We reached the end of the damp tunnel on a shallow incline and the stone simply stopped.

  My Holy Light pushed into open space and vanished into it.

  A bridge stretched out ahead of us, a long span of fitted stone blocks arcing over a chasm so wide my light could not find the far wall. The air here was colder. It moved across my face with a steady draft that carried a mineral tang beneath the rot. Somewhere below, water hissed and shifted, not loud enough to locate, but constant enough to suggest volume.

  Veyne slowed, then stepped gingerly onto the bridge as if testing the first stones for give.

  "This is an access point to the aquifer," I said quietly. My words vanished into the open space. "That's why the air has been so wet."

  Seraphine gnced down over the side. My light couldn't reach far enough to show the bottom, but it lit the bridge's parapet in pale gold and made the moisture on the stone gleam.

  Sir Veyne walked ahead of us, face tight.

  We crossed in a compact line, close enough that I could hear Seraphine's breathing behind me.

  At the far end, the stone widened into a nding, where a set of stairs climbed up, steep and pin, carved into the wall.

  "There's our way out," I said.

  We climbed. The dampness changed. The air here was less wet and more stale, as if water had once been present, then sealed behind stone and forgotten.

  The stairs opened into a long passage lined with doors and narrow alcoves. The walls were cleaner than the cave we'd just left, but not by much; grime had settled into the corners, and the mortar lines were dark with age.

  The servants' quarters.

  Still one of the lowest levels in the castle, but no longer just architecture. A pce meant for people to sleep, eat, and wait. A pce meant to keep them out of sight.

  The First Men had built their castle in yers: grand halls above, working organs below. They did not need to see the people who made it work, only the results.

  Veyne stamped his feet once, then again.

  Seraphine winced. "Stop."

  He paused mid-stomp. "I'm just drying my boots."

  "We're standing on top of nothing," she said. "And you are here tempting fate."

  Veyne's mouth tightened as if he were about to argue. Then he apparently decided it wasn't worth it and went still.

  I told myself not to think too deeply about what y beneath our feet. The structure hid the chasm below us, but did not erase it.

  The servants who slept here had been made to do the same—as if to remind them that their lives hung on the ingenuity of the engineers above.

  The corridor opened into a broader common area with long tables and benches, all worn down by use. I slowed, letting my light skim across the tabletops. The furniture here was rge, but not scaled for giants as it had been in the City.

  A faint, unhelpful smirk touched my lips.

  The royal family had cimed descent from the First Men's noble warriors, but it seemed more likely to me that their bloodline ran through these more modestly sized servants.

  "Cire," Seraphine murmured, catching the shift in my expression.

  "It's nothing," I said. "Let's keep moving."

  The space ahead widened again and then broke open into devastation. The kitchen, or what used to be one. The ceiling was high for this level, likely to vent heat. Several hearths lined one wall, their stone bckened and cracked. The long preparation tables were split, scorched, overturned. Pottery y in fragments beneath a drift of ash.

  Scattered through it all were the inert bodies of Nyxara's constructs.

  Some toppled in the corners. Some colpsed across tables like they had been caught mid-climb. Their pted limbs were spyed, joints locked. In pces, the stone around them had been blown outward, as if pressure had erupted from within.

  Seraphine stopped at the threshold. Her shoulders rose with a breath that did not settle.

  "Had I known what was beneath us," she said softly, "I would have chosen less bombastic magic."

  I looked down at the fractured floor stones and the hairline cracks that spidered away from impact points.

  "If anything," I said, "this should inspire confidence, I think."

  Seraphine turned her head slightly.

  "In the First Men's engineering," I said. "Because despite everything you did here, it's still standing."

  She didn't seem comforted by that. She shifted her gaze toward one of the golems with its torso split open, inner runes exposed and dull.

  Phymera moved past us.

  "Go," I said. "The pantry should be just up ahead."

  Seraphine nodded and followed Phymera, stepping carefully over shattered crockery. She lifted Pulseweaver slightly so the blue glow could probe the darker corners.

  Veyne and I remained near the entrance, where the corridor fed into the kitchen, standing guard. I kept my Holy Light angled to illuminate both the hallway behind us and the kitchen floor.

  After a minute, Veyne shifted his weight. His gauntlets creaked softly.

  Then he spoke without looking at me. "Stop staring."

  I blinked. I hadn't realized I had set my eyes on him.

