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T he second Rebecca and Maxwell 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 chair was an 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’t know … Why would anyone need more light in a dark place underground? Just a guess, but it probably has something to do with wanting to see …”

The strident, piercing echo of his voice rolling around the hall and bouncing off the walls almost made Rebecca grimace. This did not feel like the kind of place where flippant comments were so easily overlooked.

The woman at the far end of the hall, however, still hadn’t moved beyond her slow rocking in the chair and the occasional poke at the hearth beside her with a stick.

But as her small group approached, Rebecca had enough time to take in more of their surroundings.

There was nothing here. Just the long stretch of cold stone hallway stretching ahead of them and the twin streaks of magical fire burning across the stone walls on either side. Whether the darkness was simply too thick or the ceiling was abnormally high, she couldn’t see any part of it.

No other furnishings. No scraps of fabric or bits of broken things lost and forgotten. No personal items. No food.

No proof at all that anyone had spent any significant amount of time down here, in this place.

And yet, the old woman at the end of the hall looked particularly settled beside her built-in underground hearth.

As far as Rebecca could see, no other door revealed itself along either wall or at the far end of the hall behind the old woman in her chair. There was only one way into or out of this room, and they’d all just walked through it.

Putting the only door at her back, so far behind her if they needed to make a hasty retreat, did not make her feel any better about this place.

And she was certain the only door out of the antechamber behind them was up the stairs and out the side of a giant metal dragon statue off I-70.

A surge of cautious alarm and prickling discomfort from Maxwell told her he’d just reviewed all their disastrously limited options as well.

For however long they were down here, they were stuck down here. And if the old woman in the chair or any other entity in this hall wanted to keep them here, it would be only too easy.

As the foursome continued down the hall that seemed to stretch even longer in front of them than it had first seemed, Rebecca noticed the streams of flame along both walls brightening with them as they moved. She glanced over her shoulder once and could have sworn the flames behind them were dimmer, somehow. Duller.

As if these twin streams kept lit across the stone by magic—and what else?—were there to illuminate the long, harrowing walk for their visitors, bit by bit, with every step.

Or to keep them blinded to whatever else might have loomed around them in the comparative darkness.

When they finally neared the end of the hall and the old woman’s cozy setup, Rowan walked a bit farther than everyone else but still stopped at a respectful distance from the Peddler.

That had to be who this old woman was, despite her surroundings strikingly empty but for her rocking chair, her own private fireplace off to the side, and a small, square table sitting low to the ground in front of her.

On the other side of that table, directly in front of Rowan, rested a single wooden chair also facing the table, its frame crooked and skewed by age or neglect or the combined weight of every traveler who’d sat there to do business with the Peddler beneath the dragon.

The setup was surprisingly casual and unassuming, as if this woman hosted one-on-ones with visiting inquirers all day long.

Whatever she used to sustain herself down here, though, it wasn’t food. Not in the normal sense. Nothing but the scent of dust and age and emptiness filled the air.

Rebecca’s curiosity had brought that odd new mystery to her attention, but she had no desire to find out what that darker sustenance was or where it came from.

Or if it had any connection to the decomposed corpses in the antechamber.

With Maxwell at her side and Maleine only a few feet in front of them now that she’d stepped up alongside Rowan, Rebecca waited as silently as the others, eyeing the back of Rowan’s head, then the old woman’s shadowed face beneath all the rags as she stooped over her lap and rocked.

The woman’s gnarled fingers moved in one smooth, endless rhythm over something in her lap that could have been…knitting?

When she finally looked up from her project, Rebecca’s gaze was forced toward her face, as if the power in this hall had seized her eyes and wrenched them upward.

The Peddler fixed them all with a warm, gentle smile that certainly looked friendly.

It didn’t feel friendly at all.

Given her stooped posture and her current living conditions, the woman seemed relatively young at first glance. No older than seventy, at least on the outside. Her cheeks maintained a healthy glow, though that could have been from the fire beside her. Bright white hair pulled away from her face on top while thick curls tumbled around her shoulders.

Most striking of all were her eyes—open, lively, but colored with the milky white film of blindness.

She rocked back and forth, back and forth, fingers working nimbly on the knitting in her lap—or whatever it was.

And her smile remained.

“If you ask me,” Maleine murmured, “she’s gonna need a lot more light if she wants to see anything.”

Rowan jerked toward her and bit back a snarl before forcefully recovering his composure.

The Peddler’s hearty laugh billowed around them. “You aren’t the first to guess wrong. Come a little closer. That’s right.”

Despite their constant battling and bickering, Rowan and Maleine both took two small steps forward.

“All of you,” the woman added, her chair creaking peacefully as she rocked.

Rebecca and Maxwell exchanged a look, then did as the Peddler commanded.

This was weird as hell.

