“Look again.”
With a sigh, Neve turned to the jagged line in the distance. This far away, the mountains were barely anything but looming shapes. She narrowed her eyes, squinting to bring them into focus.
The angles were strange. The edges of the mountains were pointed in odd directions, lumped up haphazardly. One bulge in particular looked uncannily familiar…
Her eyes widened. The bulge wasn’t a rock. It was a giant skull.
“Bones,” she murmured. “They’re bones.”
“Dead Old Ones.” Solmir turned away from the graveyard range, eyes glittering. “A nightmarish territory for a nightmarish god.”
“You don’t seem to like the Oracle much.”
“I don’t like anything here much.”
Fair enough, she guessed.
As they drew closer to the entrance, its features became easier to make out—the hill wasn’t made of rock. Skulls, again. Rows of them, melted together as if by a torch, cobbled into lines like bricks. A few of them looked almost human, but most were from creatures Neve didn’t recognize, the bones oddly shaped, the angles all wrong. “It’s all damn bones here.”
“One of the side effects of most things being dead,” Solmir said.
In the center of the cairn was a hole, deep-earth dark. No stairs, but the floor of it seemed to slump downward, like an entrance to a purposefully formed cave. It brought easily to mind a huge, muscled serpent, working its way below ground over eons to make its own kingdom.
Neve shuddered.
Solmir noticed. “I suppose I’m going first, then?”
“You are absolutely going first.”
He sighed, the breath of it stirring his hair. “Fine.” Blue eyes turned to her, no humor in them. “I know the prospect of being near me is not one that appeals overmuch, but you’ll want to stay close.”
“I think I can overcome my distaste for an hour or two.” Already, she stood closer to him than she ever had voluntarily, close enough to see a wink of silver through the strands of his loose hair—the ring punched in his earlobe. The man wore more jewelry than she ever had. “What will we find down there, other than the Serpent? More lesser beasts?”
“I doubt it. That thing you killed before we saw the Seamstress is the first child of the Serpent I’ve seen in years.”
So that was one of the Serpent’s children. Which meant that the Serpent must just be a larger, stronger version, probably with more teeth. Neve’s pulse ticked in her wrists.
“But if we do…” Solmir stuck his hand in the pocket of his coat, the one she was still wearing. Neve lurched backward, a retort rising to her mouth, before Solmir pulled his hand away with something clutched in it.
The god-bone.
He flipped it around his finger, then offered it to her, blunt end first. “You use this.”
Hesitantly, Neve held out her hand. He dropped the bone into it.
“I told you before that it won’t work on me, but I feel the need to reiterate, since I’m sure it would hurt anyway.” Solmir turned toward the dark. “You still need me, and I still need you.”
Neve hefted the bone, tapped her thumbnail against the ivory. “Watch your tone, and I’ll try to remember that.”
He huffed half a laugh as he stepped into the maw of the cairn, shadow and light striping his hair. For the second time, he offered her his hand. “It’ll be dark,” he said, in explanation.
And for the second time, she put her hand in his. His skin was slightly warmer than the air, the chill of his silver rings like spots of ice against her palm.
He grinned at her. “Ready to commit high blasphemy?”
“Always.”
Then Solmir plunged them into the dark.
Neve’s vision adjusted quickly to the gloom—the equivalent of days spent in gray scale had already altered her sight. But there wasn’t much to look at. The walls of the cavern were smooth stone, curving into a sloped ceiling. Flecks of mica glittered on the equally smooth stone floor, canted steeply downward. If she sat and pushed off, she could probably slide on it.
The thought made a nervous giggle rise in her throat; Neve clamped her teeth together to keep it in. Even though she could see, she kept one hand in Solmir’s, the other gripping the bone.
A sound breathed up from the depths of the cave. Neve clasped Solmir’s hand hard enough for his rings to dig into her skin; she pressed forward until the only thing separating their bodies was the bulky fabric of his coat.
“Jumpy?” he asked.
“I have reason to be.”
“Not as much as I do. You’re the one with the stabbing implement.” Solmir took a step farther into the dark, pulling himself away from her, though their hands stayed clasped. Neve made herself keep the distance as she followed.
Her thoughts turned, inexplicably, to Raffe.
Neve shook her head, a tiny shudder, just enough to expel the memory of Raffe’s kiss, his skin, his gentleness. Later, she admonished herself. She could think about him later, delve into that knot of feeling and pick it apart. Or she could leave it to freeze over, ossify, become something that would have to be cracked and broken rather than untangled. Keep shoving it down. She’d gotten so good at that.
An impatient tug on her hand—Solmir, tilting his head to the side to direct her gaze. A bloated, wormlike corpse lined the wall, as long as three grown men were tall. One of the Serpent’s children, a lesser beast long dead. The thing’s skin was a patchwork, like a snake in half molt, or meat left out too long.
And at one end, a gaping maw full of teeth.
Neve recoiled, fear making all the hair on her arms raise, before logic snapped in and told her the lesser beast was dead. She looked to Solmir. “Are you going to take its magic?”
“That thing has been dead for a while,” Solmir answered. “Whatever magic it had is gone.”
“To the Kings?”
“Unfortunately.”
Neve kept her neck craned as they passed the corpse, unwilling to completely turn her back on it until the path curved and it was lost from sight. Even then, she couldn’t shake the gooseflesh rippling over her shoulders.
What started as one tunnel into the earth expanded the deeper they went, more corridors bored into the stone walls at irregular intervals. Some of them were large enough to walk through, but others were so narrow that you’d have to crawl. Neve didn’t let herself look at them for too long. Just thinking of inching through the earth like that made her palms clammy.
Finally, their path leveled off, terminating in a circular cavern. Tunnels branched in all directions, too dark to give a clue to what they held. Solmir stopped and dropped her hand, turning to glare at each tunnel in turn.
Neve crossed her arms. “Well? Where to now?”
“Give me a minute.” For the first time she could remember, Solmir looked completely unsure. He shook out his shoulders, making his hair sway over his back. A moment, then he flexed his fingers, wiggling them as if he could coax some direction from the air. Trying to feel out the Serpent’s power.