Page 70 of Deadly Maiden

I can’t see the full extent, but at least fifty graves must be located here. If you could create guns like Wyntre’s in large quantities and harvest ghosts for power, mages might be dispensed with in war? That quiet unease settles in like a toad on a lily pad.

“I’ve heard stories about malevolent ghosts. No?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know, but I had no real fear of the gheist. Or of the ghosts that might be nearby, last time. That day, what I was afraid of, and angry about, was the unknown in my past. That’s when Landos first told me I had necromancy in my blood. I hated the deception, the lying I saw in that.” She stops, opens her hands, palms upward. “I see no reason a necromancer should fear the dead, whether they decided to hang about as ghosts, or not.”

“Interesting. Keep going.” Strangely, maybe, I feel pride. I love how matter of fact she is about this. I hope she is right.

“Here. In there is the strongest feeling.”

A fig tree shadows the tomb, thick roots tangling and twining over one another, knotting, strangling, draping over some of the stonework, as if ready to ambush the unwary.

“Inside the tomb?” Though part of the right-side wall is damaged by the tree and the door hangs half-open, the steps leading down inside seem intact. “Damnation. It looks…ominous?”

Wyntre laughs. “Scaredy cat?”

“No. Enter. I’ll follow your badass ass down the steps.”

“Ooh.Poetry there? Badass ass?” Still smirking, she skips down the steps to vanish into the tomb.

“Fuck.” My heart is galloping herds of horses about in my chest, from the feel of it. However, I’m a dragonshifter not a pussy. I follow her, cautiously, descending into the darkness.

Why did I not think to light a torch? I won’t need it to see, but fire is always good.

*Definitely a nice, fuckable, badass ass.*

“And the Inner Dick returns,” I mutter to myself.

Chapter 21

Rorsyd

My eyes adjust quickly to the dark. Dry leaves whisper and crunch under my boots. Wyntre stands between the shelves that lie to our left and right. Those hold the bodies of the dead. Or are these corpses? I suppose that’s the better word. Perhaps these were once wrapped in cloth, and shreds do remain, but most of the wrapping or binding cloth has rotted into dust, and the skeletons are exposed.

The space in here is limited. I could swing a man by his feet and hit the walls. The dank stone has dark tracks running over it, and rain has leaked in. The smell, thankfully, is of vegetable rot and ruin but not of decaying fae flesh.

Sunlight strays in past my shoulders, to slant down and strike the middle of the floor where leaves are strewn.

A skull shows on the left shelf, eye sockets a dark abyss. On the right shelf a jaw and a set of ribs are starkly pale. My vision shows me more and more detail. On the left, some of the long bones of the legs and arms have fallen to the floor, though are still connected at the joints by dried tissue.

“Has someone disturbed these?” I ask, wondering how much Wyntre can see.

“Perhaps? That might explain the ghosts remaining. Something tragic is the usual explanation,” she adds, absentmindedly, as she kneels to poke at the humerus of the left-hand corpse.

“From what you’re doing, you can see in the dark as well as I.”

“Oh! It’s dark here? I hadn’t thought.” She stares at the ceiling, where cobwebs show the tomb has more living visitors than us—the spiders arrived first.

I’m sure this is new for her—to have vision in the darkness. Some added necro skill has crept in and infiltrated her. It’s a little creepy. Or not. Wyntre is growing into a role, into her parents’ inheritance.

Her parents. It’s hard to let go of twenty years of hate.

What would Orish say? That I need to dispense with my prejudices?

“This place is tiny. If a ghost exists here, you should be able to see it by now? Or…feel it?” I’m unaware of anything strange.

“It’s here,” she whispers. “I’m trying to act nonchalant.”

“Oh.”Fuck.I back to the entrance, to the foot of the stairs, to give her and this invisible other occupant some room.

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