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R HAIF STOOD WITH the others gathered before the bronze shell at the edge of the malignant forest. To his side, Nyx stared at the sign inscribed with the name Rab’almat. Her face had darkened with despair.

He understood that sentiment.

They all did.

To come this far, to lose so many lives, only to find the door locked in front of them. And though Rhaif was a skilled thief, this was a lock he could not pick. None of them could—as a consequence, they were now considering breaking the door down.

With an ax.

Jace hefted his weapon in his hand. “We could shatter the turubya ’s riggings. Drop the sphere and all its power down that shaft. Maybe it’ll trigger on its own. Like the ta’wyn coolers did on the ship.”

“And if that fails to happen?” Graylin challenged him.

Jace pointed his ax at the sign. “Then… Then at least we keep it out of Eligor’s hands. And we move on. Take our chances with the one turubya and see if something can be done with its key.”

“That’s if our allies can discover the key’s location,” Krysh reminded them. “Then reach it before Eligor does.”

From everyone’s expression, this option was rapidly fading as a possibility.

Shiya stepped closer to the bronze shell.

Rhaif cringed, knowing what she was about to say.

“I can try activating it myself.” She stared at the device. “We don’t know if the Roots were ultimately successful in their endeavors. It may still work for me.”

Rhaif stomped forward. “Sard that!” He pointed to the bronze shell, while keeping his eyes on Shiya. “You fool with that—powered by the fekkin’ dark forest—you’ll get yourself killed. We nearly lost you when the Spider entrapped you in the chrysalis chamber back at the Frozen Wastes.”

Shiya placed a consoling hand on his shoulder. “There is no crystal to enclose me here. I should be able to break loose if anything goes awry.”

“ Should. That’s a feeble word to bet your life on.”

Graylin intervened. “She’s right. We must try something. We can’t let Eligor get control of the turubya. If damage is done to the sphere in this attempt, we’ll be no worse off than if we tried Jace’s plan.”

“It’s not damage to the turubya that I’m worried about,” Rhaif said hotly.

Still, he knew this was a battle he could not win. He bowed under Shiya’s palm on his shoulder. Not from the weight of her bronze, but from dread.

She drew him closer.

“I will be careful,” she whispered to him.

He stared up at her eyes’ azure glow. “You had better. If you fail and the world ends, I don’t want to be alone.”

She pulled him into an embrace. She glowed warmly against him. His body responded with its own weak bit of bridle talent. Soft chords, as faint as a whisper, rose from his heart. It was a lullaby his mother used to sing to him, to console a boy’s fright. He heard the same echo from Shiya, a soft harmony winding together into an embrace far stronger than the bronze arms around him.

He wished to stay there forever.

Let the world end now, and I’ll be content.

But he knew he could not be that greedy, not even for a thief.

He sighed against her, letting her know he was ready.

She gave a small squeeze, warmed brighter against him, then took all that warmth and shine away. Still, it drew him in her wake as she crossed to the bronze shell.

The others gathered behind them.

Shiya stepped into the fringe of the forest, ducking from burning branches, then climbed onto the raised shelf at the bottom. She turned to place her back against the curved shield of the shell.

Her eyes stared down at him.

He offered the barest nod, though it took all the strength in his body to do so.

Shiya returned the nod and leaned back.

For a moment, nothing happened. He sighed with relief—until Shiya stiffened sharply. Her back spasmed, arching off the bronze as if trying to escape it. A glow flared from her, along with a cry of agony.

Rhaif took a step forward, but Graylin pulled him back.

“Wait,” the man warned. “Look.”

From the sides of the shield, bronze melted out into a tangle of fibers that wound together and sculpted into what appeared to be handles.

Shiya must have thought so, too. She reached up, her face etched with concentration and effort. She fought to lift her arms to grab those bars. She failed in her first attempt, but she succeeded on her second.

As her fingers clamped, her body convulsed again. Her skull snapped back with a ringing impact, then sank into the bronze shell as if it were warm clay.

All around her, the shell writhed out with snaking tendrils, unraveling into a tangling snarl that flowed over Shiya’s body. The bronze briar crawled up her limbs, over her torso. More tangles draped down, wrapping and choking, covering her mouth, snaking past lips open in a silent scream.

Rhaif again lunged, but Graylin held firm.

“You can’t help.”

Rhaif recognized this. He could only watch as azure eyes stared out blindly through the writhing mass—then vanished into the weedy mire.

Rhaif fell to his knees, breathing hard.

This was far worse than a trap of crystal.

It was a prison of bronze.

N YX RUSHED TO Daal with her arm outstretched. She knew she had only moments to act. His eyes narrowed, clearly reading her urgency, her need. He grabbed her hand. She sank into him, but barely. Both had been tapped to near depletion, he more than she. Nyx felt the beat of his heart in her palm, in her own chest.

