through the snow, stabbing her blade into bodies with ruthless efficiency. “Down and dead.”
Blood still hums through my veins. It was a short and brutal fight. We’d caught them by surprise, and by the time they’d drawn their weapons, we were upon them. The leader barely had time to scramble for his horn before Eris drew her sword behind her head and then heaved it at him from across the clearing.
She puts her boot on his head as I watch and yanks her blade free. The horn remains silent in the snow.
“Do you think anyone heard?” Thiago demands.
Baylor scans the hills, his nostrils flaring. “There’s no sound of anyone nearby. And I can’t scent anything.”
“None of them are loaded with equipment to stay out here for the night, which means they’ll be due to check in sometime in the next half day,” Eris guesses. “Or another company will be coming to replace them, but I don’t know how soon. And the Black Keep is only an hour away. There will be patrols out and about.”
“Drag them out of the Hallow and strip them of their armor,” Thiago says, “then cover their bodies with snow. We need all the delay we can get.”
And then he turns and uses a blast of wind to stir the snow so that it covers the blood.
The Black Keep looms below us in the valley, a central spire soaring toward the heavens. Thick walls guard it, and steep cliffs slide away from it like skirts. There’s only one way in; a long narrow bridge that arcs over nothingness toward it.
Now I know why Thiago insisted upon bringing the armor.
We strip off our outer clothes and fit ourselves into the bloody assortment of armor we stole from the Unseelie. Everything is black—which hides the blood well—but there’s a soaring white wyvern emblazoned on my chest, and another one on the shield I can barely lift. It’s taller than I am.
“This isn’t going to work,” Baylor mutters. “Iskvien’s too short to be mistaken for one of Angharad’s warriors.”
Thiago considers me. “He’s right. Get dressed again. You can be our prisoner.”
“You do realize it’s freezing,” I growl, dumping the shield with pleasure. “You could have realized this flaw in the plan before I removed my nice warm coat.” I strip out of the black leathers and haul my own clothes on again.
“And now we just need some fog,” Thiago whispers, staring at the valley. “Vi, can you see through our fetch’s eyes?”
It makes my skin creep every time I try, but I need to know what’s happening inside the keep. Grimm promised that no harm would come to Amaya until night falls—and the Black Keep is much further west than Old Mother Hibbert’s cottage was. Though the sun is slinking toward the horizon, the moon hasn’t bared her shimmering face yet.
Taking a deep breath, I slip the bracelet off and reach for the fetch that’s bound to me.
—chanting echoes through an enormous hall, and unseelie sway as they call for their dark god to rise. A little girl yanks at her chains, her teeth bared in fury as I step between the stones of the Hallow—
I pull back and slam the bracelet on so that the fetch won’t sense me. “She’s alive.”
Just scared and desperate.
“How soon can you call in that fog?”
“Give me twenty minutes,” Thiago murmurs, his eyes distant as he stares across the gulf between us and the Black Keep. “Anything faster will draw attention.”
I pace the ledge.
It surprises me how beautiful it is up here.
Despite the snow and the sheared-off mountains in the background, there’s a purity to the world that makes my chest hurt. Ever since I bound myself to Evernight, I’ve been able to feel the land breathing beneath my feet, and though we’re a long way from home, there’s something stirring beneath me.
I reach down and stir the snow away from the ground with a wisp of wind before placing my palm flat on the ground.
Somewhere beneath the castle the earth bucks and twists…. It feels like the land is screaming, like it’s trying to force solid stone to become diamond.
And then I find that pressure point.
“Who are you?” asks a little voice.
I rip my palm away.
And realize Grimm is watching me.
“You can hear her,” he murmurs. “She’s always been gifted. She’s always been drawn to the land. She is a natural queen who will rule this world if she’s given the chance.”
I slowly press my palm back to the rock. I don’t dare reply—I don’t know who else is listening, or if they even can.
But I don’t want her to feel alone.
“Amaya?”
