I couldn’t stop staring at the skull a foot from my head, as though looking away for longer than a blink would bring it to life. “Buried—why?”
“It was an honor, apparently.”
I forced my gaze off the bones and onto his shadowed face. “You knew this was here.”
“I had no idea.” His gaze traveled down the dirt pathway into darkness. “Not until Liora told me about it. Feyreign has catacombs, but I never thoughtwedid.”
“You could have told me before now.”
“Would you have preferred to know before or after you stepped through the mirror-way?”
If I had known, would I have come? The braver part of me would say yes; the part that couldn’t conceive of an endless corridor of bones wasn’t so sure. “The dagger is down here?”
“According to Liora.”
“Do you believe her?”
“I believe she’d find a quicker way to kill us if she just wanted us dead.”
I shifted the light around. More bones, stacked into the dark. “So just… walk.”
“It’s all we can do.”
I took one step forward, then another. More of the corridor appeared—more bones. “How far does it go?”
“Far.” I didn’t know how I knew, but Iknew.“Catacombs are said to be labyrinthine.”
Ice spread in my chest.Labyrinthinewas dangerous. We hadn’tbrought much for supplies—maybe a couple days’ worth of food and two canteens. “If we don’t find a water source…”
His hand moved to my wrist. He turned me toward him. “We can turn back.” Dorian’s voice was quiet. “We don’t have to go any further.”
He was right. We could stop here, turn back, climb out of the sewers and never leave the inner district. We could be fat, happy, eternal. We had that choice.
And yet…
I had been shown a vision of that dagger. Had held it in my hand, felt its tip slice through my skin. It wasmine.My only hope in the Killing Fields. The sole route to continued life in a world beyond reckoning, beyond imagination.
I wanted that. And if I knew Dorian, he wanted it, too.
I unwound my hand from Dorian’s grip, reached into my belt, lifted out my pocket knife and flicked it open, the click too loud in the skull-lined silence.
“What are you doing?”
Light from my crystal caught in hollow eye sockets as I lifted it toward one of the skulls and stepped closer. With a flinch, I drew the blade across the skull’s browbone in one quick swipe, then a second swipe to make a crosshatch. I stepped back.
Dorian stared at me. “What was that, Eury?”
I pointed at the skull with my open knife. “That’s how we find our way back. At every turn.”
He made a soft noise, almost humored. Not quite. “So that’s your answer. Of course.”
“Of course what?”
“Of course you’d walk into hell”—he nodded toward the crosshatch—“with this as a lifeline.”
“Are you afraid?”
“Yes,” he said, no hesitation. “Aren’t you?”