It must be enough.

She stoked what she had left and stole everything from Daal. He gasped and fell to his knees. She continued to hold his heart, feeling it tremble and go cold. She inhaled deeply for the chorus to come.

Graylin noted her effort. “Nyx?”

As her song built inside her, she thrummed as much explanation as she dared. “Root alchymy… flowing bronze… still soft…”

“What do you—”

“Be ready.”

Back out in the desert, Nyx had ridden the wyldstrom, waged a battle across a thousand eyes, hearts, and claws. By now, she knew the alchymy of the Roots and the tone to break it. She had screamed that specific vibration from a thousand throats, heard it in the hundred blasts of p?rde horns.

At the cost of blood and lives, she had learned the cipher to their bronze, the exact pitch and vibration necessary to shake loose the tiny motes of hardness and melt them into the empty spaces between—to make it all flow. Over the course of this bloody day, the cipher had been written into her bones, as surely as the Myr poison in the past, which had allowed her to burn the venom from Daal.

Now she intended to burn bronze from this trap.

Only, as weak as she was, she knew she had to act while the metal remained soft and flowing. She did not have the reserves to break hardened bronze.

Still, I don’t need strength, only skill.

As her power coalesced into a bright star, she squeezed it tighter until she could hold it no more. She let it burst forth, sculpted by her throat into a perfect pitch: the screech of a mankra, the blast of a horn.

The savage aria burst out of her like a golden fireball and struck where Shiya lay imprisoned. The force blasted soft bronze from her hard metal, stripping it away like ice off rock.

Shiya fell forward as she was released.

Graylin, Rhaif, and Krysh fought to pull her free, but a handful of shining vines still held her trapped. Then Jace shouldered up, shoved through crystal branches, and swung his ax.

As the blade cleaved through the last stubborn stragglers, Shiya toppled out, nearly crushing her rescuers.

Off to the side, a groan drew Nyx’s attention.

Daal had been thrown by the force of her blast to the edge of the forest. He struggled to his knees. Still breathing, just weak.

Spent and empty herself, she staggered toward him, numb with fatigue. Her vision narrowed, growing watery.

Her view of the forest darkened, as if growing smoke-filled.

She squinted, struggling to understand.

Daal must have noticed her concerned expression. He turned to the growing pall in the woods.

“What is that?” he mumbled hoarsely. “Looks like dust.…”

D ESPITE HIS SHIVERING weakness, Daal reached a hand to where swirls of fine powder sifted off the tangled branches. The dust rose upward throughout the forest, from every crystal facet, like smoke from a smoldering fire.

His fingers brushed across a thin tendril, scattering it apart. He gasped at the burn, then cried louder as acid scorched down to bone. He yanked his hand back, drawing a few particles with him from the forest. The dusty black specks shivered and fell to the copper floor.

Still, he retreated from them, as if from poisonous spiders.

“Get back…” he croaked to the others.

He stared down at his fingers. His skin lay blackened in stripes, as if he had become tangled in the stinging tentacles of a gelatinous war-bell. Blood seeped from the cracked edges.

He continued to retreat until he could push to his feet. He stumbled into Nyx, who could barely keep her legs. Her eyes had gone cloudy again after burning through so much strength.

“What is it?” she asked, clutching his arm.

He stared into the forest, watching the dust grow thicker and rise higher. The pall poured in swirls, then spread outward, exhaled by this dreaded forest.

Now that he was starved of bridle-song, Daal’s vision sharpened. His eyes could discern the baleful sheen to the dust, some spoiled version of what had once been golden. Only this wasn’t a poisonous emerald in hue, but a loathsome black, the color of corruption and festering rot.

“What are you seeing?” Nyx repeated.

“The forest… it’s shedding whatever you felt living in the crystals, some perverse bits of vileness.”

“The little frilled animals.”

“Now loose, they churn through the air, burning with acid and fire. Far worse than any brush against their crystal.”

Daal watched the dust continue to darken the bower and grow heavier. Above the forest—seen through breaks in the canopy that shrouded them—the pall formed a low-lying black fog that washed outward across the breadth of the dome.

He glanced to the others, still huddled low around Shiya. All eyes were on the forest and the spreading pall. Daal guided Nyx to the others.

Jace stared around. “That black tide seems to be avoiding this clearing, like the forest does around us.”

Daal turned to the few specks of dust that had wafted into this space and lay dead on the copper. “I think whatever energy is given off by the giant sphere repels them, kills them if they get too near.”

Krysh nodded. “If true, we should be safe as long as we remain near the turubya. Whatever foulness was created by the Roots, they wouldn’t want to risk damaging it.”

Rhaif kept low next to Shiya, who remained inordinately weak. “This must be a secondary trap set by the bastards. If their throne is attacked”—he looked over at Nyx—“then this menace traps the culprits, holds them in place until they can be dealt with.”

