“Yes.”
“At least we’re being honest with each other these days.” He stepped past me. “I’ll lead.”
An endless burial ground. I’d lived my whole life walking—running—sleeping atop it, never knowing centuries of humans lay beneath my feet.
I couldn’t think too much about it. I hadn’t been superstitious like my mother, but this place could make anyone believe in ghosts.
The first corridor wasn’t flat; it sloped, leading us down at a slight grade. Down, down, and I could swear the air cooled as we passed the grimacing skulls and stacked spines.
Instead of a hard turn like in the Eldermaze, the corridor only curved gradually to the left, then right. After a time, we came to a split.
Dorian stood at the split, eyes shut, nostrils widening. When his eyes opened, he said, “Right.”
I smelled it, too. I moved two paces down the right path, flicked out my knife, and raised it to the nearest skull.
We walked. Sometimes Dorian led the way, and sometimes I did. Some of the corridors were narrower, some wider. In some the bones had collapsed from one wall, leaving a gaping maw into the earth, and we picked our way through them as reverently as we could.
Best not to fuck with the living. Better not to fuck with the dead.
After a time we stopped to eat and drink. It might have been hours; without sunlight, time stretchedandshrank. He and I sat back to back, staring into the darkness so we didn’t have to touch our shoulders to the bones.
I bit into a piece of dried rabbit meat. “The smell has changed since we first entered.”
“Your nose has improved.”
I stopped chewing. “It’s like…”
“Sulfur and wet ash.”
“Exactly. Is that…?”
“Maybe.” He swigged at his canteen. “I’ve never smelled a dragon before.”
Dorian’s back pressed harder to mine, warm and solid. A tether to life. “How is that possible? The passage down is barely big enough for us.”
“Funny, that you should still consider anything impossible.”
I leaned my head back until my scalp made contact with his. “Haskel called it a tooth. If he’s not exaggerating?—”
“Not about this,” he said.
“—then what would compel a dragon to give up atooth?”
I felt him shrug. “Apparently Carys did so, once.”
“How?”
“If anyone knew the answer to that, I expect Liora would already be hoarding the dagger in her great golden cache.”
I stared into the darkness. “Why are there no dragons in the world, Dorian?”
“Besides the one who guards the inner district sewers, you mean?”
“Yes, besides the shit guardian.”
He let out a gusting breath. “Humans and fae only love what they can conquer. Anything else is a threat.”
My brow lowered. “Do you mean to say we’ve killed them all?”