“Later,” he whispered.

  A promise.

  But by the time we reached the steps into the castle, there was nothing left in me but the desire to stretch out over the icy stones and cool my burning muscles. Miles of upward climbing through the streets had left both of us quietly gasping for breath as we made our way toward the waiting entrance.

  The outer doors were nearly as tall as the building itself, decorated with iron flourishes and the symbol of Lyonesse, a roaring lion’s head. And, mercifully, by wind or someone’s hand, they were already ajar—just wide enough for the two of us to slip inside. Beyond it was a corridor that ran between two stairwells on either side of us, and beyond that, another set of doors that led into the great hall.

  Exchanging one last wary look with Emrys, I released his hand and stepped carefully through the doors to the hall.

  The smell of must and rot was overwhelming. The air itself seemed dead: unnaturally heavy and still, hanging over derelict feasting tables like a mourning shroud.

  “Hello?” I called out. “Cait! Neve! Are you here?”

  My voice echoed back to me, small and fearful. Are you here? Are you here?

  “Do you want to wait here or go looking for them?” Emrys asked.

  My gaze drifted over to the two thrones at the head of the hall. Carved from wood, embellished with gold; the velveteen fabric of the seats had been devoured by moths and damp. And any crowns had left the kingdom when its ruler did, dead or alive.

  A section of the vaulted ceiling had caved in, and at some point, water had rushed in through the splintered stones like a cascade, creating a solid wall of ice along the grand room’s eastern face. Tapestries.

  My feet moved toward them of their own accord, even as my mind tried to pull me back toward the corridor connecting this room to the next. A breeze slipped through the open door and pushed at my back, encouraging me forward. The air hummed in my ears, low and soft, like a mother’s hushed soothing.

  Emrys pulled a flashlight out of his bag. I took out my own, moving to the first panel at the far end of the hall. Rubbing a hand over the frost, I shined the beam of light through it.

  The scenes were distorted and magnified by the glasslike ice, but not even that could diminish their beauty. I walked slowly along, clearing the cloudy layer of rime as I went. After I reached the end of the panel, I stepped back to view it in full. Emrys stood behind me, his body warming my back, his chest rumbling as he made a thoughtful noise.

  “The creation of the world by the Goddess?” he suggested.

  “Looks like it,” I murmured.

  At the center of the panel was a pale-haired woman, her figure wrapped in silky white robes. Something about her face, the serenity of her smile, stirred a thought at the back of my mind, but I didn’t know the right memory to reach for.

  Around her outstretched arms, a garden was forming, and creatures of every kind gathered.

  “And here we have men,” Emrys said, pointing to the figures below the garden. “Struggling to spark fire, to harvest—”

  “Not men,” I said. “The Firstborn.”

  Emrys looked over, surprised.

  “The Gentry. The Tuatha dé Danann. The Aes Sídhe. Tylwyth Teg,” I said. “According to the Bonecutter, they’re all names for the same beings. Born with magic and immortality, but not invulnerable to death.”

  He scratched at the stubble growing along his jaw as he moved to the second panel, revealing it with a few careful swipes of his arm.

  There were the mortal men, with the Firstborn lording over them with magic and crowns. Swords appeared, and the scenes of duels became battles. In the third, a man with a silver hand reached out toward a group that looked to be his children. Three sons, with wheat-colored hair and gray eyes. To my disappointment, the next panels were too torn and darkened by decay to see what they depicted.

  A thunderous clatter sounded above us, like a wall collapsing. We froze in place as dust shook loose from the ceiling.

  “Please tell me we’re not going to investigate whatever unthinkable dark horror that was,” Emrys said.

  But I was already running for the door.

  The entry hall was guarded on either end by spiraling sets of stairs. I let my feet guide us to the one on the right, straining my ears for an echo of the sound we’d heard. Other than the clatter of small loose stone and drifts of dust, the castle had fallen back into deathly silence.