Daal reminded them of a greater concern. “While we’re safe in the clearing, we’re not the only ones down here.”

That became clear in the next breath.

A ripe scream rose from beyond the forest, sharp with pain, then gargling away. Then another picked up the refrain, then another. More soon joined the chorus of agony.

Darant’s men were out there, as was Vikas.

And one other.

A howl burst through the forest, bright with agony and fury.

Nyx turned to Graylin. “Kalder…”

W ITH HIS HEART clenched into a fist, Graylin prepared to answer his brother’s howl, to let Kalder and the others know that safety lay this direction—if they could reach it.

His group shouted, too, calling to the men, warning them to seek higher ground away from the low-sweeping fog, to flee its reach in any way they could. But their bellows were lost to the chorus of pained screams.

Graylin lifted a hand to his lips, carving his fingers just right, and blew a piercing whistle that cut through the agonized cacophony. In the past, he had used this signal to summon Kalder and his brother, Aamon, out of the Rimewood, to urge them home to a warm hearth.

Listen to me now, my brother.

The only response was a pained howl that strangled away.

Graylin imagined Kalder inhaling the fiery dust into his lungs, burning from the inside, drowning in his own blood.

Graylin whistled again, but he could raise no other howls.

Nyx staggered to him, near blind but finding his pain unerringly. She grabbed his arm. She allowed him to pull her closer. As they listened, the chorus of cries slowly died away. No one in their group bothered to shout any longer, recognizing the futility.

They stood vigil in grim silence, in defeat.

Daal finally lowered to his knees, still trembling with weakness.

Rhaif dropped next to Shiya, who was still recovering on the copper floor.

Jace abided numbly with his ax at his knee, while Krysh stared dead-eyed at the forest.

Then Rhaif lifted his face. “I hear something…”

It drew the thief back to his feet, drawn up by his sharper ears. Then Jace took a step toward the forest, lifting his ax higher.

Though he heard nothing, Graylin shifted Nyx behind him and dropped his hand to his sword’s hilt. Finally, he could detect a faint crashing, echoing out of the forest. It grew louder, sounding like a bull pounding toward them, heedless of anything in its way.

What new menace is this?

Through the dust-shrouded forest, a huge dark shadow appeared, shouldering toward them, flashing with lightning, its face featureless.

One of the ta’wyn had survived.

It rampaged toward them, ready to rid this trap of its rats.

Graylin yanked his sword. Shiya reared to her feet, but she staggered, still sapped of strength. Jace closed ranks with them. Krysh and Rhaif pulled Daal behind everyone, joining Nyx.

The ta’wyn shattered through the forest, driving straight toward them. Then it burst through the heavy pall and crashed into the clearing with a final heavy swing of a broadsword.

Vikas…

The mountainous woman collapsed to her knees, then her hand, losing her sword. She yanked her other arm from behind her and dragged a snarling shape into view by its scruff. A headscarf wrapped the vargr’s head. Vikas had done the same to herself.

She must have run blind, hacking a straight path through the forest.

She ripped her scarf away, dropped to her other hand, and coughed up a gout of blood. She waved weakly to Kalder, for someone to help him.

Graylin crossed and yanked the scarf away. Kalder snapped at him, blinded by pain and terror. The vargr stalked a circle, one eye weeping and clouded. Blood stained the froth of his mouth as he growled. A tail swished savagely.

Vikas continued to pant on all fours, blood seeping from her lips and nose. Both must have inhaled some of the pestilent dust. But while Kalder’s fur had kept the vileness from reaching his skin, Vikas had not been so lucky. Her fingers—what showed beyond her half-gloves—had blackened and split, running with blood. It looked as if she had thrust her hands into a blazing fire. More burns slashed her face. If Vikas had not been so adamant about keeping herself fully geared—with leather, boots, and a padded gambeson—she might not have survived.

Once the quartermaster was able to roll to a hip, Jace passed her a waterskin. She signaled her thanks, spat the blood from her mouth, then took a few cautious sips.

Graylin tried to offer the same to Kalder, but the vargr refused with a rumbled growl, his blood still too hot.

The group regathered, relieved to have the two returned, but they were no closer to addressing the trouble with the turubya. Jace’s plan of breaking the rigging and crashing the sphere below had grown in appeal to Graylin.

“What now?” Rhaif asked.

Krysh frowned. “We can’t stay here forever.”

This became clearer as a hard tremor shook the floor. No one spoke, all praying for it to stop. The gods ignored them. A fierce quake struck, ringing the copper dome like a bell. The forest rocked with a crystalline tinkling, and somewhere in the distance, a cliff of glass shattered darkly.

But that was not the most concerning.

Behind them, the turubya ’s large crystal sphere rattled in its cradle.

Fortunately, suspension rigging held.

But for how much longer?