Page 48 of Kiss of Smoke

Robin stepped into the newly-revealed tunnel, and used his knife to pick something from the dirt wall. It was an amulet that had been jammed into the dirt so hard it left an impression behind after it fell into his hand.

Grayfog leaned over it. “This matches the description of one of the artifacts stolen from Queen Aine’s tomb—an amulet to grant all illusions and glamours.”

Robin pocketed the amulet. “I’m sure we’ll find more.”

We began moving down the tunnel, but Ceri’s ghostly form came trotting up, curling around Gwyn’s legs.

My Hunter leaned down to scratch his ears. “What’d you find?” he whispered to the hound.

Ceri pointed with his nose, slinking carefully.

We found another Ghosthand kill, a female Fae who crumbled into ashes as well. These were very old murders, ones that would never have been found if not for Carabosse being careless enough to leave the soul lamp out that night.

I paused to look at the Fae, wondering who she had been, and realized the guys were getting ahead of me. No way in hell was I getting left behind in the dark here.

I caught up to the rear of our group, being careful to walk along the edges of the walls instead of out in the open.

That was my undoing.

Gwyn strode just ahead of me, clearing my path of cobwebs, and I kept a pace back. He walked over a divot in the floor, one that I didn’t notice until I planted my foot firmly on it.

The small patch of ground shimmered, the sickening twist of Fae magic twining through me.

Or maybe that sickening feeling was my stomach dropping as the floor below me vanished, and I fell into darkness.

17

There wasno time to scream or shriek.

One moment I was on solid ground, and the next I was dropping silently out of sight into a deep, dark hole.

My back hit the tunnel wall hard as I dropped, knocking the air out of my lungs.

I slid down a steep embankment, then fell again, stones scratching at my hands and face as I desperately scrabbled for and failed to find purchase.

My fall came to an abrupt halt when I crashed into a floor.

For a moment, the pain of being dumped thirty feet down into the earth was utterly blinding. I landed on my side, my hip and elbow screaming when they hit stone, but for the most part, something soft had cushioned my landing.

I blinked, realizing there was light, and that I could see.

And immediately wished I couldn’t.

A dead nymph had cushioned me. I’d crashed straight into her body, left on the floor of the narrow vertical tunnel. Her dull scales glinted as I painfully straightened myself out, whimpering a little even though I tried to stop it.

The drop had culminated in a small cell. I looked through iron bars at a lamp flickering on the wall of the corridor outside—not a soul lamp, thank the trees—and fear hit me after the pain.

If the lamp was lit, they would come check the cell. And find me conveniently in it, waiting for them like a trussed pig.

I could do nothing for the dead nereid, whose presence had likely prevented me from breaking bones in the fall, but I could sure as hell get myself out of here.

Once I’d righted myself, brushing dirt off my face so I wouldn’t be blinded, I spun the moonstone ring on my finger and brought it close. “Spin me a tale.”

I fully expected to feel the jerk of the ring pulling me out of my physical reality and into a world of shadows, but…nothing happened.

I sat there, cushioned by a corpse, fully corporeal and going nowhere.

That thrust of fear grew stronger. They had artifacts that could disguise tunnels and holes in the floor…maybe they also had artifacts that could dampen or nullify magic.

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