Acid gathered in my throat, and I had no idea if that was coming from Casteel, Kieran, or both.
“You must have questions,” Malik continued quietly, staring straight ahead. “You likely have things you want to say.”
I laughed, but the sound was dry. “I have a lot of things I want to say, but none of them will change the past.” And what answers he could have for whatever questions I may ask probably wouldn’t do much for my state of mental well-being or Casteel’s. There was one thing, though. I swallowed. “How did Coralena die?”
“You sure you want to know that?” Malik exhaled heavily as he held a limb back. “She was forced to drink the blood of a draken.”
Horror and grief collided as Reaver stiffened ahead, and I immediately regretted asking the question.
“It was quick,” Malik added quietly as Delano crowded me, his head brushing my gloved fingers. “I do not say that to lessen what was done. It’s the truth. Cora was—Isbeth favored her. It was one of the few times she didn’t drag out punishment or death.”
Pressing my lips together, I shook my head. I didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t know how to feel about it.
“Cas, he…” Malik looked over his shoulder and then focused on me as flurries drifted from the sky. “He mentioned some kind of rhyme you said you heard that night. That wasn’t me.”
My gaze shot to him, my throat drying. Somehow, in the aftermath of everything, I’d forgotten. “I know,” I whispered, my skin chilling even further as the essence pulsed in my chest. “That came after. It wasn’t your voice. It was like…”
It was like the voice I heard in Stonehill, urging me to unleash my fury. To bring death. That hadn’t been Isbeth.
“Poppy?” Concern radiated from Casteel.
I’d stopped walking. Delano pressed against my legs as my heart thumped—
An imprint brushed against my thoughts, one that reminded me of fresh rain. Sage?
We found the end of the trail, her response came. There’s definitely something here. It has a bad feel to it.
My brows rose, and I looked up as Casteel drew Setti to my side. “The wolven found the end of the trail. Sage says where they’re at has a bad feel to it.”
Casteel’s features were hard as he nodded. It only took a handful of minutes for us to join the wolven, where they paced restlessly through broken pillars, in front of a wall of rock that traveled as high as a Rise and was covered in blood trees, nearly stacked one on top of the other. Their unease was a tangible entity, coating my skin.
The trail ended right at the edge of the trees before a rocky hill that was more of a mountain than anything else. I looked down, seeing that the trail was already beginning to fade.
“What the hell?” Casteel murmured as he swung off his horse. “It’s a damn mountain of rock and blood trees.”
“I didn’t see this from the sky at all,” Reaver said, looking up. “This has to be where the forest was the thickest.”
Casteel strode past me, entering the crowded rows of trees. “There’s an entrance in there—in the rock.”
Delano followed as I went to Casteel and peered around him, into…vast nothingness. “Can you see anything?”
“A little. Looks like a tunnel,” he answered, squinting. “Kieran or Vonetta? What do you see?”
Kieran was the first to join us, leaning around me to look inside. “Definitely a tunnel. A natural one, kind of like what’s in the mountains back home. Wide enough for a group to walk through single file.”
I took a deep breath. “We are really going to have to walk in there, aren’t we?”
Sage nudged my hand, her words reaching my thoughts. We go first.
“No,” I said out loud in case anyone else got the same idea. “We have no idea what’s down there.”
That’s why we go first. Delano’s springy imprint reached me.
“Poppy,” Casteel began.
“I don’t want them going into the gods only know what.”
He stepped in close. “Neither do I.”
“But we have way better senses than any of the Atlantians here. Or even you,” Vonetta said.
Kieran nodded. “She’s right. We will know if something’s down there that we need to be careful of before anyone else will.”
“You can all argue all you want,” Malik said. “But it’s pointless. Because something is coming.”
All our heads snapped toward the rock. I saw nothing but darkness—
A sudden gust of wind hit the trees, rattling the branches. The air smelled strange and emitted a low howl, raising the hairs all over my body.
“I really would like a weapon,” Malik announced.
Reaver’s head lifted. The leafy branches stilled above and all around, but that sound…it still came. A moan from inside the tunnel reached us from the darkness.
“What in the gods’ name is that?” Kieran asked, bloodstone sword in hand. “Craven?”