Page 58 of Of Steel and Scale

They close.Can collect. Gria eat meat.

And with dawn rising, she should be safe from the gilded birds and their riders.

Hunt now?she added.

I repeated the question to Damon, and he shook his head. “The fresher the kill, the stronger the spell.”

Wait then. Tell when need.

Will do.

Damon walked around the crate and headed toward the tunnel. I trailed after him. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Stay here. Spells don’t often go wrong, but this one can be... touchy.”

“Because you’re destroying rather than protecting?”

He nodded. “It’s a bit of a gray area. It can work if the intent is to protect, but backlash is not unknown.”

I frowned. “Backlash?”

He nodded. “If I come tumbling out of the tunnel a raw and bloody mess, that’s backlash.”

Alarm flicked through me. “I’d appreciate you avoiding such an occurrence.”

“Oh, I plan to, if only because it’d play havoc with my seduction plans.” He swung off his pack and handed it to me, then brushed his lips across mine—a barely there caress that had me hungering for more. “Back in a few minutes.”

I nodded and watched him disappear into the gloom, then swung his pack over my shoulder and moved back behind the largest of the boxes. I had no idea how much of the tunnel would be affected, but it should be safe enough at the back here.

And hoped that I hadn’t just tempted Túxn to withdraw her favors and look the other way.

Time seemed to tick by extraordinarily slowly, but it was probably only five or so minutes later when a gentle vibration began to run through the ground. Stone dust began to sprinkle down from the ceiling, and I glanced up sharply. Tiny fissures raced across the ceiling, some of them meeting and merging, creating ever larger lines as they were drawn toward the exit tunnel.

Foreboding pulsed, and I turned, then hesitated, reaching back into the box to grab a handful of the metal tubes and a small tub of the liquid before hurrying toward the tunnel. I doubted Damon intended collapsing the whole cavern, but he’d also mentioned how unstable the spell could be. Better to be safe than sorry.

I stopped a few yards inside our escape tunnel, dropped my haul onto the ground near my feet, then crossed my arms and leaned against the rough wall. For several more minutes, nothing more happened. The needle-fine cracks continued to run together, creating a dangerous network of splinters across the cavern’s ceiling and the dust in the air increased, a red haze that quickly decreased visibility. A softwhoomphechoed, then the walls around me shuddered violently. Large slabs of stone began to rain from the cavern’s roof and, barely visible through the haze, a thicker cloud of dust and rocks ballooned out of the other tunnel.

Damon emerged from its middle, running hard. A heartbeat later, I saw why. Boulders chased his heels. Bounders big enough to crush.

The force of his spell hadn’t just collapsed the tunnel, it was about to take the whole damn cavern with it.

8

His gaze sweptthe cavern and landed on mine. He veered toward me, running across the avalanche’s surging frontline, leaping over boulders, and somehow avoiding the deadly rain coming from the ceiling.

As he hit the cavern’s mouth, the stream of rock crashed into the line of boxes. Bits of wood and metal flew in all directions, deadly spears that could pierce skin as easily as they did the air. Dark liquid sprayed high, splashing across the growing network of cracks in the cavern’s ceiling.

“Go, go,” Damon said, his voice hoarse with weariness. He swept up the tubes and the tub I’d salvaged, then grabbed my arm and pulled me along with him. I shook free, scooped up my other pack, and ran on, leading the way through the dust, the gloom, fear pounding through me as cracks splintered the ceiling above us.

From behind us came a series of heavy thumps; more of the cavern’s ceiling had come down, and it sent a thick wave of stone grit chasing after our heels. Then an odd hissing began. It sounded like a shamoke pot steaming, only a thousand times louder.

The liquid, I realized suddenly. The avalanche had crushed its receptacles, and it was now reacting—violently, if the increasing volume of that hissing was anything to go by—to the stone.

A heartbeat later, there was another loudwhoomph, and the whole tunnel vibrated.

“Lose the packs, now!” Damon commanded, dropping the tub and the tubes and racing away from them.

“Why?” I said, not looking back as I hastily obeyed.

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