  The stone steps were partially caved in and tricky to navigate, but when a sound like dry, scraping stones drifted down the stairwell to us, we hurried to climb them before we lost the trail again. The noises seemed to be coming from the third floor.

  “Neve?” I called softly at the top step. “Cait?”

  The hall was littered with filthy clothing and broken furniture, as if they’d been dropped in the rush to flee the castle, and the open doors revealed bedrooms in various states of disarray, from once-grand beds reduced to matchsticks to wardrobes caked with grime.

  Emrys ducked into the first, giving it a quick search. I tried to stop him, but he mimed holding a sword, raising both brows.

  I sighed. He was right; regardless of where the others were, and what had made the noise, we were here to find Excalibur.

  I leaned into the next bedroom and took a quick look around. Inside I found little more than furniture draped in disintegrating cloth. Every time I lifted one of the sheets to search for signs of the monster or Excalibur, I could feel traces of the rot rubbing off on my skin.

  Something built in me, room by room—an urge. Not to run, not to speak, not to fight. It had no name, but it haunted me with each step. Not even the reassuring feel of Emrys’s eyes tracking my every move was enough to dispel it.

  Halfway down the hall, we were greeted by one of the vilest smells I’d experienced in my life—like sun-roasted sewage. I shrank back from it, and despite my stomach being empty, it heaved.

  Emrys coughed, covering his mouth and nose with the sleeve of his jacket. He sent a wary look my way. “You know, we could go back down and wait for the others.”

  I wanted that more than my next breath, but this was one of those incredibly rare moments in which purpose prevailed. “No, we have to keep going.”

  He took a step forward with obvious reluctance.

  “Are you scared, Dye?” I whispered, teasing.

  “Yes.” He turned his big eyes on me. “Will you hold my hand?”

  The air was bitterly cold, but it did nothing to stop the hot flush that overtook my cheeks. “No.”

  I hurried ahead of him, making quick work of the rooms on the right side of the hall as he searched the left. With his longer legs, he caught up to me easily as I reached one of the last doors on the hall. And, together, we discovered the source of the rancid stench.

  It took all the restraint I had left to not rub the phantom feeling of itchy decay from my arms. The rot overwhelming my senses gave the horrifying impression that it was my own body that was decomposing. As we hovered in the doorway, I pushed up my sleeves to make sure skeins of dead skin weren’t falling from my bones.

  My silver bones.

  The room’s door was on the ground, forcing us to step on and over the stones piled onto it. It was as if it had been ripped off with such great force, it had taken the stones framing the doorway with it, leaving a jagged opening in the wall behind.

  Emrys gave me one last pained look, then stepped through, his scarred hand brushing over the rough stone.

  I stayed close to him. The stench of death flourished around me, the metallic tang of blood and hideous rot nearly sending me to my knees. With my free hand, I reached back to grip Dyrnwyn’s cold hilt and we crept slowly into the room.

  The chamber was vast, broken up by a few crumbling walls. As in the other rooms we’d seen, much of the furniture was dull shapes beneath the protective cloth.

  A circular settee sat at the very center of the room, curving beneath the coarse fabric in a way that was surprisingly modern. The scale of the enormous four-poster bed in the farthest visible section of the suite suggested that whoever had once resided here enjoyed high status. The musty silk wall panels drew my eyes to tarnished suits of armor by the hearth. But only for a moment.

  Emrys reared back, his breath hitching in his throat. Slowly, with agonizing care, he lifted his foot off a long yellow bone, having narrowly avoided snapping it in two.

  More bones littered the ground, some so badly broken, their edges were spiked. The longer I looked, the easier it was to convince myself they’d once been animals—at least until I saw the first skull, carelessly tossed aside beneath a small table.

  Human, my mind screamed.

  I stepped forward, picking my way through the remains. With a look of extreme reluctance, Emrys followed, taking the opposite side of the room. I looked down the doorways connecting one room to the next, but most had been emptied of their possessions.

  It was a moment before I noticed that the air was warmer in this room—almost steaming with that same rotten sewage stench.

