Page 130 of Kingdoms of Night

He nodded to Idalno, eyebrows raised, questioning. “Have you figured out the answer to that riddle?”

“I think so.” She pushed a rug aside and placed the bread on the wood floor. “All living things rot.”

Feron raised an eyebrow as he shoved a chest of drawers against the door. “So?”

“Get my bag and pull out the flint and steel. Or use that lamp.” She nodded toward the nightstand.

“Make a fire?” He looked around the room. Shaking his head, he raked a bloody clawed hand through his hair, then held it a moment before releasing it. “Idalno, we’ll burn to death.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that.” She rubbed both her wrists and then flexed her fingers over the bread. “The mold I’m about to make is highly toxic. We’ll be dead in twenty minutes from the spores if we don’t get out. But I don’t think we’ve got that long before this room collapses.”

“What?” He swiped over the back of his neck and then held up his hands. “That—explain!”

“She said that what lured us in is what will get us out. Obviously she must not have known that we were hiding from the Wild Hunt, so that has nothing to do with this. But we were free to go until Buttercup ate something.”

Buttercup hung her head. Hawthorn nuzzled her.

Idalno put her hand on Buttercup’s head and scratched her ear. “Eating! That’s what it is. That’s the answer.”

“So we need to eat the wood to get out?” Feron took in the room, bewildered. The wolves whined in response. “The wyrm was one thing, but—”

“No—” She shook her head. “You don’t have to eat everything yourself! We just need something that will consume the wood. So mold or fire.”

“We’re going to do both?” He cocked his head.

“I can only concentrate on the mold. It’ll eat the wood before the tertiary spores mature. You can try to burn a way out the other side. Whichever way gets done first, that’s how we escape. Maybe curtain off the smoke?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “Better than being eaten alive.”

He picked up the oil lamp from the rickety nightstand.

Smoke almost always killed before fire did. Now they had a witch who wanted to eat them and toxic mold as well.

Between the fire, the smoke, the mold, and Black Annis, it would be a race for the privilege to kill them first.

Idalno spread her fingers wide over the bread. It had been a long time since she’d had to draw out mold. “Honina, macha kachi mawkra nwitolwi.”

The words stumbled free, the energy resisting her as she tried to pour it in. Something was off.

Bracing herself against the floor, she gritted her teeth.Come on!

The energy coiled within her core. It was there, but it wasn’t quite right. It halted and choked, then spiraled and stalled, then—

Silvery white, the energy shot into the bread.

She grimaced, a fiery stinging racing up her wrist and along her arm. Gray and blue stolons and sporangium spread blossomed across the bread.

Hawthorn and Buttercup jumped up beside her, practically vibrating with glee.

The door shook as Black Annis cackled and shrieked on the other side. “Surely you don’t think you’re safe in there? You cheated, taking my eyes out like that. But it doesn’t mean you’ll win.”

Taking her eyes? That had to mean the carvings allowed Black Annis to see inside. Without the witch carving, she couldn’t.

“There is one question I’d like you to answer, if you’d indulge an old witch.”

“Ask away.” Feron glanced at the lamp and the ceiling, then looked at Idalno. “You’re sure about this? This room’s going to fill with smoke fast.”

She flexed her fingers over the bread. This was working, just not as fast as she wanted. Her energy wasn’t channeling fast enough. It had started to gnaw through the wood, though, leaving holes that weren’t healing. The fungus hungered more than the witch.

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