Page 15

She turns and starts walking down the grimy corridor. I look to Tuoni and shrug again. “Worth a shot.”

He puts his hand on my shoulder and nods sternly while ushering me forward. The tunnel in this direction is narrow, so we can’t walk side by side. Instead, he stays behind me with his hand holding me in place, as if he’s afraid to let go. I suppose after what we’ve just gone through, I don’t blame him.

“If anything should happen, I’ve got you,” he says into my ear.

“I’d still feel better if I had my sword,” I say.

We follow Raila down the corridor as it starts to wind around. The ground is slippery beneath my feet and tilting slightly, giving the impression that we’re going deeper into the earth. It feels colder too, and damp enough that I can feel the condensation in the air. Raila had grabbed a lit torch off the wall earlier, and the flames start to dance in the air, as if being weakened by something.

Luckily, I have the sunmoonstone in my hands, and the glow stays steady.

Not that I particularly want to see what I’m seeing: centipedes the size of my forearm crawling on the walls, hiding from the light, along with thick nets of spiderwebs above and tiny skittering insects that hop about brown-red sludge on the ground. I can feel them every time they jump on my bare legs, and it takes all my strength to try and ignore them, to keep walking forward.

Down and down we go.

At first, I was running on enough adrenaline to keep me going, but the longer we walk, the more I feel it wane. If there ever was a moment for my demi-Goddess self to come through and give me wings, if not just more strength, this would be it, but I’m feeling painfully mortal. The further we go, the more my body remembers the complete ass-kicking I took at the hands of my twin.

I know you’re not supposed to empathize with villains, particularly the one who literally just killed my husband, but I do.

How could my father do that to Salainen when she was just a baby? I knew my parents never had a happy marriage. I saw that firsthand. I lived through their divorce, through their epic separation. The idea of my father having an affair doesn’t really shock me—I never pretended he was an angel—but who he had the affair with, and especially what he did when that magicaltryst ended in pregnancy, well, that’s the part I can’t wrap my head around. How could he conjure up a baby from dark magic, a literal living, breathing being, and then abandon it in the Land of the Dead? Did he really think he was doing it a favor? Did he really think it would be fine? Or did he not think the baby was real at all? Was he just returning dark magic to where dark magic is born? Did he know Louhi would take care of her?

I hate that I can understand where Sala is coming from, why she hates me so much. I’d hate me too if my father brought me into this world for no reason other than to hide a lie and then cast me into another world to die or be raised by a demon.

“Be calm, little bird,” Death says quietly from behind me. “I can feel your anxiety in my bones.”

I nod, trying to breathe in deeply through my nose, but it only makes me cough, the air down here thin and acrid.

Oh dear, Raila says, coming to a stop in front of us.

“What?” Death growls as we both nearly collide with her.

I hear footsteps, she says.Running, many beings.

“They’re my subjects,” he says, pulling his mask down over his face. “Let them come.”

Her veiled face glances over her shoulder.They will see you and know what Louhi has told them. They will want to fight you.

“Let them fight,” he growls.

Oh boy. I clench my thighs together. What a terrible time for that to turn me on.

Master Tuoni, you don’t even have a weapon, Raila chides him.

“That’s never stopped me before,” he says gruffly.

But while they’re talking, I hear footsteps, many of them, coming faster and faster, along with some other kind of jangling noise. It takes me back to the match, and I realize it’s the sound of bones clanking together as they run.

“Get behind me, both of you,” Death says, grabbing both me and Raila and pulling us back. He takes Raila’s torch from her and brandishes it in his hand like a weapon.

The marching sounds get closer, and down beyond the dark curve of the slimy walls, light flickers from oncoming flames.

“Here they come,” Death says.

Raila reaches out with her boney, gloved fingers and gives my hand a squeeze.

Suddenly, they appear, rounding the end of the tunnel: skeletons running toward us, two abreast, shields in one hand, swords in another. They’re mostly bone, though the occasional piece of dried skin hangs off them in tatters, their eyes empty sockets, their jawbones clacking as they run.

“Halt!” Death says, raising out his ungloved palm. “I am your king. Who gives you permission to be here?”