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Instantly, I climbed back up to the rocky slope where I’d left her. Right as I reached the dellabore bush, a gasping scream echoed from around a boulder.
“Murgha!”
In a flash, I was around the corner, my gaze falling to her dagger sitting on the edge of a crevasse in the mountainside. Instantly, I was on my belly, peering inside the narrow opening.
“Murgha!” I sensed and smelled her in the darkness.
“I’m here,” her voice echoed shakily.
“Are you hurt?”
“I fell on something sharp. My arm is scraped a little.” Her voice trembled, and her pulse quickened. “Vallon?”
“Hang on. I think I can loosen these stones here and squeeze down to you.” She’d fallen through a crack where the stone had crumbled and come loose, but there was another scent wafting from down below that I didn’t like.
“Vallon?”
On my knees, I pulled loose a stone as wide as my chest and dropped it aside. “I’m coming.”
Her voice trembled more as she said in a near whisper, “I think there’s something down here with me.”
Falling back onto my belly, I peered through the wider opening, my gut twisting with blood-chilling fear.
“Don’t move,” I warned in a low voice. “Be very still.”
Murgha tilted her pale face up at the opening, squinting in the dark at the light above and holding her bleeding arm. Surrounding her in a mountainous spill into the shadows were piles and piles of bones.
Chapter
Twelve
MURGHA
Ifroze, more from the deadly tone of his voice than his command. He removed another stone, more gray light spilling through the crevice above into the pit where I'd fallen. That’s when I saw what I was sitting upon.
Scattered and broken, some still with flesh clinging to them, I had fallen into a den of bones. A predator’s den. They weren’t the remnants of deer or boar or other large prey. They were the skulls, legs, arms, and wings of dead fae. One of the skulls, completely white with two giant spiraling horns, was that of a beast fae. The jaw was open in a soundless scream.
But not even that was what had my heart pumping hard with fear. There was something foul filling this space, a dark essence that awakened my magick with a burning sensation blazing through my veins. It hurt. I whimpered.
“I can’t breathe,” I whispered to myself, my chest rising and falling so quickly I began to feel dizzy.
“I’m coming!” Vallon shouted from overhead, removing another stone from the opening.
Then a low, sinister rumble filled the cavern. In the deep shadows, four eyes glowed silver in the dark.
“Murgha, listen to me.” Vallon’s voice was deep and urgent. “Do not move. It will not be able to see you if youdon’tmove. He can smell you, but my shield will confuse his senses.”
I didn’t ask what he meant. In the next second, I was encased in a gray shroud, magick covering me like a blanket. Instinctively, I knew that it was Vallon’s magick. He’d swathed me in shadow, so the bones around me became a smudged blur. And though I could barely see those four eyes growing closer, it was the feel of this beast that had me trembling with terror.
The clamor of stones being shifted and Vallon’s labored breathing above felt distant as I homed in on the creature crawling closer to me. When it slithered near the light, to keep from making a sound, I bit on my bottom lip so hard I tasted blood.
It slid across the cavern floor and over piles of bones with a giant serpentine body, its horned head nearly scraping the top of the cavern. But it wasn’t a serpent entirely. It had eight muscular legs that ended in long black claws as long as my arm. The creature’s forked tongue lanced the air and then it hissed, revealing rows and rows of long, sharp fangs.
Vallon was right. His shadow magick had kept me completely camouflaged. Barely even breathing, I remained perfectly still as it slithered over a mound of bones, sending several skulls rolling to the side.
My heart pounded so hard I thought it would leap from my chest as it came even closer, bringing with it a wave of evil so potent I sucked in a breath. This creature wasn’t simply a predator. It was filled with something malevolent and wicked.
It moved farther into the light, heading toward me slowly, it’s black, forked tongue licking the air. Its scales were a pattern of shiny silver and dark gray would make it blend into the mountain when hunting prey. But right now, it didn’t need tohide. It simply needed to find me. If it stepped five steps to the right, its forked tongue would lick right across my face.
