Page 103 of Elven Throne

When they exchanged another knowing look, they also shared a small, wary smile before stepping forward through that open door together. Side by side.

Because they could.

But smiles and levity did nothing to settle either of their suspicion or wary caution as they followed Rowan and Maleine into the room beyond and every unknown it contained.

Because clearly, even Rowan didn’t actuallyknowwhat he’d led them into down here, no matter how confident he might have been that thiswasthe necessary first step toward finding the prophecy, and therefore their only step.

And Maleine was clearly just along for the ride, like always.

Which meant literally anything could happen now.

One wrong move, and those skeletons behind them might just get a few more eternal companions.

29

ThesecondRebeccaandMaxwell stepped through the door, the slab of heavy metal elicited a ridiculously heavy groan and swung shut all on its own behind them with an echoing boom.

Another billowing blanket of dust puffed out over them from behind, clouding any potential visibility ahead.

The familiar sensation of looming catastrophe turned Rebecca’s thoughts to the memory of descending the stairwell into Harkennr’s basement lair at the Old Joliet Prison.

Great.

She kept moving though, with Maxwell right beside her. Only after a few steps, another flash of light and roar of awakening magic filled the room. Flames erupted along the stone walls on either side, racing in twin streams all the way down to the very end of the long hall stretching in front of them.

The intensely blazing light joining the whoosh of erupting flames made Rebecca pause.

She caught a brief glimpse up ahead of Rowan and Maleine also pausing at the reaction, gazing carefully around before the flames dimmed and the hallway settled back into something resembling normal.

But the lines of fire trailing across the walls didn’t disappear entirely.

Their flickering glow remained, providing just enough ambient light to reveal a figure at the far end of the chamber.

Sitting alone and nearly motionless in an ancient rocking chair, the figure was covered in rags, hunched forward to poke at another fire in a hearth directly beside the chair. As if stoking those flames with a gnarled stick just for a little more heat and light, despite columns of flame now lining both walls.

“Four have entered.” The voice echoed everywhere—a voice that might have belonged to a woman, once, but tinged now with the eerie rattle of age and power. “And four will approach. Come, all of you.”

The hall’s four visitors reluctantly pressed forward, until Rebecca was sure the figure in the chairwasan old woman, dressed in rags.

The Peddler?

Whoever she was, the woman repeatedly poked at the fire in the hearth beside her, not once lifting her head toward her visitors.

Clearly, she didn’t need to see them to know they’d arrived.

“First mystery,” Maleine muttered. “Which does the Old One require more? The fire right next to her, or the flames all around us?”

It was the first time she’d spoken without sounding like she was full of shit.

Rebecca had wondered the same thing. Why keep a fire in the hearth right beside that rocking chair when the long stretch of this stone hallway was already lined with it, providing plenty of heat and light?

Why line the walls with threads of flame when there was already a perfectly suitable fire right there?

Everyone stepped forward together, moving slowly while their shadows danced across the walls, each of them sharing the same misgivings about this place.

And apparently trying to deflect it, in their own way.

“Oh,gee,” Rowan quipped, rolling his eyes. “I don’tknow… Why wouldanyoneneed more light in a dark place underground? Just a guess, but it probably has something to do with wanting tosee…”

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