“Long enough to need to stop to eat?” Their gazes met, Nesta’s silvered in Bryce’s starlight.
“We don’t know these caves. I prepared for anything.”
“Not the Wyrm, apparently.”
“You’re alive, aren’t you?”
Bryce couldn’t help her snort. “Fair enough.”
There was no more talk after that.
It was possible they could walk right into a dead end and have wasted miles and hours down here. But the tunnel seemed … intentional. And Bryce wasn’t about to pose a question about the potential fruitlessness of their trek if it would make Nesta try to drag her back to the cave-in to wait to be dug out.
She was getting her way—for better or worse.
* * *
Bryce was deep enough in her thoughts that she didn’t notice the fork in the tunnel until she’d nearly passed the tunnel that veered to the right. She drew up short, the halt of Nesta’s footsteps behind her telling her the warrior had done the same.
Bryce tugged the neck of her T-shirt down to reveal more of her starlight, illuminating the two options gaping before them.
To the left, the tunnel continued, old, rough rock walls curving into the gloom.
To the right … Around the natural archway, an array of stars and planets had been carved, crowned at its apex by a large setting or rising sun. Bryce’s star glowed brighter as she faced it, guiding her there.
She could dimly make out more scenes of violence and bloodshed covering the walls inside the tunnel.
“I’m going to take a guess and say let’s go right.” Bryce sighed, covering her star again with her shirt.
“Very well,” Nesta said, and strode for the archway.
Bryce lunged before Nesta could clear it, grabbing the warrior by the back of her collar. With a twirl and a flash, Nesta was on her, sword at Bryce’s throat. Its metal was impossibly cold.
Bryce held up her hands, trying not to breathe too loudly, to bring her skin into any more contact with that horrific blade than necessary. “No—look.” She nodded as minutely as she could to the carvings in the tunnel just beyond the archway.
Nesta didn’t remove the blade, which seemed to throb against Bryce’s skin, like the sword was alive and aware. But Nesta’s gaze shifted to where Bryce had indicated.
“What is it?”
“Those carvings,” Bryce breathed. “Back home, my job is to look at ancient art, to study it and sell it, and … never mind, that’s not really relevant. I just mean I’ve seen a lot of ancient Fae artwork, and that stuff on the walls—it’s spelling out a warning. So if you want to get impaled by a bunch of rusty spears, keep walking.”
Nesta blinked, head angling, more feline than Fae. But the sword lowered.
Bryce tried not to gasp in relief as that icy metal left her skin, her soul. She never wanted to endure anything like it again.
Nesta either didn’t know or didn’t care about the sword’s impact on Bryce as she surveyed the carvings. The one closest to them.
A female, clearly Fae nobility from the ornate robes and fancy jewelry, stared out from the wall. As if she were addressing an audience, welcoming the newcomers to the tunnel. She was young and beautiful, yet stood with a presence that seemed regal. Long hair flowed around her like a silent river, framing her delicate, heart-shaped face.
Bryce shook off the last of her dread and translated the inscription. “Her name was Silene.”
Nesta peered at the writing beneath the image. “That’s all it says?”
Bryce shrugged. “Old-school Fae. Lots of fancy titles and lineage. You know how they liked to preen.”
Nesta’s lips quirked upward. Bryce motioned at the embossed panels that continued onward.
“The warning is in the story she’s telling here,” Bryce said.
A field of corpses had been carved into the wall, a battlefield stretching ahead. Crucifixes loomed over the battlefield, bodies hanging from them. Great, dark beasts of scales and talons—the ones from the pit beneath her cell, she realized with a shudder—feasted on screaming victims. Blood eagles were splayed out on stone altars.
“Mother above,” Nesta murmured.
“Those holes along the corpses there—the ones that look like wounds … I’d bet anything there are mechanisms in them to send weapons at passersby,” Bryce said. “As some fucked-up ‘artistic’ way of making the viewer experience the pain and terror of these Fae victims.”
Bryce could have sworn something like surprise and embarrassment—that perhaps the warrior herself hadn’t spotted the threat—crossed Nesta’s face.