Page 61 of Horn of Winter

I scanned the arch for a second and then, not sure what else to do, pressed a hand over the worn image. For several seconds, nothing happened. Then the knives pulsed, and the carved image came to life. Light shot across the old stone, tiny bolts of bluish-white that fled to the very edges of the arch. With agroan not unlike that of an old man rising, the stone pushed back several inches, then slowly slid to one side.

“Loving those sound effects.” Mathi shone his light on the newly revealed steps. Water from the cavern spilled over the sill, making the black stone shimmer wetly, and the air was icy cold and extremely foul. “But I’m not loving that scent.”

“No.” I drew a knife and warily stepped through the archway. Lightning briefly danced down the blade’s fuller, but it was more in response to my touch than any threat coming from below.

The stone steps were narrow and a little crumbly, and the trickling water didn’t make them any easier to traverse. I went down sideways, watching where I placed my feet, relying on the knives to warn me of any sort of magical danger, though the air’s foulness and how damn difficult it made breathing without giving in to the urge to puke seemed to be the main threat right now.

Below us, just beyond the reach of our flashlights, a tiny beam of light appeared, hitting the plinth, the golden stand that had once cradled one half of a god’s horn, and the body that lay in a crumpled heap at its base.

“Ah, fuck,” I muttered. It was obviously a woman, but her position made it hard to discern anything else.

“A crude but apt statement in this sort of situation,” Mathi commented.

I stopped on the last step and swung the light around. The chamber was small and round, and unlike the one above, absolutely dry. I swung the light up to the ceiling, looking for the source of the light beam, but it seemed to be emerging out of solid rock. Magic? Given this was a chamber that had once held a godly relic, that was more than a little likely.

I swept the light around one more time, but whatever protections had been here had obviously been dismantled when the horn had been stolen.

“Are we going closer, or are we just going to stand here?” Mathi asked, amusement evident.

“Personally, I’d be voting for the latter, given the stench, if not for the need to know who our dead person is.”

And breathing through my mouth rather than my nose wasnothelping. This close to the body, the stench of putrefaction was so bad, it coated my throat and made my stomach churn all the more fiercely. The iciness in the cavern might have delayed the inevitable decay, but it hadn’t stopped it.

In the flashlight’s bright beam, the concave nature of the back of her head was very evident.

“Hit from behind,” Mathi said.

“Yeah.” I scanned the shrunken figure for a second, then got out my phone and handed it to Mathi. “Record the body position and me moving it. Sgott and whatever team he calls in from down this way will still be pissed at us, but at least we’ll have a record of our interference for them.”

He immediately recorded not only her position, but also added the immediate area and the plinth for good measure. When he was done, I tugged my sleeve over my hand, then bent, gripped her bony shoulder, and lightly pulled her onto her side.

Her face was skeletal, the skin little more than white parchment stretched over bones, which somehow made the rose tattoo running down the left side of her face stand out even more starkly.

Shock ran through me, and I couldn’t help the gasp that escaped.

“What?” Mathi immediately said.

“I know her.” My gaze rose to his. “It’s Peregrine Stace—the woman who’d been staying with my aunt when we delivered the red knife.”

Chapter

Nine

Mathi’s eyebrows rose.“The woman spying on your aunt for the Looisearch?”

“Yes. The last I’d heard, she was still at my aunt’s.” Mainly because I’d used my magic on her and had then totally forgotten about her.

“She couldn’t have been part of the red knife restrictions, though, because she’s not a pixie.”

“No, but I’d ordered her not to leave a defined area of my aunt’s house. Given the IIT haven’t contacted me to release her, she should still be there.”

“Unless the IIT reached out to the pixie council to undo your orders.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Possible, but I wouldn’t think they’d consider Stace a big enough threat to risk the danger of undoing my control over her.”

“Then how did she get here?”

“I have no fucking idea.”

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