We don’t stop until a figure appears at the end of the tunnel. It’s Magpie, holding up a lantern. Lark collapses at her feet, gasping. “Oh, thank gods. You heard us.”

“Heard what?” Magpie asks. There’s a tight, unhappy look on her face.

I clutch at the stays of my corset, gasping for breath. I want to tell her what we found, that the dowsing rod worked…but then the shadows behind her move.

And I realize she’s not alone.

A very large—and very grim-faced—Taurian is right behind her.

Hawk.

Shit.

TWENTY-SEVEN ASPETH

3 Days Before the Conquest Moon

Apparently when one finds a dead body in the tunnels—a not-uncommon occurrence—one must call in the guild authorities. Our tunnel is roped off, sealed with guild flags, and Magpie wastes no time shouting at us as Drop Thirteen is closed off to our Five.

“You were supposed to be looking for artifacts, not for bodies,” she tells us. “Idiots!”

“Why is anyone even dowsing at all? That’s nothing but mucking fairy tales,” Hawk growls.

We’re silent, chastised. Well, except for Gwenna. She glares at Magpie as if she’s responsible for our troubles.

“Maybe he had an artifact on him,” Mereden says in a small voice.

“He didn’t.” Hawk’s voice is harsh, and he hasn’t stopped scowling since we ran into him.

It’s been nearly a full day of guild rigmarole and politics since we returned. The guild wants to claim the new chamber because guild law states that a dead body must be investigated. Magpie wants to have the drop because she claims that it’s ours until we release it back to the guild. That we’ve staked our claim and anything found there will belong to her house.

In the meantime, a team has returned with preliminary information while we rested, cleaned up, and ate and guild healers looked us over. It seems that our collapsed tunnel was not always collapsed, and that the spot we’d dowsed at was the thinnest spot in the walls to get through to the other chamber. The new chamber is the remains of an old bathhouse, which excites me. Some of the most interesting things have been found in Old Prell’s drains, and now that I’m over being scared of a corpse, I want to return and see what we can find.

“Absolutely not,” Hawk says, and he’s in agreement with the guild. His expression is ice-cold as he regards us, as if we’ve done something wrong.

“It’s our claim,” Magpie argues with him. “And that body was ancient. He wasn’t guild. He wasn’t even a guild ancestor. He might have dated back to Prell himself.”

“How was there so much of him left?” Gwenna asks.

“There was hardly anything,” Lark protests. “He was nothing but bugs and bones.”

“Natron,” I say absently. The others in my group turn to me, and I continue explaining. “It’s well-documented that the lichen that grows in the tunnels produces natron. It slows down the decay of everything. It’s one reason why the bodies in the tombs last for so long down in the Everbelow.”

“I find it creepy that you know that,” Mereden says. Kipp looks rather disgusted, too.

Hawk doesn’t budge. “I don’t care if that corpse was from yesterday or from Old Prell. Let the guild determine if it’s safe before you send a pack of fledglings back down there.”

“Then you come with us,” I say brightly. “You can watch over us and we can excavate and look for artifacts.” Truly, I’m thinking of all the things my father’s pipes master has found in the hold’s sewer lines. Rings. Necklaces. Carved toys. He’d once found a hand. And while I don’t relish the thought of finding that, I’d be happy with nearly everything else, especially if the cavern has been collapsed for so long that it hasn’t been ransacked by the guild yet.

The look he shoots me is positively hair-curling, and for a moment, I wonder what I’ve done wrong to incite such anger from him. “You and I need to talk.”

“We’re talking right now—”

He moves to my side and grabs me by the arm, escorting me out of the dorm’s kitchen, which has become our unofficial meeting area. I trot at his side, a knot in my throat and a flutter in my stomach because the last time he was high-handed with me, we’d practically fornicated in an alley.

And I’m utterly shameless because the thought of doing so again excites me.

“You’re not going down there again,” he tells me the moment he has me in the hall. “Absolutely not.”

“If you go with us, we’ll be safe,” I say, my expression encouraging. “I trust you.”

“Do you?” He arches a brow and then looms over me, his arm braced over my head. I get the impression that I’m supposed to be afraid, that he’s using his power and build to try to intimidate me into seeing things his way, but it just turns me on.

“Of course I trust you. You’re my husband.”

“Then tell me who you met at the tavern the other night, and I’ll go with you,” he says, voice silky smooth. “I’ll tell Magpie to send you down again and I’ll supervise. I just need a name, Aspeth.”

My entire body locks up and I go cold. “It’s no one important, I swear.”

“Then tell me a name.”

“I can’t.”

He gazes down at me, his expression full of frustration. “I wonder about you sometimes.”

“I promise I’m not very exciting,” I tell him, my expression falsely bright. “I’m just a woman who loves Old Prell and wants nothing more than to study it.” I reach up and caress his face, so strange from my own yet so comfortably familiar already. “That’s all there is to me.”

“Is that so?” He leans in ever so slightly. “I think you’re lying, Lady Aspeth Honori.”

The breath catches in my throat. My name. He knows my name and who I am.

I’m fucked.

TWENTY-EIGHT HAWK

Earlier

5 Days Before the Conquest Moon

There’s nothing quite like having a new wife to make you question your sanity.

I should be upset over the stranger she met at the inn. I should be furious. I should march down there and question every person who’s ever gone in and out those doors and not let up until I get an answer. But the Conquest Moon is coming closer and closer, that annoying circle in the sky shining brighter with every day, and it’s making me irrational.

I’m upset over Aspeth meeting a stranger, true, but when I try to think about that night, all I can think of are the soft cries she made as I ground my cock against her skirts. The way her slick cunt felt under my fingers. The way she watched the others with such avid interest. It’s the rut that won’t let me focus on anything but her, and I don’t trust myself to climb into bed next to her that night, or any of the next several. Last night, I stayed in the kitchen, drinking an herbal tea that’s supposed to deaden the hunger that the Conquest Moon brings on.