  While Emrys knelt to look beneath the bed and check under the mattress for the sword, I followed my nose to the source of that smell, gripping the cloth covering what looked to be a large settee. Taking the cloth in hand, I gave it a gentle tug.

  It slipped off with a soft swish, meeting no resistance as it skimmed over the slick, gleaming scales of a mountainous spine and pooled on the floor at my feet.

  Thunder gathered in my ears as my pulse beat against my skull. My head no longer seemed to be connected to the rest of my body. Out of the corner of my eye, Emrys moved silently, desperately mouthing something to me.

  The beast huffed in its sleep, nestling its enormous head against the blood-splattered rug beneath it. It was smaller than I’d imagined as a child, only twice the length of the nearby bed. Its craggy scales reminded me of a crimson sunrise reflected on a distant mountain range. Every spine on every scale looked primed to slice flesh.

  Draig Goch. Red dragon.

  Its massive tail swished the way a cat’s did as it slept. It scraped across the floor, making every piece of glass and tarnished décor shiver like terrified animals. The noise we’d heard before was the dragon shifting its massive weight, settling down in a more comfortable position. The floor rocked beneath my feet as the monster shifted again, bringing its head down to rest against its leg.

  My stomach liquefied.

  If this was the Beast of Land’s End, it was now painfully clear why the kingdom had been abandoned. No blade could pierce the skin of a dragon. No spell, either. It was why Hollowers fought to source the material for their work gloves.

  It was why we were going to have to find a way to leave this citadel right now.

  The others, I thought, terrified all over again. If they’d come here and been taken by surprise…

  Emrys held his hand out toward me, his panicked eyes flicking between me and the slumbering dragon. I took a slow step toward him, avoiding the bones scattered around us. Hot, smoky breath wheezed out between its teeth and through its nostrils, curling in a strangely beautiful pattern as it rose.

  Another step.

  Another.

  I reached my hand toward Emrys, straining for his fingers, for something to steady me when my body was bursting with adrenaline.

  The dragon let out another gasping huff, releasing a plume of ash.

  One leathery eyelid lifted. A wet, clear membrane peeled back over the burnished gold iris. Both of our faces were reflected in the glistening surface as the dragon lifted its head. As it scented us.

  Emrys’s hand closed around mine, and, with one last desperate look, we ran.

  The floor shook as the dragon barreled after us. Shards of stone exploded into the air as its great body slammed clumsily from wall to wall, its talons clawing for purchase on the slick stone floor.

  The smell of smoke returned as the dragon let out a hacking cough, spraying flames from its mouth in every direction like buckshot. I slapped a hand against Emrys’s smoldering sleeve before ripping the bulky thing off him entirely. The dragon wasn’t going to mistake him for a fuzzy treat.

  I pushed my body harder, faster, as a stairwell appeared through a parting cloud of dust.

  The dragon’s roar echoed off the walls like a deluge of untuned strings. It rasped and shrieked in turn, a quavering note of agony threading through every reverberation. The barking cough burst into a pure scream of fire.

  The narrow walls funneled the maelstrom of flames right to us, and there was no other choice—we dove down the winding stairs. The steps battered my ribs, reviving the sharp ache of my earlier injury, and scraped at my legs. I had enough sense to protect my skull with my arms, letting them absorb the abuse as fire raged over our heads, spiraling down through the stairwell with us.

  The river of flames scalded the air; I didn’t try to breathe, knowing it would only damage my lungs and throat. As we hit the landing, I reached over, feeling for Emrys.

  “I’m okay,” he said, climbing unsteadily to his feet. “Let’s go, let’s go—”

  The dragon screeched as it tried to force its body through the curve of the tight passage, straining, flooding the air with the noxious steam of its breath.

  But between one heartbeat and the next, the red dragon suddenly stilled, as if in surrender. Loose debris skittered down the steps. Emrys’s pulse sped beneath my fingers as my grip on his wrist turned to iron, but still, neither of us seemed capable of moving, not even to save ourselves.

