Torches line the walls of the Well of Tears, and banes prowl the open cavern. But it’s the set of standing stones that have been hauled into an upright position by pulleys that captures my attention.
This is where the Horned One is bound.
And I can see from the cleave lines through the base of the stones that they fell at one stage. When the Alliance of Light came for the Horned One, he clearly didn’t go easy. Power sheared through those stones, and someone’s resurrected them and resealed them with melted brass.
The Hallow pulses.
But it’s an odd beat.
An echo.
As if the power that flows through the stones meets that brass line and takes a second to skip over it through the rest of the stone.
Dozens of banes are chained to the walls. Another dozen or so unseelie warriors stand guard with their hands on their swords. They’re not like the ones in the foothills. No, these ones wear black markings tattooed on their cheeks, and there’s a hardness to their eyes and bodies that assures me they won’t be easy to defeat.
But it’s the sight of the three fetches standing between us and the Hallow that makes my heart pound in my ears.
“How are we going to get past them?” I whisper.
Grimm suddenly shimmers into the physical world, wending his way through my legs. “Consider them mine, Princess. I’ll make the Shadows so dangerous they won’t dare fade into them.”
And then he’s gone again.
A guard turns, frowning at our sudden appearance. “What are you doing down here? The queen is not to be disturbed while she—”
He suddenly sees the blood dripping from Thiago’s short sword, and his tongue trips over itself. There were five guards outside, but Thiago dispatched them with ruthless efficiency.
The guard’s eyes widen. “You’re not—"
Thiago lunges forward, grabbing him by the helmet and yanking him onto the blade. A soft cry chokes out from the guard’s mouth, but Thiago catches him as he slumps, and tries to ease him back into the shadows.
Too late.
Another guard notices. “What are you—?”
One of Finn’s arrows suddenly sprouts in his throat. He goes down with a clatter, and every head in the Well turns sharply toward us.
“Well, fuck,” Baylor growls, drawing both of his massive swords.
“Cover me,” Eris yells at Finn, and then she’s leaping over the edge of the stairs and landing in a crowd of unseelie.
“Vi!”
I turn at Thiago’s yell, and he slashes his sword through the ropes that are bound loosely around my wrists. Tugging a dagger free, he tosses it toward me, and then he’s turning, the arc of his sword gleaming as it slices through the throat of an unseelie warrior.
They attack us in droves, and there’s no time to think. Only time to move. I duck the whine of a sword, grabbing the bastard’s arm as he extends and stabbing my dagger into the vulnerable patch under his arm. A wheeze escapes him as I hit the lung, and then I draw it out and whip it across his throat.
Blood splashes my cheeks.
I kick his fallen sword into my hand and leap over his body, bringing both weapons up to block an overhead swing. The vibration jolts up my arms. But all my training has been against warriors both taller and heavier than I am. I deflect the blow to the side and spin low, onto my knees, the bite of my dagger slashing through a hamstring.
The fight is short and brutal, and some part of me relishes the blood.
I drive my sword straight through a guard’s gut. This is for Old Mother Hibbert.
Another one lunges at me.
For all those children who ran in fear….
For me.
For Amaya.
It’s that thought that nearly undoes me. Amaya. I turn for the Hallow once more, and this time I catch a glimpse of her, gaping at us as if she can’t believe her eyes.
Bending low, I smack my palm against the stone floor, feeling the ripple of my blow vibrate through the floor toward her. “Be brave,” I tell her. “We’re coming for you.”
Amaya looks down at her palms, as if she heard me.
The room seems to vanish.
All I can see is her.
A little girl dressed in a pale white smock, her tiny wrists manacled to the middle of the Hallow, where she cowers from the banes that snap at her and the fetches that laugh as she begs.
Fear drains away.
I know what I must do.
“Cover me,” I say, walking toward her.
As much as I yearn to smear blood across the floors, my fight doesn’t begin or end with a sword.
“Vi!” Thiago snaps, but I’m already past his reach.
“Just get me to that Hallow.”
I am going to get my daughter back.
He lunges forward, turning a blade that was meant for me. Another unseelie sprints toward me, but he goes down with an arrow in the throat. And then Eris is there, her sword held low as she guards my right flank.
“Can you hear me?” I call out to the Mother of Night.
There’s no answer, but I can feel her presence over my shoulder, like thunder thickening the air on the horizon. The little hairs down my spine lift. And I give myself to the Hallow.
There’s something wrong with it.
Not merely the way the stones were cut, but with the Hallow itself.
Every other Hallow I’ve met has been a conduit between the ley lines and myself, but this one doesn’t give up its energy. It drinks it in, like a sucking chasm of nothingness that seeks to fill itself. It feels like reaching your arm into a bottomless pool of oil; thick and viscous and choking. I could drown in that pool if I let myself, and it would slowly haul me under, a clammy sucker mouth clamping over mine as it drinks the very oxygen from my veins.
Something watches me.
Something enormous in the dark.
A little flutter swims through my stomach, but there’s a hand in mine, suddenly squeezing.
“If you stare too long
