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Erawan still remained unaware of his presence Perhaps the nature of his raw ic indeed provided hinize it thanks to whatever she’d pried froht, Dorian returned to Maeve’s tower chao over all he had seen What she did during the day to keep Erawan froh his halls, she did not reveal

She’d brought the spiders, though Dorian had heard the servants’ terrified whispers about the fleeting portal that the queen had opened to allow in six of the creatures to the catacoic, allowed in the Valg princesses

Dorian couldn’t decide whether it was a relief that he had not encountered these hybrids yet Though he’d seen the emaciated human bodies, mere husks, that were occasionally hauled down the corridors Dinner, the guards carrying them had hissed to the petrified servants To feed a bottoer To prime them for battle

What the spider-princess creations could do, what they would do to his friends in the North … Dorian couldn’t stop recalling what Maeve had said to Erawan That the Valg princesses had been held here for the second phase of whatever he was planning Perhaps to ensure that they ell and truly destroyed once the bulk of his arh

It honed his focus as he hunted Pushed and nudged him onward, even when reason and instinct told him to flee this place But he would not Could not Not without the key

Sometimes, he could have sworn he felt it The key The horrible, otherworldly presence

But when he’d chase after that wretched power down stairwells and along ancient corridors, only dust and shadoould greet him

Often, it led hiuards posted outside One of the few reh other possibilities did still remain

The reek fro before he soared down the winding stair, the di to his fly’s senses It had been the safest form for the day The kitchen cat had been on the prowl earlier, and the Ironteeth witches hurried about the keep, readying for what he could only assu for the key since dawn, Maeve occupying Erawan’s attention in the western catacombs across the keep Where those spider-princesses tested their new bodies

He’d never gone so deep under the keep Beneath the storage rooeons He’d only found the stair by the smell that had leaked from behind the ordinary door at its top, the scent detected by the fly’s remarkable sense of smell He’d passed the door soit a mere supply closet--until chance had intervened today

Dorian rounded the last turn of the spiral stairs, and nearly tumbled from the air as the smell fully hit him A thousand times worse in this form, with these senses

A reek of death, of rot, of hate and despair The scent that only the Valg could suet it Had never quite left it behind

Turn back The warning was a whisper through his mind Turn back

The lower hall was lit with only a few torches in rusted iron brackets No guards were posted along its length, or by the lone iron door at its far end

The reek pulsed along the corridor, e

Would Erawan leave the key so unguarded? Dorian sent hisfor any hidden traps

It found none And when it reached the iron door, it recoiled It fled

He spooled his power back into hi it closer

The iron door was dented and scratched with age Nine locks lay along its edge, each e locks

He didn’t hesitate He aiap between the stones and the iron door, and shifted The fly shrank into a gnat, so small it was nearly a dustout the sainst his blood

It took hih-hewn cha froreenish flaht slid over the heap of black stone in the center of the roous

And all around it, built into shelves carved froleamed Wyrdstone collars

Only the instincts of his small, inconsequential body kept Dorian in the air Kept hihtless chamber The rubble in the center of the space

Erawan’s tomb--directly beneath Morath The site where Elena and Gavin trapped hius that could not be un Where, centuries later, his father had clai the Wyrdkey to unlock both door and sarcophagus, and unwittingly freed Erawan