Total pages in book: 179
Estimated words: 169943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 850(@200wpm)___ 680(@250wpm)___ 566(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 850(@200wpm)___ 680(@250wpm)___ 566(@300wpm)
I don’t want anyone to touch him but me. He’s mine.
It’s just another thing I’ve ruined. Another person’s life I’m casually destroying.
Strangely enough, it hurts more than everything else. Perhaps it’s because I’ve had time to get used to the idea that I’d be hunted like an animal if I didn’t get artifacts to save my father’s hold. I’ve bedded down with that realization for months now. But the loss of Hawk is new, and it aches. I’d allowed myself to hope for something more.
That maybe after all the dust had settled, he’d still want to share a bed with me, still want to talk to me late into the night, just telling me about his day….
“Hawk will understand,” Gwenna says, interrupting my melancholy thoughts.
I don’t think he will. Even now he’s probably bending some woman over in an alley while we wait for ratlings or starvation. “He’s not coming for us. It’s the Conquest Moon. He’s going to be…occupied for the next several days.”
And cursing my name the entire time.
“And there are no other Taurians in the city right now. Not any guild ones.” Lark leans against the slab heavily. “We’re in for a long wait.”
“But you do think someone will come?” Mereden asks.
“Oh, I do. They’re bound to come after the ring.” She waves a hand at the ring tied to the top of my staff, the red glow continuing to pour forth. “It could take a long time for them to find it—and us—though.”
Kipp gets to his feet. He dusts off his tail, licks his eyeball, and then looks around the chamber. He moves to the far corner of the crypt and we watch him from our spot by the door, and when he pokes and prods at the walls, I finally speak up. “What are you doing, Kipp?”
He turns and gestures. It takes me a moment to realize he’s indicating that he’s looking for a way out.
I sit up. “This room is sealed. It has to be, or else the ratlings would be coming in. They’ve probably had a nest in that room for ages.”
Kipp slumps, nodding. Then he shakes himself off and goes back to his prodding. To him, it doesn’t matter. He’s still going to look for a way out. He’s not going to give up.
I’m filled with intense affection for the slitherskin. “He’s right,” I say. “We can’t just give up. We should try to find a way out. I don’t want to die here.” I think of the tomb robber we’d found in the drop just a short time ago and hope that’s not our fate. To come so close to success and yet die on the way.
The doors surge again, and Gwenna gets to her feet. “Two of you keep leaning against this at all times. We can take turns searching the room.”
I get up, ignoring the throb of my bad wrist. “Mereden, why don’t you come sit with Lark?” They’re both the worst injured, though Lark would probably deny it. “I’ll help Gwenna and Kipp look around.”
They settle in against the slab, and Mereden’s face looks tightly drawn in the shadows. Her curly hair is covered in pale dust, which I know she has to hate. She’s particular about her hair.
“Hey,” Lark tells her softly.
“What?” Mereden looks over at her, her expression weary.
“I need to get something off my chest just in case we don’t get out of here.”
Mereden sits up, her focus on Lark. “What?”
Lark leans in and gives Mereden the lightest, sweetest kiss on the lips. “That.”
“Oh.” Mereden touches her mouth, but she’s smiling.
They make me ache with how cute they are. I bite back a smile of my own as they link their fingers, and I wonder about Hawk. Does he miss me right now? Or is he furious at me for disappearing right before the Conquest Moon after I’d promised him?
I wanted to keep that promise so badly, too.
With a miserable sigh, I shake out my now-torn skirts and stretch my legs, eyeing the crypt. Everything is awash in crimson shadows, making it seem far more ominous than it truly is. It’s just a crypt of Old Prell, I remind myself. Where they honored the dead. Gwenna walks briskly to the far end of the crypt and leans over the open sarcophagus, and then turns back to me, her expression stunned.
Oh gods, what now?
“Aspeth? You need to see this.”
FORTY-ONE
ASPETH
Imove to Gwenna’s side, my heart hammering with dread at what she’s found. Kipp crawls up to the corner of the sarcophagus, peering in, and I can hear Lark and Mereden stirring from their position by the door. My thoughts race as I try to figure out what it might be. More ratlings? The corpse of a fae? But no, they’re all gone. They left this land when the god Milus was destroyed by the other gods. Maybe it’s a spider. Maybe it’s a whole nest of spiders.