When Iseult made no move to pluck it up, he gently grabbed her wrist and twisted upward. Then he dropped the iron into her waiting palm. It was warm against her skin, as were his fingers—fingers he now unfurled.
No words left his lips, and no words left Iseult’s. She simply examined, almost numbly, the iron needle head as it glittered in the speckled sun.
Aeduan was back to Owl’s side before Iseult could angle toward him, and they were already stepping out of sight, a sliver of movement amid the whispering green, before Iseult finally found her voice.
“Aeduan.” She’d never said his name aloud. She was surprised by how easily it rolled off the tongue.
He looked back, his expression inscrutable as always. But laced with … with something. Hope, she found herself thinking, though she knew it was fanciful.
Aeduan was not the sort of man to ever hope.
“The talers,” she went on, “are in Lejna. There’s a coffee shop on the hill, and I discovered a lockbox full of coins in the cellar. I don’t know how they got there. I simply found them, and I took them.”
Aeduan’s chest fell with a sigh. He wanted to ask more—Iseult could see it in the way his lips tightened. Readying for words.
But then he changed his mind and turned away.
So Iseult matched his movement, pivoting toward the river and setting off.
She did not look back.
*
Merik dropped to his knees beside Cam, all thoughts of Vivia or Garren or any of the Nines forgotten. Cam was curled in on herself, her left hand clutched to her belly. Blood streaming.
“We need to get you help,” Merik said. He tried to lift her, but she resisted. Her head wagged.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she whispered. “I didn’t know what Garren was gonna do—”
“And I don’t care about that, Cam. Stand up, damn it. We need to get you help.”
Vivia’s shadow stretched over them. “Pin’s Keep,” she said. “We can get a healer there, and it’s that way.” She motioned across the square.
“Then let’s go.” Ignoring Cam’s arguments, Merik eased a hand behind the girl while Vivia moved to Cam’s other side.
But Cam, stubborn as ever, shrugged them off. Her face was pale. Blood stained everything. “I can walk,” she huffed. “It hurts like hell, but I know the fastest way. Come on.” She stumbled over the corpses, leaving Merik and Vivia with no choice but to hurry after.
It was then, as Cam led them onto a side street, that Merik felt it—a cold draft from an unlit hearth. A frost to trickle against his ever-present rage.
He spun toward the sensation, and just as he knew he would find, just as he felt tugging in his belly, a wall of shadows met his eyes. It towered above the buildings. Blacked out the entire city, the entire cavern.
The wall moved this way.
“Run.” The command fell from Merik’s tongue, alive. Undulating like the creature he knew came toward them. Then louder, “Run!”
He grabbed for Cam, tugging her faster toward Pin’s Keep—or whatever might lie ahead. But definitely away from the shadow man.
No one argued. Everyone ran.
Each step made Merik’s chest clench. He was a fish on the line being reeled the wrong way. Block after block. Trying to keep panic at bay.
A distant voice began chanting.
It carried the words Merik had grown used to, the song that lived inside him now. These were the verses he’d forgotten, or perhaps never heard, and the song came from the city’s heart. Far away, yet frizzing ever nearer.
“So on they swam deeper, till darkness took hold
and the only sound was click-click.
Daret feared it the sound of her claws,
but Filip assured him it wasn’t.”
Cam almost tripped. Merik caught her, keeping his arm sturdily at her back.
“What was that?” Vivia asked.
Merik didn’t answer. He simply spurred them on, for the wall of darkness was catching up.
“Then fool brother Filip swam faster ahead,
forgetting his brother was blind.
For fool brother Filip had heard tales of gold
that Queen Crab hoarded inside.”
The voice had reached a nearby street. The shadows grew thicker. Any moment now, they would roll over Merik and Vivia and Cam too, leaving all of them blind. Leaving all of them trapped.
“Queen Crab avoids fishes, she only hoards riches—
at least so Filip believed.
He also believed that money bought love,
and that riches could make him a king.”
The road ended ahead, and a curl of air kissed Merik’s face. A breeze. Cool, refreshing …
“Turn right,” Merik barked, and Vivia and Cam obeyed.
“But this is the secret of Queen Crab’s long reign:
she knows what all fishes want.
The lure of the shiny, the power of more,
the hunger we all feel for love.”
Two more streets, two more turns, and more cold wind slithered over Merik. Yet as his lips parted to holler that they veer left, he realized—with a punch of dread in his belly—that he had taken them in a circle. That now, somehow, the wall of black waited directly ahead.