Page 119 of Silver in the Bone

But still, it shattered.

The unicorn reared up, and the vision shifted behind my eyelids, each detail more horrific than the last. The unicorn faded back into the mist, and in its place came hairless gray scalps, then long, spidery limbs. Claws embedding themselves in the wet stone.

Tamsin? I thought I heard my name from somewhere nearby.

Children rising from beneath the thick mire of the moat, dragging themselves onto the platform, galloping on their strange, spidery limbs down the tunnel, toward the hidden entrance—

I gasped, my eyes snapping open.

“Tamsin?” Cabell had me by both shoulders, his grip like iron as he shook me.

“What’s wrong?” Emrys asked.

The bile was too thick in my throat to speak. I shook my head, dropping into a crouch.

“Come on,” Neve said as she and Emrys helped me stand again, supporting me from either side. “Let’s head back up and get some fresh air. I can get Olwen—”

I shook my head fiercely, but when my eyes slid shut, I saw that same scene play out again. The Children’s rancid breath fanning over my face ...

I forced my eyes open to find Emrys’s face hovering nearby.

“You look like you’re about to be sick,” he said. “Neve’s right, we should go.”

“When are you going to realize that I’m always ...” Neve trailed off, looping one of my arms over her neck. She looked around us, searching the shadows. “Do you hear that?”

Behind us, where the sludgy moat lapped against stone, the dank water began to gurgle. Roil.

Mist rose, sweeping past us with stunning force. And within the depths of it, four shadows emerged, scaling the edge of the platform.

The moment turned gauzy around me. As surreal as my waking nightmare just moments before.

No. This was—it was—

“Run,” Emrys breathed out. “Run.”

We made it all of five feet before the first of the Children screeched, scrabbling after us. Ten before Cabell realized I couldn’t keep up and stopped to throw me over his shoulder.

My body ached as it was jostled, but my attention was fixed behind us. The Children broke ranks as we passed through the antechamber back into the tunnel. They clawed their way up and over the walls, crawling along them. Rather than being repelled, their jaws snapped around Neve’s lights, devouring them one after another. That threw the tunnel behind us into complete darkness and made them appear to ride the wave of an unnatural shadow.

The tunnel dead-ended where the platform was meant to lower down from the armory. Cabell slid to a stop, and to my left, I saw Emrys dive for an iron lever on the wall. The platform rumbled as it started to lower.

“Now, Neve!” Cabell shouted.

Her scream pierced the pathway a breath before the spell’s lights did; they roared across the stone, tearing through the Children until there was nothing left but ash.

As soon as the floor was low enough, Cabell dropped me on it and turned back toward the others. The sorceress swayed, her face graying with exhaustion from the spell. Emrys caught her arm, and he and Cabell lifted her and themselves onto the slowly rising platform.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Cabell told Neve.

“How ... ,” she gasped out between heavy breaths, “did ... they get in?”

“There must be some kind of gap in the walls around the moat,” Emrys said, running a hand through his hair and clenching it. “We have to tell the others. Now.”

But as the platform finished its ascent and leveled out with the armory’s floor, the Children’s screaming didn’t stop. It only amplified into a roar, engulfing us like a thunderstorm.

I pushed to my feet and ran to the nearby window. Betrys was visible through the rippled glass, a sword clutched between her hands, her back to the building. She ran into the courtyard with a ferocious battle cry.

“Holy gods of night.” Cabell ran to the doorway, throwing it open before I could stop him.

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