  "I'm not," I said automatically, looking away. My grip tightened on my bag. "I was just watching our fnk."

  He made a sound that sounded like disbelief. "If I was so easy to figure out, I wouldn't have gotten hired."

  I snorted. "You certainly have a high opinion of yourself—"

  Boom.

  The castle shook.

  A deep, rolling impact that passed through the stone like a wave. Dust sifted down from the ceiling in a light fall, catching my Holy Light and turning into drifting gold specks.

  Veyne and I both turned toward the corridor leading out of the kitchen, toward the living quarters.

  Another dull rumble followed, distant but present enough to make my teeth rattle.

  Veyne's posture tightened. "Sounds like things are getting intense up top."

  "No," I said, "that can't be it. We're too far down to feel the effects of a fight in the courtyard."

  "Earthquake then," he said, grimacing. "My favorite."

  "I wouldn't worry," I said quickly. "This fortress has been here for centuries. The First Men would have accounted for the occasional quake."

  Veyne did not look reassured.

  BOOM.

  The next impact came sooner, and closer. It hit the stone overhead with a hard snap, as if something enormous had struck the structure with a fist.

  The kitchen rang.

  A ripple passed through the floor. Loose fragments jumped. A cracked pot shard skittered across the stone and vanished under a table.

  I stumbled. Veyne's hand snapped to my waist and shoved me upright.

  Seraphine's head appeared from the pantry doorway, hair loose from its tie, Pulseweaver held halfway raised. "What's happening?"

  "I don't know," I said through gritted teeth.

  The air filled with dust, thick enough that it turned my light into a murky glow. I pulled my sleeve over my mouth and nose. The fabric tasted like old salt and dried herbs.

  "Are you almost finished?" I said urgently. "We need everyone in the corridor. Now."

  She nodded. "We just got done."

  She and Phymera exited fast.

  We stepped into the servants' quarters.

  The corridor was filled with dust. The air was opaque for the first few yards, and the walls were only visible where my light hit them directly. Bits of mortar rained down in slow, soft taps.

  I angled my light toward the stairwell that should have led up.

  It wasn't there anymore.

  Or rather, the frame of it still was, but the stairs themselves had colpsed inward. Stone blocks y at odd angles, stacked in a fresh, jagged pile. The ceiling above it was cracked, and a thick sb had come down like a lid.

  I narrowed my eyes.

  I gnced over at Veyne, expecting to see something like recognition, or calcution. The signs of a man hired with sabotage in mind.

  He looked as surprised as I felt.

  Seraphine coughed into her sleeve. "What do we do now?"

  "We go back," I said. "And find another way up. There has to be a secondary stairwell, or a service dder, or a lift shaft. Something."

  Phymera's eyes flicked to the colpsed stairs, then to me.

  "Let's move," I said, and began running.

  We retraced our path through the corridor, past the common tables, back down the steep stone stairs toward the bridge. The air grew wetter again with each step, and the draft returned, cold against the sweat on my neck.

  Another impact rolled through the stone while we were still on the stairs. The wall shivered under my palm as I steadied myself on the descent. Dust shook loose and stuck to the dampness on my skin.

  When the tunnel opened into the chasm again, the bridge was still there.

  The same fitted blocks, the same parapets. But now, when I stepped onto it, the vibration under my feet was stronger. Not a hum. A stressed, uneven pulse.

  "Hurry," I said, and we ran.

  Halfway across, a sharp crack sounded above us. Somewhere in the stone belly of the castle.

  Then another crack, and another, like splitting wood.

  The air filled with a rain of grit. I felt it pepper my hair and colr.

  Stactites.

  Thick stone teeth that had grown for centuries and now decided to fall all at once.

  "Down!" Veyne barked. "Move!"

  A shadow dropped into my light. Instinct took over. I grabbed Seraphine's shoulder and shoved hard.

  She stumbled sideways, boots slipping on wet stone, and a stactite smmed down where she'd been a heartbeat earlier. It struck the bridge with a sound like a bell being broken, shattering on impact and sending chips of stone skittering across the parapet and into the dark.

  Seraphine's eyes went wide. She didn't speak, but her fingers tightened around Pulseweaver so hard her knuckles went pale.

  We ran again.

  BOOM.

  Another bst from above. It sounded like air being punched out of a lung.

  A stactite the size of a wagon fell, not on top of us but ahead.

  It struck the span of bridge two lengths ahead, and the stone blocks there cracked.

