But I wanted her to trust me. I wanted her to know she could. I just didn’t know how to show her that.
Time, Haskel would say.All things truly desired come in time.
“Dorian.” Eury had stopped. In her hand, the stone had begun to glow with white light. Not just crystal light, but sunlight.Solaire, so much of it and so terrible on the eyes I couldn’t keep my gaze on the thing.
It truly was the sol key—the bright key to the eternal cell.
I closed my eyes, breathed out. Some part of me had hoped the stone would always stay a stone.
Her footsteps started again. Ahead of me, the light grew as she neared the wall, until she stood in front of an iron door almost twice as tall as her. Black iron, ancient, riveted with bolts the size of my fist. No handle, no hinges—as though it had been forged into the stone itself, meant never to open. At its center, a depression in the exact shape of the crystal, carved deep into the metal.
I had never seen that door in my life. I had walked these catacombs as a boy, had traced my fingers along every wall. This door had not existed then—or it had existed, and the dark had hidden it from me.
I stepped up beside her, before the door that shouldn’t exist. The iron seemed to drink the light from the crystal in her opposite hand, giving nothing back.
She met eyes, hers a shimmering sapphire in the sol key’s light.
We don’t have to, I wanted to say, but saying it would be as pointless as trying to breathe underwater. She was here, and so we were here.
I nodded, and she pressed the sol key into the depression.
For a moment, nothing. Then the stone flared—blazing white, blazing gold—and a sound rose from deep within the door. Not a click, not a groan. A breath, as though something ancient had been holding its lungs for centuries and finally, finally exhaled.
The iron split down the center. The two halves swung inward, slow and massive, revealing nothing but darkness beyond. Cold air rushed out, so frigid it burned my skin, carrying with it a smell Icouldn’t name—old blood, older stone, and something else astringent in my nose, familiar but ten times worse.
Eury stood silhouetted against the black, the sol key still bright in her hand.
“What is that?” she said. “That scent.”
No use lying to her. She’d know, sense it in my tone or my breath or my eyes. I didn’t know what lay down there, but my fae senses did. Every part of me understood.
“Death,” I said. “Endless death.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Eurydice
Air poured from the doorway,cold and earthy and putrid. Beyond the door and the key’s light, the threshold was black as pitch.
Every instinct told me to turn away. Yet this was where we had to go.
Dorian reached for my hand. His fingers slid through mine, clasped, and together we stepped through and into darkness. On the other side, stone floor gave way to earth.
I raised the sol key—and illuminated two walls of bare bones.
Femurs, tibias, skulls. Endless remains on either side, from my feet to seven feet above my head. Stacked tight, close. Eyeholes stared back at me, rows of teeth like wide grimaces.
The doors shut behind us with an echoing thud. We were enclosed.
Dorian’s grip tightened, as though he anticipated I’d jerk away. “They’re catacombs, Eury. Just bones.” His voice was too loud, resonant, like it might wake something.
I couldn’t move, could barely breathe. “Cata-what?”
“It’s where the dead are buried.”
“No, the dead are burned.”
“It’s where theyusedto be buried.” His thumb stroked the back of my hand. “Long ago.”