Page 116 of Elven Throne

This circular room rocked and bucked beneath them too, letting out its own pained groan as the cracks in the ceiling split and widened, rippling dangerously across the space above them from one end to the other.

With Maleine’s light chasing away all the shadows in here, it was impossible not to see how much more the antechamber had changed since they were last here.

The broken bits of abandoned furniture were gone. The two aged skeletons sitting together against the curved stone wall still remained, but they were no longer alone.

The entire floor was littered with bones and decomposing strips of cloth. Everywhere Rebecca looked, she found scattered remains of those who had dared to enter the Peddler’s lair and had never made it back out again.

“What the hell is—” Rowan tripped on the uneven ground with a grunt and sprawled chest-first across the floor with a clatter.

Lying face to face with a skull of one such unlucky visitor staring right back at him.

“Vrestí!”

The first hunk of stone broke away from the antechamber’s ceiling and tumbled toward them.

“Back up the stairs!” Rebecca shouted as she headed that way. She stopped only to snatch up a fistful of the back of Rowan’s jacket and haul him to his feet before shoving him forward ahead of her.

The second he scrambled with her toward the stairwell, another chunk of ceiling dropped, cracked onto the ground where he’d just been, and pummeled the skull with which he’d had a momentary staring contest to dust.

Their only hope now was to keep following Maleine’s spiraling silver light back up the stairs while trying to avoid being crushed and entombed down here with all the Peddler’s other victims.

The stairwell bucked and pitched, throwing Rebecca and the others side to side like they were in a fucking ship at sea during a deadly storm instead of merely underground.

Echoing slaps of hands and faces smacking back and forth between the walls joined the ominous rumble of the cavern below and the grating roar of the stairwell walls crumbling from their settings.

Rebecca’s feet pounded up the stairs, but then her next footfall came down on nothing at all, the step crumbling away beneath her into nothingness.

Her shin cracked against the edge of what remained, then her knee, and she was falling…

A hot, painful grip clamped around her wrist. Silver eyes pulsed within the billowing clouds of churning dust.

Maxwell hauled her up out of the gaping hole that wouldn’t have been there, then they were racing up the stairwell together. Almost there.

Almost free…

The door at the top of the stairs opened on its own too, just in time for all four of them to barrel forward and through.

The second they did, the entire stairwell they’d descended collapsed, churning up a thick, billowing cloud of dust and ground stone to suffocate them if the cave-in below failed.

A deafening roar followed them, shaking the foundations of the earth above and below, all of it punctuated by the Peddler’s cackling laughter echoing everywhere.

As if a part of her had followed them back to the surface and would follow them still, just to keep up the chase.

Rebecca skidded to a halt above the surface and pivoted to slam the full weight of her body against the open door.

It shut with a hollow clang, and the noise from below cut out instantly. Like nothing had ever happened.

If it weren’t for the clouds of dust settling around them or the desperate panting from four pairs of lungs, she almost could have believed she’d dreamt the whole thing.

With her chest heaving, she sagged sideways against the door, for now focusing solely on the fact that they weren’t dead.

Maxwell was at her side in an instant, reaching for her without touching her, looming over her with deepening concern as he coughed and waved away the dust. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she panted.

His concern for her only strengthened, so she forced herself to straighten against the closed door, look him in the eye, and try again to hopefully convince him. “Really. I’m okay.”

The shifter’s deep rumble didn’t sound like he was fully convinced, but he didn’t argue or ask again.

---