NINE MINUTES LATER

Serena’s eyes were pink and she was speaking in that ancient tongue again, the language that carved the air like a blade and sat in the ears like a hymn from a civilization that had been dead for ten thousand years.

Gavriel’s head turned towards Serena, slow, the same involuntary rotation that had happened in the cavern.

“Open the path that remembers our blood,” he said. His voice was distant. Detached. The words coming from a place in his brain that he had never accessed voluntarily and whose accessing was becoming a pattern and the pattern was producing a dread that was sitting in his stomach like a stone.

Maelor gave him a look so offended it should have been framed. The look contained: professional outrage, linguistic jealousy, academic fury, and the specific indignation of a man whose entire career was built on being the only person in any room who could translate sealed Fae script, and whose only-person status had just been demoted to ’one of two’ by a Gamma.

“I am choosing to ignore that,” Maelor said through his teeth.

“Hard to ignore when he keeps doing it,” Aeron murmured.

“I said I am CHOOSING, Aeron. The choosing is an ACTIVE process and your commentary is UNDERMINING it.”

The mountain trembled. The trembling was deep, tectonic, the vibration of something massive responding to Serena’s words the way the cavern walls had responded to her touch, the mountain recognizing her blood and the recognizing was producing geological movement.

A section of the slope split apart. Stone grinding against stone, the seam widening, revealing a tunnel carved into the mountainside. Dark. Narrow. The exact dimensions of every other tunnel Serena had entered today, and the exact dimensions were producing a collective response from the group that could best be described as “profound, visceral reluctance.”

Maelor groaned louder. He was watching his own resolution die in real time. Nine minutes. His binding declaration, which had been filed with the cosmos and witnessed by six people, had lasted nine fucking minutes.

“Oh, come on. FUCK no. Absolutely not. I am drawing a line. I’m staying right—damn it, Serena, don’t walk into it—”

Possessed Serena entered the tunnel with the unhurried confidence of a woman whose ancestors were driving and whose ancestors did not consult passenger opinions on route selection.

Fin did not let go of her hand. Possessed Serena looked down at Fin’s hand in hers with the expression of a woman tolerating a barnacle. She had historically treated physical contact with the tolerance of a cat being held against its will. The fact that Fin’s hand was permitted was either a concession to the severity of the day or an acknowledgment that the man attached to the hand was going to follow her regardless and the regardless was easier to accommodate than resist.

Without a shred of dignity, a gram of self-respect, or a single functioning survival instinct between the three of them, Hyran, Maelor, and Aeron followed her into the tunnel like ducklings trailing a mother duck who was actively leading them into traffic.

“Nine minutes,” Aeron said.

“Shut up.”

“Nine minutes, Maelor. Your ’binding declaration’ lasted NINE MINUTES. That is a new personal record. The previous record was eleven. You are getting WORSE.”

“I am following under PROTEST. The protest is FORMAL. I want it DOCUMENTED.”

“Documented where? Your robes? Because your robes look like something a raccoon fought and the raccoon won. The only documents you have left and they’re mostly HOLES.”

“You are a CRUEL man, Aeron.”

“I am an ACCURATE man. There is a difference and the difference is that accuracy hurts more.”

Hyran was already ten steps inside the tunnel. He had stopped arguing. He had stopped complaining. He had stopped threatening to fake his own death. The stopping was the most concerning development of the day, because a silent Hyran was a Hyran who had accepted his fate, and a Hyran who had accepted his fate was a Hyran who was going to do something either brilliant or catastrophically reckless and the catastrophically was the odds-on favorite.

“For the record,” he called back to the group, his voice echoing off the tunnel walls, “when I write my memoirs, this Chapter will be titled ’A Girl And Her Tunnels: How I Lost My Career, My Dignity, And My Tea.’”

“I’d read it,” Gavriel said.

“It will be SCATHING, Sterling.”

“Even better.”

“I swear I’m not doing this again,” Maelor grumbled.

“Then stop walking,” Aeron snapped.

“You stop walking!”

“You first!”

“Both of you shut the fuck up,” Hyran snapped from the front, “or I will fabricate a muzzle for each of you with locks. And the keys will go in the lava.”

“You wouldn’t muzzle me,” Maelor said. “You need my diagnostic arrays.”

“I need your diagnostic arrays. I do not need the mouth they come attached to. The arrays can stay. The mouth can go.”

“Hyran, that is the most hurtful thing you have ever said to me, and you once told me my thesis was ’competent.’”

“It WAS competent. That was a COMPLIMENT. The fact that you received it as an insult is a commentary on your ego, Maelor, and your ego is a structure that requires its own zip code.”

“My ego is EARNED, Hyran. It is PROPORTIONAL to my abilities, and my abilities are EXTRAORDINARY, so the proportion is CORRECT.”

Aeron pinched the bridge of his nose. “I am inside a volcano. On a mystery continent. Following a possessed woman. With two mages whose combined academic credentials could fill a library and whose combined emotional maturity couldn’t fill a thimble. I left Shadowclaw for this. I had a desk. I had tea. I had silence. I traded all of it for this shit.”

Dex and Gavriel followed with matching smirks. The smirking was the smirking of two men who had been listening to mage bickering for hours and whose hours had converted the bickering from annoying to entertaining, the entertainment value increasing in direct proportion to how close they all were to dying at any given moment.

The tunnel opened into an inclined slope, more like a tilted death slide, and they climbed out the other side of the mountain, pressing upward into the volcano’s throat.

The air grew hotter. The heat was a living thing, pressing against their skin with the insistence of a hand that wouldn’t let go, the temperature climbing with every step they took toward the summit. The stone path narrowed into a knife-edge trail hugging the mountain wall, jagged cliffs rising on their left and an endless river of molten orange churning on their right.

It started with a hiss.

Low. Sharp. Venomous.

Serena froze mid-step. Her eyes flickered back to green. Her hand tightened on Fin’s. The tightening was involuntary, her fingers clamping down with a force that would have hurt anyone whose hand wasn’t built to absorb Alpha-level grip pressure, and Fin’s was, and the was the reason she was holding it.