No old woman Rebecca had ever met gave off this same level of confusingly contradictory vibes—warm welcoming and cold, vicious brutality. No Peddler had ever left her feeling this way either, come to think of it.

With nothing else around her in this hall to offer evidence of what she truly was, Rebecca had a feeling this woman wasn’t entirely a Peddler, either.

For one, she had nothing to peddle.

Rowan had said this one traded in information, but even if that were true, where the hell were all the items people had traded for that information?

“What can I do for you?” the woman asked sweetly.

If Rebecca didn’t know better, she would have mistaken this…whatever she was for someone’s harmless grandmother.

Rowan stepped forward again, stuck out his heel, and folded forward over himself with a ridiculous flourish to offer a dangerously steep bow. “Greetings, Peddler. Good health and clear sight be yours. We come to trade.”

“Well…” the woman mused. “Three elves and a shifter. Now that’s an interesting pack indeed. Or did the three of you adopt him ?”

Maxwell stiffened at that, as he did after any mention of his unique personal circumstances—a shifter without a pack.

Rebecca gently brushed the back of her hand against his arm, hoping it would be enough to calm him.

They were all just words, anyway, though she couldn’t help but wonder how a blind Peddler conducting her business out of a dark room underground with nothing to show for her business dealings—at least not visibly, anywhere around her—could tell exactly how many of them they were. Or what they were.

This woman was definitely more than just a Peddler. That much Rebecca knew.

“Now,” the old woman added, still rocking away, “what could the four of you possibly be seeking that would lead you all here?”

“Information,” Rowan began, “lost to our people within the effort of protecting it.”

“It usually is.” Tittering, the Peddler tilted her head, swinging it from side to side as she listened to something only she seemed to hear, her unseeing gaze sweeping over each of them. “Closer, loves. It’s hardly a conversation across such a distance.”

Her friendly smile never wavered.

Neither did the pit in Rebecca’s stomach at the sight of it.

Still, she stepped even closer toward the table and the Peddler rocking behind it, Maxwell, Maleine, and Rowan all doing the same.

“We have a gift,” Rowan added hastily, as if only just remembering. He shuffled forward with the Pu’uzáh cradled in both hands, looking like he wanted to tell the woman what it was but then thought better of it.

The Peddler nodded. “On the table.”

He jerked forward, paused, then settled the object carefully on the center of the worn, dust-layered table and immediately pulled away to fall in line with Rebecca and the others again.

The rocking chair continued its ceaseless creaking back and for, and the old woman didn’t even direct her unseeing gaze toward the table. Instead, she craned her head back and smiled at the unseen ceiling far above them. “Ah, yes. A Pu’uzáh. I haven’t seen one of these in a very long time. How thoughtful of you.”

With a groaning stutter of her chair, she leaned forward and slowly reached toward the offered gift with an outstretched hand. “And what do you desire in exchange?”

Rowan cleared his throat. “We seek the location of the lost records of Agn’a Tha’ros, moved from the capitol city—”

“Before the Gateway opened again.” The Peddler’s hand froze over the Pu’uzáh, and whatever rocking she might have picked back up again stopped abruptly. “Yes. I imagine elves would be interested in such a thing, though I wouldn’t have expected anyone to come searching for those for another century or two. What about you, shifter?”

Maxwell stiffened, his jaw muscles working furiously when the Peddler settled her blind white eyes directly on him. “I seek the same.”

She cocked her head in his direction, pursing her lips through the first twitches of another budding smile. “Of course you do. Well I certainly don’t doubt your conviction.”

Then she lowered her outstretched hand into her lap, not having touched the Pu’uzáh, picked up her knitting once more, and continued rocking. “Unfortunately, I cannot accept this gift.”

The stunned silence felt like a punch to the gut.

“I’m sorry?” Rowan sputtered, mirroring the bobbing of the woman’s head as he cocked his ear toward her , as if certain he’d misheard.

The Peddler rocked and said nothing.

With a scoff, he glanced down the line at Rebecca, his eyes wide with uncertainty. But he quickly tried to pull himself back together and asked, “May I ask why?”

The old woman shrug, her voice as lighthearted and kindly as ever. “It’s insufficient.”

Rowan gawked at her. “Even for one of us?”

“One of you. All of you. I cannot accept this gift in exchange, but I do hope you find someone else who appreciates its value.”

Shit.

That definitely sounded like a refusal. A dismissal.

Like they were all shit out of luck before they’d even started.

Rebecca wanted to scream.

Rowan had assured her he would take care of everything, that he knew exactly where to go to lead them toward the Bloodshadow prophecy. If he’d told her anything else at all, she would have known to bring something else with her, in case one obnoxious particular Peddler got picky and turned her nose up at his offering.

And now the Pu’uzáh resting uselessly on the table was just another dead end. Completely without value in buying them any information.