  My own heartbeat pounded everywhere in my body as a new gust of scalding steam billowed past us. The dragon, with all the grace and silence of a snake, stretched its long, sinuous neck down along the curve of the stairs until its horned head appeared behind us, and for one terrifying moment, the creature’s mouth parted in an almost sinister smile. It flicked its forked tongue at our feet, taunting. Tasting.

  My focus narrowed to those golden eyes glowing in the darkness. Pure blue fire began to gather at the back of the dragon’s throat, illuminating every jagged onyx tooth.

  “Tamsin!” Emrys hauled my stunned body up as blue flames intensified. Apparently, it liked to cook its meals before consuming them.

  That delirious thought vanished as the dragon coughed and retched. The flames gathering in its mouth extinguished as it thrashed its head around the stairwell. Showers of dust and debris rained down over us as we fled.

  We were halfway down the hall when the dragon finally rammed through the collapsing stairs and tore through the wall to reach the landing. An explosion of dust and rubble pelted us from behind. I glanced back, squeaking as the creature barreled toward us on all fours. Its wings were folded tight against its sides to squeeze through the corridor, but the left one jutted out slightly at an angle, as if it had been broken and hadn’t healed straight.

  Scars and missing scales pitted its face and neck. I noted each one, only to remember that the fact that I was close enough to see them was a very, very bad sign.

  A deep draw of breath and the stench of smoke warned of coming fire. The dragon skittered to a stop, rising on its haunches, and spread its wings. A thick, veined membrane connected the bones and joints, and both wings were tipped with talon-like hooks that scored the walls as they beat the air.

  The wind they created slammed into me like a tackle, knocking me off my feet onto the unforgiving stone floor. Emrys fell beside me with a harsh gasp.

  Fire raced toward us, twisting and thrashing like an animal.

  But it wasn’t flame that blasted over us—it was a different, colder wind, blowing hard and furious, deflecting the fire back toward the dragon.

  I looked up, shocked to find Neve standing a few feet away in the doorway, her hands still outstretched. A staircase to the main hall was behind her.

  “Hi!” she said cheerfully. “Nice of you guys to show up! I was starting to get worried.”

  My relief turned to horror in an instant. “Get out of here!”

  Heat gathered behind us again, the dragon hacking and snarling in fury.

  It charged toward us again, bursting through the burning debris. I started to reach for the hilt of my sword, then stopped. Dragons were born from flames. They would never die of them.

  Stupid fire sword, I thought, exasperated. It wouldn’t even penetrate the dragon’s skin.

  “Let’s go!” Emrys said, hooking my arm, then Neve’s, to drag us away.

  The beast raged forward, rasping and hacking. We ran down the stairs, each bone and joint in my body aching with the force of my pounding steps.

  This time, however, the dragon didn’t follow. As we reached the ground floor of the castle, I whirled back to find only shadows behind us.

  “This way!” Neve panted. The cavernous hallway echoed her order. A distant dripping and the settling of rocks answered.

  We found Caitriona standing at the imposing entrance to the castle, her back to the great hall. She waved a torch back and forth above her head.

  “Here!” she shouted—but not to us.

  Before any of us could react, she dropped the torch and turned to run into the great hall. Within the space of a second, the red dragon flew in low through the entrance, snow and ash shaking free from its scales as it gave chase.

  “Cait!” I screamed, following at full speed. My feet slid over the loose stone and ice, crossing that last bit of distance to the doors of the great hall.

  The dragon spewed flames as Caitriona ran alongside the wall of tapestries. As fire struck the ice encasing them, it evaporated into hissing steam that choked the chamber and stole Caitriona from sight.

  The dragon’s fiery breath died again as it hacked and choked, its spine curling up as it clawed at the floor.

  I hadn’t noticed Nash crouched in the crosshatch of the hall’s rafters until he jumped down from them, landing on the dragon’s back with a grunt. He slid down the smooth scales, grabbing one of its spiked shoulders at the very last minute to haul himself back up.