Page 43 of Bonded By Stone & Blood

"I'm coming with you."

Every protective instinct I possess rises at once — a wall of territorial fury and bone-deep refusal that would have been absolute, two months ago. One month ago.

It is not absolute now.

I let my gaze settle on her. On the blade, the unflinching set of her chin.

Centuries of wound tear open in my chest and rearranges itself into a fury darker and more dangerous than anything that came before it.

"Then hop on," I say.

Sabine wraps her arms around me, holding on tight, and together we fall off the ledge into the frozen black.

23

SABINE

The world drops away the moment my arm closes aroundTovian.

I've flown with him before, but never like this—never tucked tight against his chest with his wings beating hard and fast in great, powerful arcs while the snow-choked canopy blurs beneath us into a smear of white and black.

The cold tears at my face. My stomach lurches sideways every time he banks. I should be terrified. I am, a little. But underneath the fear lives a pulse of exhilaration I have no business feeling, and I press my face against the warm column of his throat so he doesn't see me almost smile about it.

He lands at the cavern mouth before the wind can change direction, setting me on my feet with a precision that still surprises me every time. Vorgrym and Velka drop in behind us seconds later, both of them landing hard and low in the snow.

"Tunnels," Tovian says. One word and we move.

The familiar chambers give way to the unfamiliar within minutes.

I've explored most of the upper cave network by now—the great cavern, the side chambers, the long hall where theawakened warriors sleep in shifting rows. But Tovian takes us past all of it, leading us deeper and lower until the carved stone columns disappear and the walls narrow to rough, unmapped bedrock. These tunnels weren't built. They were found. Ancient cracks in the mountain's bones, widened by centuries of geological patience.

The air changes first.

Above, the caves smell of cold stone and old smoke from our fires. Down here, it smells of nothing. That's the only way I can describe it—nothing. Primordial air that has never met a human breath or a wind from the valley. It settles deep into my lungs like a weight and I have to remind myself to breathe slowly, steadily, the way Vorgrym is breathing behind me. I can hear him. I can hear all three of them in the dark—Vorgrym's low, rhythmic exhale, Velka's slightly faster human pace, and Tovian's almost inaudible pull of breath ahead of me. It's the most intimate sound in the world, hearing people breathe in the absolute dark. It strips everything else away.

Tovian carries a dim stone that pulses with stored warmth—gargoyle-made, he told me once, capable of holding heat and casting just enough light to walk by. It casts him in amber from below. His horns throw shadows up the walls. His wings are folded tight to his back to fit the passage, and even then his shoulders nearly brush both sides when the tunnel pinches. He moves through it without complaint, without slowing, navigating ancient stone like he was poured into it.

I focus on the back of his neck, on the metal rings braided into his dark hair, on the familiar set of his shoulders, and I try not to think about Leif.

We are maybe an hour deep when the tunnel opens into a chasm.

It's not large—perhaps forty feet across, the ceiling just high enough that I can't see it—but the bedrock here has settled overcenturies into a series of compressed, layered shelves. Like the mountain pressed the stone flat under its own weight. Tovian holds the light up and sweeps it slowly across the far wall before stepping forward. Then he stops.

I almost walk into his back.

"I know this place." His voice is quiet. Almost nothing. "We used to bring the younger ones here when the upper chambers were too loud. Young gargoyles learn to echo-locate in spaces like this."

Velka and Vorgrym stop a respectful distance behind us. I don't look back at them. I look at Tovian. At the barely perceptible tension running from his jaw down the length of his spine.

"Tell me," I say.

His head turns slightly. Not toward me. Toward the wall.

"You know the shape of what happened," he says. "The gates sealed. The poisoned air. The collapse."

"Yes."

"You don't know what that means." He exhales. “The poison moved through the vents faster than we could track it. The warriors who hadn't gone to stone yet—the ones mid-cycle, between sleep and full wakefulness—they couldn't fight it. They dropped where they stood."