Winter Flint's Arc

Chapter 11 of 18

Winter stepped back from the braced door and counted heads. One was missing. Morgatha. He turned a slow circle and saw the trail — small pale lights drifting in a line down the side passage, glowing soft and wrong in the dark. Esmerelda saw them too. "She went down," she said. "Alone. Carrying something heavy." She held up her journal, finger on a fresh sketch. "The relics. All of them." Winter's stomach dropped. He had thought she came to help them seal it. She had come to finish opening it. "Liri. With me. The rest hold the door." Liri's wings snapped open. "I'm already moving." They followed the floating lights down past a cairn of glowing runes, around a bend, and there she was — kneeling at a lower seam in the stone, the stolen relics laid out in a careful row. Morgatha did not look up. "You buried my work," she said. "Without a word. I am returning the favor." Winter lunged. Liri was faster. She drove Morgatha sideways while Winter swept the relics into his arms, every one of them, and ran. Behind him Morgatha rose calmly. "Take them. It heard me. That is enough." Stone groaned somewhere deep below. Winter reached the braced door gasping, relics clutched to his chest. The clans stared. He set the keys down where every elder could see them and spoke flat. "She came to wake it. She may have done enough already. We have less than three days, and now we have her too." Durgan was already calling for rope. The council, at last, did not argue.