Page 61 of What Blooms from Death

“Base rate’s gone up in recent days, I’m afraid. The walls at Wrathmere are failing, so we’ve got more refugees to contend with, as of late. Supply and demand and all that.”

Thalia scowled. “We’re only passing through. Not even spending more than a day. Your price is absurd.”

Atros shrugged. “Reaper’s orders. You know how he is. He wants what he wants, fair or not.”

“Give my money back, then,” she demanded.

He walked the bag between his mangled fingers, his dexterity surprisingly impressive. “There’s a fee for disrupting my peace, too.”

Zayn and Aleksander exchanged a look before turning away, mumbling among themselves.

My face flushed hot. I hadn’t planned to intervene or get in the way, but this man reminded me entirely too much of some of the scum I’d dealt with back in the seedier areas of Eldris. The first rule to surviving my kingdom’s seedy underbelly was to always act more confident than you felt—and I suspected that rule was universal.

I stepped forward. “No deal is no deal,” I snapped. “The payment isn’t yours to keep.”

He finally, noticeably blinked—a slow, calculated fluttering of his eyelids—before flashing his odd gaze in my direction. “And who might you be?”

“No one important.” I thrust out my hand. “The bag,” I said, tapping my palm. “Now.”

He started to smile the same oily smile he’d given Thalia—until his eyes fell upon my bracelets. The one my father had given me on my birthday had separated from the others, sliding down, dangling partially around my hand.

Atros stared at it with such a disturbing hunger that I nearly jerked my wrist back, half-expecting he might bite it off if I didn’t.

But I kept still. Calm. Confident.

“The bag,” I repeated.

He tossed it up and down in the air, taunting me. Daring me to try and grab it.

So Ididjerk my wrist back, but only so I could spin my bracelets around and take hold of one of the black-rose beads. A squeeze of my fingers brought a strand of my essence to the surface, and then it whipped forward and wrapped around the bag, possessing and halting it in mid-air. A quick beckoning of my hand sent it hurtling toward Thalia—who managed animpressive catch, as if we’d practiced this exact routine many times before.

Atros stared.

I gave him a nasty smile before turning away. “On to alternative routes, then,” I told Thalia, coolly.

Atros blustered out some response—back to his initial language, now—but I ignored him and started to walk.

Thalia caught up to me after a moment of staring at my retreating back. “Thereareno other routes, as I told you before,” she said quietly.

I didn’t speak until we reached the others, well out of the gatemaster’s line of sight.

“Do the guards ever change?” I asked.

“Rarely. It could be days before Atros is gone.”

“We don’t have days’ worth of supplies,” Zayn pointed out.

“How’s the foraging in this part of Hell?” I asked, mildly.

“Complicated,” she replied—a word she was very fond of, I was noticing. “We need to get into the city sooner rather than later.”

“Is there somewhere nearby where we can rest and regroup to figure this out?” Aleksander asked.

Begrudgingly, Thalia led us along the western wall, trudging through muddy terrain for about a mile or so before we came to what looked like it had once been a grand pavilion similar to the one at the main gates, albeit smaller. The ground was cracked and uneven, littered with sticks and stones. A small building sat on the edge of it, its roof halfway caved in.

“This was one of the city’s original gatehouses,” she explained, “back when Erebos was much larger. It’s never used anymore, now that the city has drawn more tightly into herself.”

As the others scouted the area further, I turned to Thalia, replaying the tense encounter with Atros in my head. “What did Atros mean when he saidthe walls at Wrathmere are failing?”

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