CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The air grew colder the closer we rode to the Keep. I didn’t even realize I’d been holding my breath until my vision went spotty. I let it out slow and leaned my forehead against the silver bars. The metal was freezing. Figures.

I let the world blur around me as hooves clattered against stone, echoing off buildings that looked too perfect and uniform to be real. The air smelled like incense and sea salt and something else… something sharp.

Blood. Old blood.

Holy place, my ass.

Mafos, the goblin, had long shed whatever fear he’d once had of me. He’d been chattering beside my cage since, going on about where we were headed.

I suspected it was less about me and more about how no one else wanted to listen. Vasska certainly didn’t.

I, ever the cooperative captive, responded with my polite little ohhs and ahhs.

Mafos made the city sound like paradise.

And then it rose before us — vast, cold, and beautiful — like something sculpted from a nightmare, as everything in Erevar tended to be.

Hal