Page 120 of Kingdoms of Night

“Me neither.”

“I dance.”

“No comment,” he said.

“I eat.”

“Me, too.”

Finally. “What kinds of food do you like?”

“I didn’t agree to answer questions.” He flashed her a crooked smile.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” She set her hands on her waist as they reached the top of the hill.

“Another question? You’re not very good at this game, are you?”

She opened her mouth to answer but stopped. Something yellow lay on the side of the path, almost hidden by a clump of tall grass. “What’s that?”

He tilted his head, then crossed over.

She followed as the wolves leaped ahead. A shoe. A child’s shoe. Leather with a little bow.

Her mouth went dry as her nerves spiked. Lalko hadn’t been wearing shoes at all. But that shoe might have fit her. “Is it Annette’s?”

Feron stooped down. The little bow tore away with just the faintest of touches. “No.”

The wolves sniffed at it. It had been exposed to the elements for a while. The part facing upward had faded in the sunlight, while the other side remained a bright yellow. “It’s been out here a long time, I think.”

A shiver wove down her spine.

She scanned the area for the shoe’s mate. Such a pretty shoe wouldn’t be lightly lost. Yet the sinking in her stomach warned her that there was no matching shoe. Its owner had probably vanished a long time ago.

She rubbed her arm. Ahead, at the bottom of this hill, the forest continued on either side, forming a green wall beneath the mid-morning sunshine. The rosy red path wended down the hill until it opened up into a great gorge. There, the short-growing grass faded away to reveal rich-black soil that gave way to ash-gray and red-brown sandstone.

The sandstone opened up into a jagged-mouthed cavern with a massive ouroboros carved into the top, not unlike the clock tower in Lambton. Even from this distance, the exceptional detail work could not be ignored. The ouroboros’s scales had been carved with the precision of a master, and its eye glittered like a gemstone.

More disturbingly, though, the sky beyond this gorge and the hill—it was that same hazy silver blue, almost violet. It made her want to turn away, as if it didn’t want to be seen. She dropped her gaze, then stopped.

Her skin prickled.

There was also a pretty white cottage and a great pruned oak tree. Had that been there before?

It sat on the ledge just before the gorge and the cavern, utterly adorable. Dried herbs hung in bundles from the overhang above the porch. Lavender, chives, rosemary, chamomile, yarrow, thyme, and others she didn’t recognize. Bright designs decorated the rich blue door’s frame in reds, blues, greens, and yellows.

It looked… charming. Didn’t it?

More goosebumps rose on her arms as the skin along the back of her neck tightened.

No. And the ground was wrong here as well. Up through the soles of her cactli, she felt it. Uncomfortable. Itchy. She hadn’t really paid much attention to it before, but it reminded her of the foreboding sensation at the wyrm’s den. Somehow more sinister and less obvious.

“Who do you think lives there?” Feron indicated the cottage with a jerk of his head.

“No idea. It feels bad, though.”

He squinted. “The house? Or the cave?”

With the massive ouroboros carved in the rock face, the cave certainly had an ominous look to it.

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