  The surface fractured in a line that raced outward like a seam being cut. The section dropped away in pieces, as if the structure were deciding which parts it could afford to lose.

  A gap opened.

  Not wide, but widening.

  Veyne accelerated and jumped.

  His boots cleared the first crack. He hit the far side hard, tumbled once, and came up on one knee.

  Seraphine reached the edge next. She lifted Pulseweaver and spoke a single word through clenched teeth.

  "Levitate."

  It wasn't the gentle lift she'd used before. This was thrust, forced and ugly. The magic caught her like a hand at the waist and threw her forward.

  She cleared the gap with a sharp gasp and nded badly, knees buckling. Veyne grabbed her elbow and hauled her upright.

  The gap widened again.

  Stone blocks dropped away from the underside with grinding groans. The bridge wasn't swaying, but it shed pieces the way a cliff shed rocks.

  I stopped short with Phymera beside me. My light spilled into the widening dark and showed nothing.

  The distance was too far now. For me. For her, too, in this frame.

  Seraphine looked back, eyes frantic. "Cire!"

  Phymera's breath came quick. Her face filled with fear.

  "Phymera," I said, and forced my voice to stay ft. "You have to use your wings."

  She stared at me.

  "I need you to get us across," I said. "Now."

  "I can't..." Her mouth opened, then closed. "I can't fly, remember?"

  "You don't have to," I said. I could hear my own pulse. I could hear stone grinding under the bridge as it continued to fail. "You just have to get us far enough. Seraphine will help us the rest of the way."

  Phymera's gaze flicked toward the gap, then toward the far side where Seraphine stood with her hand outstretched and Veyne braced behind her like a living anchor.

  Phymera swallowed.

  For a moment I saw something in her eyes that did not belong to Lumiere. A raw calcution. A fear that was not about pain, but about failure.

  Then she nodded once, small and sharp.

  Metal shifted.

  Her borrowed form began to change with a series of clicks and sliding ptes. Shoulders broadened. The back opened along hidden seams. Bone-like struts unfolded, yered with thin metal membranes that caught my light and shone dull gold.

  Wings.

  I stepped closer and wrapped both arms around her torso, pressing my cheek against cold metal. The scent was different from the damp stone: oil, old smoke, and the faint metallic tang of iron.

  Phymera took a running start.

  Her cwed feet struck the bridge in hard, rapid beats. The structure shuddered under the force. Somewhere behind us, stone cracked again.

  At the edge, she jumped and spread her wings.

  Air caught in the membranes with a snap. The wings didn't lift us, not truly. But they slowed the drop, turned it into something closer to a falling glide.

  The chasm yawned beneath us. My Holy Light swung wildly, painting nothing.

  Seraphine ran to the edge on the far side, arm outstretched so far I thought she would follow us into the dark. Veyne grabbed her wrist with one hand and hooked his other arm around a parapet post, bracing his weight.

  Her fingers fred, and I felt a column of air push from beneath us.

  "Got you," she gasped.

  Phymera's wings beat once, not with lift but with effort, a hard shove of air that bought us inches.

  Her feet ccked against chipped stone, cws scraping over wet grit. For a breathless moment her weight carried her backward over the edge of the broken bridge.

  She threw her wings wide for bance, metal scraping stone, and managed to stop with her heels half over open space.

  Then she hauled herself forward, panting hard. The wings folded in, shaking.

  I let out a breath that felt like it had been held since the kitchen.

  Veyne dragged Seraphine back from the edge with a grunt.

  Phymera straightened, still breathing too fast. Her face had gone bnk again, as if she could hide the fear by refusing to show anything at all.

  I took one step toward them.

  The stone beneath us gave a soft, ugly crack.

  Veyne's head snapped up. His eyes went wide for only the third time since I'd met him.

  He lunged for Seraphine, pulling her back another step. His gauntlet closed around her arm and yanked her with brute force.

  The section of stone under my feet dropped.

  For a half second there was resistance, the sensation of a structure trying to hold one st time.

  Then it failed.

  My stomach lurched. Air rushed past my ears. My Holy Light fred and spun as I fell.

  Seraphine's hand shot out and grabbed for me. Her fingers missed my sleeve by inches.

  The st thing I saw was Seraphine's face, mouth open in a sound I could not hear over the roar of falling stone.

  Then the light above fractured into dust and darkness, and Phymera and I dropped into the chasm.