wall with his eyes shut while Shining Talon kept watch.
He counted a few slow cycles of his heartbeat. Then pushed on.
They were one floor below ground level, having descended what felt like the entire Hill on the inside. But that was where the servants’ staircases ended. Rags and Shining Talon circled the perimeter once, and it took ages. The castle was massive, round to fit atop the Hill, and unnaturally quiet. There were no idle comings and goings, no men and women of state milling on the white tile inlaid with black bone. Rags didn’t like it. Gave him the crawlies.
“Below,” Shining Talon murmured.
Rags looked down, saw that they were standing on a black hand. More fae bones. He made a face, but it was time for him to be useful, to find a way down for Shining Talon. If he was leading them straight into some bad shit, at least he was leading at all. Right?
Easier thought than done.
Still, Rags had experience with tricky architecture and getting into places he wasn’t meant to find. He also saw another hand inlaid into the floor, about ten paces from where they stood, and noted that its fingers were pointing the same way as the first.
Another ten paces, another hand. Rags crept from one set of black bones to the next, which kept him close to the wall. That was good. He was starting to feel faint. He counted off eleven hands in total before the trail stopped. A hand was missing beneath a high, narrow window with a plush velvet seat built into the sill.
No, scratch that. There was a hand, but it was white bone, human bone, and almost impossible to see against the surrounding white tile. Rags crouched to inspect it, then found himself grinning as he set his palm against the outline. Sure enough, the top of the window seat hinged open soundlessly, revealing a space wide enough for Shining Talon to crawl through, which meant Rags could fit, no trouble.
Beneath the window seat: a ladder. Rags sent a prayer to Lady Winter and gripped the rungs for dear life. Miraculously, he managed not to plummet straight down.
Shining Talon had no difficulty following him.
The window seat snapped shut after them, plunged them into darkness. Or it would have, if not for that faint glow of Shining Talon’s skin.
Rags counted the rungs as they went, although he started to harbor a worm of panic when he came to fifty. How far down were they going? And how much of an idiot was he for wanting to reach the bottom without knowing what he’d find there?
He forced himself to slow his breathing. If he panicked between the castle and what lay beneath, he’d black out and fall to his death for sure.
He just had to remind himself that after weeks of being out of control, he could control this. Going down was his choice.
Whether or not it was a terrible one.
Finally, after seventy rungs, Rags’s heel hit solid ground. Shining Talon dismounted the ladder after him, and Rags groped his way one-handed along a dark tunnel that curved inward toward the Hill’s center.
They had to be below the Hill at this point, surrounded by fae bones. Shining Talon’s breath shivered audibly. Rags didn’t know what to do for him, settled for doing nothing. He wouldn’t tell him it was gonna be all right, because Rags wouldn’t make a promise that could be so easily broken. And unlike in the carriage, they were on the move, not the place to touch Shining Talon’s arm or take his hand. Rags recalled the warmth of smooth fae skin against his own before he banished the thought. No distractions.
In front of them, a sliver of silvery light shone from around a final curve in the tunnel. Rags slowed, let his eyes adjust, and kept himself tucked against the wall so he wouldn’t bust in on—
What he saw around the corner nearly blinded him. He drew back, squinting and wincing, biting down curses. Light everywhere, it seemed, like the chamber they’d found held a sun. Only there was no heat, so it couldn’t be fire. The place was cold, sucked warmth from Rags’s fingertips, his chin, his nose.
He had to look in there again, try to resolve the overpowering light into a set of images. He couldn’t ask Shining Talon to do it, because Shining Talon had gone still as stone after edging away from the light. Rags could barely see the glint of his