Page 134 of The Thief and the Traitor Bride

She felt oddly woozy, and she did not think that was simply a result of their betrayal. “I think it’s just exhaustion,” she said.

He offered a hand. Nore accepted, letting Caspian guide her down the rest of the path. The sea was roaring tonight, crashing against the cliffs below. He deposited her on one of the stones—it was a plinth, Nore realized, like the ones that still held the statues of the gods in Osar. She fought the chill that ran down her spine and tucked her knees to her chest, wrapping herself in her cloak.

Caspian and Gail were talking quietly beside the altar. Cas had taken off his coat, draping it over one of the broken-off pillars, and stood with his arms crossed, nodding to something Gail was saying. He wore gloves again tonight. In the thin sliver of moonlight and the dim blue of magelight, he was barely recognizable as her husband, and Nore was finally able to identify the uncanniness she felt: this was not Caspian her husband, or Caspian her lover, or Caspian her friend. This was Caspian the thief—a side of him she had only been allowed to see in totality once.

He glanced up, as if he could read her thoughts. The calculating look on his face cleared after a moment and he angled a sad smile her way—and there were all the other Caspians melting together; and Nore did not know what it meant, but she felt in her heart that she had made some discovery in the last minute.

She got up, sliding from the plinth, and went to join them.

“It doesn’t look like there’s a crypt dug into the foundations,” Gail said as Nore approached. “So either they’re in the cemetery beyond, or the altar stone is actually a grave.” He nodded to the altar.

“Let’s open it,” Cas said decisively.

“What?” Nore said.

He was not looking at her but at the runes. He must’ve sensed something, she realized. Some sort of magic within the crypt that only he could detect. “If we open it—or try to—and we’re wrong, we just move on. If nothing else, it’s a small delay, and we need to work quickly.”

Nore glanced at Gail to see if he detected any note of oddness in Caspian’s voice, but the other man was just nodding, clearly agreeing. “Do you feel your elementals are up to working on stone?” Gail asked. It took Nore an embarrassing amount of time to realize he was asking about Caspian’s magic.

Cas flexed his hands in his gloves. He shifted, moving beside Nore—and Nore realized he was burning with heat. She glanced at him, confused, but he did not look fevered to her.

“I think so,” Caspian said. “Between us and my magic, we should be able to move the slab. And then, Finch? Do you think you’d be able to reach in and see if there are bones inside? They would mostly be dust, at this point.”

“I think I could manage,” she said, even as her stomach turned.

Cas nodded. He brightened his magelight and handed it to Nore. She moved around the altar, closer to the windows, as Caspian and Gail positioned themselves around the heavy slab. Gail gave the signal, and they began pushing it to one side—the stone held for a minute, and then Caspian made a low noise, and it started to move.

Nore stepped closer as the stone slab shifted. Her heart pounded in her chest, the wrongness of the scene stirring her—it was a defilement, and in the core of her heart she knew it. She wanted to say something, to call this all off, to tell them they didn’t need whatever it was that was inside the tomb—but to do so would be to unmask herself, and she had already come so far.

“Finch,” Cas grunted.

She forced herself in, forced herself to look. The inside was deep and shadowed—it was hollow, after all, which suggested they were correct. She stepped in next to Caspian, holding the magelight closer, letting it illuminate the inside of the altar.

And Cas was right. It was a tomb after all.

“There are bodies,” Nore confirmed. She forced down the bile, taking in the tatters of fabric, the coating of dust, the gray-white of old bone. “Bones.”

“If we put the slab down,” Gail said through gritted teeth, “we may break it. Or may not be able to pick it up again.”

“Nore?” Caspian said, breathing hard.

“I’ll get it,” she said, her voice barely audible. The others were also looking into the tomb, all of them straining under the weight of the slab as Nore leaned over it. She had the fear, suddenly, of leaning too far—of tilting in, of joining the bones.

Two skulls. Two spines. Two rib cages. Entwined, she realized, as if the second body had not been moved years and years ago, as if she’d been interred here the whole time. Or perhaps, as if when laid to rest with her beloved, their bones had once more had power to move, turning in for an embrace.

Nore leaned down farther, the smell of dust and rot entering her nose. She gagged, and Caspian said her name, very quietly. But Nore persisted: she brought the magelight down, trying her best not to look at the bones. She swept the magelight over them, looking for a hint of metal—and there, around one neck, she saw the thread of a chain.

Nore gritted her teeth. “I need to get closer,” she said.

“Put the magelight down inside,” Cas said. “You don’t have to hold it.”

Nore nodded, but even doing that felt invasive. She felt unspeakably sad—and she was not certain all of the emotions she felt were her own.

She set the magelight down in the bare space between the bodies’ collarbones. Nore reached in with both hands, delicate, searching for the chain. She found it, and then the clasp. Nore undid it and lifted up the necklace, taking the medallion in the middle into her palm. It was warm in her hand—hot almost. There was something wrong with it, some strange and intrinsic magic that made her stomach curl, that brought a swell of grief rising to her throat.

She cradled it in her hand. It was round and small, carved with runes that wound around the edge, with a bigger rune in the center. Nore flipped it over, looking at the runes on the back.

“Do you think that’s it?” Cas asked softly.