I could feel them sleeping, pacing, running hands and claws over the other side of the walls.
They were ancient, and cruel in a way I had never known, not even with Amarantha. They were infinite, and patient, and had learned the language of darkness, of stone.
“How long,” I breathed. “How long was she in here?” I didn’t dare say her name.
“Azriel looked once. Into archives in our oldest temples and libraries. All he found was a vague mention that she went in before Prythian was split into the courts—and emerged once they had been established. Her imprisonment predates our written word. I don’t know how long she was in here—a few millennia seems like a fair guess.”
Horror roiled in my gut. “You never asked?”
“Why bother? She’ll tell me when it’s necessary.”
“Where did she come from?” The brooch he’d given her—such a small gift, for a monster who had once dwelled here.
“I don’t know. Though there are legends that claim when the world was born, there were … rips in the fabric of the realms. That in the chaos of Forming, creatures from other worlds could walk through one of those rips and enter another world. But the rips closed at will, and the creatures could become trapped, with no way home.”
It was more horrifying than I could fathom—both that monsters had walked between worlds, and the terror of being trapped in another realm. “You think she was one of them?”
“I think that she is the only one of her kind, and there is no record of others ever having existed. Even the Suriel have numbers, however small. But she—and some of those in the Prison … I think they came from somewhere else. And they have been looking for a way home for a long, long time.”
I was shivering beneath the fur-lined leather, my breath clouding in front of me.
Down and down we went, and time lost its grip. It could have been hours or days, and we paused only when my useless, wasted body demanded water. Even while I drank, he didn’t let go of my hand. As if the rock would swallow me up forever. I made sure those breaks were swift and rare.
And still we went onward, deeper. Only the lights and his hand kept me from feeling as if I were about to free-fall into darkness. For a heartbeat, the reek of my own dungeon cell cloyed in my nose, and the crunch of moldy hay tickled my cheek—
Rhys’s hand tightened on my own. “Just a bit farther.”
“We must be near the bottom by now.”
“Past it. The Bone Carver is caged beneath the roots of the mountain.”
“Who is he? What is he?” I’d only been briefed in what I was to say—nothing of what to expect. No doubt to keep me from panicking too thoroughly.
“No one knows. He’ll appear as he wants to appear.”
“Shape-shifter?”
“Yes and no. He’ll appear to you as one thing, and I might be standing right beside you and see another.”
I tried not to start bleating like cattle. “And the bone carving?”
“You’ll see.” Rhys stopped before a smooth slab of stone. The hall continued down—down into the ageless dark. The air here was tight, compact. Even my puffs of breath on the chill air seemed short-lived.
Rhysand at last released my hand, only to lay his once more on the bare stone. It rippled beneath his palm, forming—a door.
Like the gates above, it was of ivory—bone. And in its surface were etched countless images: flora and fauna, seas and clouds, stars and moons, infants and skeletons, creatures fair and foul—
It swung away. The cell was pitch-black, hardly distinguishable from the hall—
“I have carved the doors for every prisoner in this place,” said a small voice within, “but my own remains my favorite.”
“I’d have to agree,” Rhysand said. He stepped inside, the light bobbing ahead to illuminate a dark-haired boy sitting against the far wall, eyes of crushing blue taking in Rhysand, then sliding to where I lurked in the doorway.
Rhys reached into a bag I hadn’t realized he’d been carrying—no, one he’d summoned from whatever pocket between realms he used for storage. He chucked an object toward the boy, who looked no more than eight. White gleamed as it clacked on the rough stone floor. Another bone, long and sturdy—and jagged on one end.
“The calf-bone that made the final kill when Feyre slew the Middengard Wyrm,” Rhys said.
My very blood stilled. There had been many bones that I’d laid in my trap—I hadn’t noticed which had ended the Wyrm. Or thought anyone would.
“Come inside,” was all the Bone Carver said, and there was no innocence, no kindness in that child’s voice.
I took one step in and no more.
“It has been an age,” the boy said, gobbling down the sight of me, “since something new came into this world.”
“Hello,” I breathed.
The boy’s smile was a mockery of innocence. “Are you frightened?”
“Yes,” I said. Never lie—that had been Rhys’s first command.
The boy stood, but kept to the other side of the cell. “Feyre,” he murmured, cocking his head. The orb of faelight glazed the inky hair in silver. “Fay-ruh,” he said again, drawing out the syllables as if he could taste them. At last, he straightened his head. “Where did you go when you died?”
“A question for a question,” I replied, as I’d been instructed over breakfast.
The Bone Carver inclined his head to Rhysand. “You were always smarter than your forefathers.” But those eyes alighted on me. “Tell me where you went, what you saw—and I will answer your question.”
Rhys gave me a subtle nod, but his eyes were wary. Because what the boy had asked …
I had to calm my breathing to think—to remember.
But there was blood and death and pain and screaming—and she was breaking me, killing me so slowly, and Rhys was there, roaring in fury as I died, Tamlin begging for my life on his knees before her throne … But there was so much agony, and I wanted it to be over, wanted it all to stop—
Rhys had gone rigid while he monitored the Bone Carver, as if those memories were freely flowing past the mental shields I’d made sure were intact this morning. And I wondered if he thought I’d give up then and there.
I bunched my hands into fists.
I had lived; I had gotten out. I would get out today.
“I heard the crack,” I said. Rhys’s head whipped toward me. “I heard the crack when she broke my neck. It was in my ears, but also inside my skull. I was gone before I felt anything more than the first lash of pain.”
The Bone Carver’s violet eyes seemed to glow brighter.
“And then it was dark. A different sort of dark than this place. But there was a … thread,” I said. “A tether. And I yanked on it—and suddenly I could see. Not through my eyes, but—but his,” I said, inclining my head toward Rhys. I uncurled the fingers of my tattooed hand. “And I knew I was dead, and this tiny scrap of spirit was all that was left of me, clinging to the thread of our bargain.”
“But was there anyone there—were you seeing anything beyond?”
“There was only that bond in the darkness.”
Rhysand’s face had gone pale, his mouth a tight line. “And when I was Made anew,” I said, “I followed that bond back—to me. I knew that home was on the other end of it. There was light then. Like swimming up through sparkling wine—”
“Were you afraid?”
“All I wanted was to return to—to the people around me. I wanted it badly enough I didn’t have room for fear. The worst had happened, and the darkness was calm and quiet. It did not seem like a bad thing to fade into. But I wanted to go home. So I followed the bond home.”
“There was no other world,” the Bone Carver pushed.
“If there was or is, I did not see it.”
“No light, no portal?”
Where is it that you want to go? The question almost leaped off my tongue. “It was only peace and darkness.”
“Did you have a body?”
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