Page 269 of Vasmora

Peering through the binding of webs showed the ragged tunic clinging to his body, his chest twitching with labored breaths, then beyond the flesh and bones to a heart that pumped slow. Slower.

Spiders skittering over the organ. Fangs sinking into it. Blackness crawling over the surface. Blood darkening.

I opened my eyes. “He’s infected.”

Zevander slashed his blade over the man’s throat, and blackness poured from the wound as he choked and gagged.

I frowned, watching him bleed out, wondering if my blood could’ve saved him, but glancing around stirred a heavy dread.

Too many to save.

We kept on, weaving through the cocoons, and my boot caught, sending me stumbling forward and nearly loosening my grip on the pup.

A bone. Hundreds of them scattered over the ground, some embedded in the gritty floor.

A light dusting sprinkled my face, and I frantically brushed it away, looking up to see tiny chunks of stone falling from the domed ceiling overhead.

“That can’t be safe,” I muttered.

“King Sagaerin was having renovations done.” Gavroche stared upward. “Entire tunnels have collapsed. These walls are ancient. They go back to the early days of man.”

“And the bones?”

The boy shrugged. “Don’t know. Could be spindlings who got trapped in the tunnels.”

The sound of a distant cough brought us to a halt.

Trailing after the sound, we slipped through the dangling cocoons, some of which wriggled when I got too close.

Splayed on the ground ahead of us lay a ravaged spider, its belly sliced open, leg bent and twitching. Another spider lay a few steps away, legs curled under its body, fangs torn from its face and discarded onto the floor. Another spider lay in a bloody heap. And another. Dozens of them scattered about.

Another cough.

Zevander turned around, pushed aside one of the dangling cocoons, and froze.

Across from us, Branimir lay slumped on the floor, one leg torn away at the thigh in bits of shredded flesh, the other severed at the knee, where bone peeked out from the wound. His chest had been cracked open, rib bones sticking up through macerated chunks of skin.

Still, Zevander didn’t move toward him. As if the soles of his boots had been soldered to the ground.

I handed Rho off to Verena and quietly stepped around him, through the pooling black blood, and knelt at Branimir’s side. Blood trickled out of his mouth, dribbling down his chin. Every breath was labored and heavy, rattling like coins trapped in tin lungs.

My mouth hung open. Tears blurred his face. I held up my trembling hands, not knowing what to do with them.

Ringing blared in my ears, a warning of infection, but I didn’t care. I reached out to caress his forehead, and his eyes shuttered as if he’d waited for one gentle touch.

“You shouldn’t … get close,” he rasped.

“Do you think a plague would keep me from your side?” I didn’t intend for the question to be humorous, but his lips twitched as if he might smile.

“I tried … to protect … her.”

My heart hitched at that. “Rykaia? Is she …” I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

“Sleeping …” His eyes shifted upward, and I turned toward a cocoon against the wall behind him.

Zevander strode toward it, tugging his blade free along the way. He viciously sawed at the webs, his movements unbroken like a machine put to work, his gaze never straying from the task.

“I … put her to sleep. Cocooned her … so she wouldn’t … hear me. When they … came for … us.” Branimir’s body jostled with another cough, and more blood trickled out of him.