The immediate moment of stunned disbelief spread across their little group, then Maleine snorted and folded her arms, shooting Rowan a sideways “I knew you’d fail” glance.

Rowan’s shoulders sagged forward, his mouth gaping open.

Maxwell remained perfectly still, silent and alert and watching everything, but his discomfort in this place was no less palpable.

The Peddler had turned them down, and they were out of options.

That wasn’t good enough.

Rebecca refused to let this end in defeat. There was too much at stake.

On a whim, she stepped quickly forward, swatting Rowan’s hand aside when he reached out to hold her back. “What gift will you accept?”

“Ah.” The old woman grinned. “Finally, a relevant question. For what you seek, my price is a reading.”

“Wait, what ?” Rowan spluttered.

“ Somebody got bad information…” Maleine teased.

He glared at her. “ Somebody wasn’t even invited—”

“As in our fortunes?” Rebecca asked.

The Peddler nodded. “That’s it.”

“She wants to read our fortunes,” Maleine echoed with a wry laugh. “This just keeps getting better and better .”

Maxwell let out a deeply disturbed sigh. “That does not sound like much of a trade at all. More like a trick.”

“No trick, shifter,” the woman replied cheerily. “That’s my price.”

His eyes widened at her huddled form rocking back and forth, as if he’d assumed she couldn’t hear his suspicious grumbling from that distance. But when the old woman chuckled again, Maxwell tore his gaze away from her to look at Rebecca. “She wants to provide us a service in exchange for another service. How costly could that be?”

She dipped her head in subdued warning. “You’d be surprised.”

Anything to do with seeing the thread of an individual’s life—reading fortunes, divining prophesy, aligning duty with free will and calling it fate—made her squirm. It always had.

She’d had more than enough experience with that kind of thing for several lifetimes.

But she absolutely believed the Peddler possessed the information they needed.

It came at a steeper price than Maxwell assumed, but they had to be willing to pay it.

Rebecca had to be willing.

Without bothering to confer with the Blackmoon Elves standing in line with her, she nodded at the Peddler. “We accept.”

“Oh, we do , do we?” Rowan snarled through gritted teeth, glaring at her. “That’s what we’re going for here? You call all the shots and just offer up our fortunes to get what you need?”

“Your plan failed,” she muttered. “So now we have a new one.”

Scoffing, he turned toward Maleine next. “You’re okay with this?”

“I’m just along for the ride,” she replied, smirking. “So far, it’s been excellent.”

Maxwell offered no argument, and Rowan didn’t bother to ask.

“Then it’s settled.” The Peddler looked incredibly happy to hear the news, grinning fiercely at her visitors until a high-pitched laugh barked out of her as she rocked.

Rebecca thought that rocking had intensified, faster and louder than ever, but it could have just been her distrust of Peddlers in general and fortunetelling specifically.

“Take back the Pu’uzáh,” the woman said, nodding toward Rowan. “Save it for a rainy day, hmm?”

Rowan scowled at her, glanced at his rejected gift, then leapt forward to quickly snatch it off the table. The next second, the Pu’uzáh disappeared in a flash of silver-white light before he stepped back in line with the others.

The Peddler clicked her tongue. “You sit first, elf, and we’ll begin.”

It was impossible to think her blind gaze had landed anywhere but the center of Rowan’s face.

He looked terrified, then whirled toward Rebecca and hissed, “I can’t believe you just volunteered me for this.”

She shrugged. “That’s the price. And we’re going to pay it.”

Rolling his eyes, he took a deep breath, then glanced around the massive stone hall flickering with flame and shadow all around him. He took a moment longer to dust off the sleeves of his light jacket, stretch out his neck from side to side, and shake the remaining tension from his arms and hands.

He was stalling.

For good reason.

This was exactly as uncomfortable and risky for Rowan as Rebecca had known it would be, and his reaction perfectly matched what she’d expected.

With two quick, shuffling steps toward the table again, he leaned forward toward the Peddler, conspiratorially lowering his voice. “Might I request a more…private reading?”

The Peddler threw her head back and shrieked with laughter.

Now Rebecca knew the woman’s rocking had increased to a feverish lunging back and forth in the chair, the groan of the ancient wood mixing with echoes of billowing laughter.

“You’ve already come this far together,” the woman replied between gasping breaths, still chuckling. “No reason to separate you now. Sit.”

Rowan stared at the wooden chair in front of the low table and swallowed thickly.

If there had been any more light in the hall, Rebecca knew she would have seen all the color drain from his face.

And she knew why.

Rowan Blackmoon had very good reason to fear the telling of his fortune by a Peddler who dealt exclusively in information. First, because it birthed a new possibility for her to offer whatever details she’d gleaned about him to any of her future clients in trade.

Second, because having one’s fortune told always carried the potential to reveal one’s secrets with it.

Whether the person was aware of those secrets didn’t make a difference.

And Rowan definitely had more secrets.