“Right as rain,” I snapped. I looked to Rory.

And let out a sharp cry.

I could see it, even in the dim light—even with water in my eyes. A massive dent in Rory’s breastplate.

He gasped for air. “Keep your balance. There are pikes at the bottom of this pit.”

I swore, then shouted once more at the gargoyle. “Throw something down to us.”

“There’s a hefty weave of rope here—oh, but Bartholomew!” He screamed. “There are worms on it.”

“Gargoyle!”

“Must I always save everyone?” He let out a string of language so jumbled not even a scribe of the Seacht could make sense of it, retrieved the rope, and threw it into the pit.

Rory and I hauled ourselves out.

“Well.” Rory lay on his back and wheezed. “At least we know we’re in the right tunnel.”

“That pike might have killed you.” I leaned over him and ran my hand over the angry dent in his breastplate. “Gods, I could kiss your armorer.”

“What about me?” The gargoyle was seething. “Is no one going to kiss me?”

Rory reached for his face—kissed his stone cheek. “Help me get this off.” He winced. “It’s getting hard to breathe.”

I helped the gargoyle undo the straps and hauled the breastplate off. Rory coughed, then went suddenly pale. “Fuck.”

He looked down at himself. At the tunnel floor. “It’s gone.” Panic touched his voice. “My coin.”

All three of us peered into the pit. The torrential current that had knocked us from our feet was now a steady drip. But the remains of it were still there—a black pool of water deeper than I was tall.

“All the armor comes off, then,” Rory said.

“You can’t jump in there,” I cried. “What about the pikes?”

He stripped his gauntlets. “I’ll avoid them.”

“There must be thousands of coins at the bottom of that pit!”

Off came his vambrace, pauldrons. “Gold ones. Mine’s stone.”

“And that shiny new bruise on your chest—no doubt over your lungs? What about that?”

Next were his cuisses and greaves. “I’m a good swimmer.”

“No, no, Bartholomew, better that I take the risk. I am very good at saving people, after all.” The gargoyle stretched his wings, suddenly heroic after his kiss. “What exactly am I looking for again?”

Rory shot me a heavy-lidded glower.

I bit down. “Do you really need the coin?”

“As much as you need your hammer and chisel.” Off came his chainmail.

I wasn’t going to win this. “Just… be careful.”

Rory stood before me in his under armor. Hooked my chin. “It means something that you care enough to argue.”

Breath fluttered out of me. “Maybe I just like fighting with you.”

“I’m sure that’s the only reason.” He brushed his thumb over my lips. Dropped a kiss onto my mouth, pulled back—then kissed me again, like he couldn’t help himself.

The gargoyle sighed. “Really, Bartholomew, when are you going to put her out of her misery and tell her you love her?”

Rory’s dark eyes roamed my face. He grinned.

Then disappeared down the rope into the pit.

For a time there was nothing, just silence and the occasional sound of Rory in the water. The air in the tunnel was tepid, oppressive, and it was dark. So very dark.

Still, I saw it.

A shadow, darting past my periphery.

“Gargoyle?”

He was next to me, eerily still as he looked down the tunnel. “I saw it, too,” he whispered.

“Is someone there?” I called out.

Is someone there? my echo answered.

I rubbed my eyes and tried to see into the impenetrable darkness.

There was a clacking—so near I felt it in my chest. Clack, clack.

Clack, clack, the echoes sounded. Clack, clack.

Prickles rose on the back of my neck. “Rory.” I leaned over the pit and tugged the rope. “The Heartsore Weaver, Rory.”

But my voice never found him under the water.

The gargoyle gasped. “Look, Bartholomew.”

Out of the darkness, a shadow shifted. It came toward me, and I saw that it was small and on wings. Pale and delicate as gossamer.

A moth.

It fluttered to my face, so close its wings stirred my lashes, then withdrew, fluttering back down the tunnel from whence it had come.

“Wait for Rory,” I told the gargoyle, and stole after it.

The tunnel drew close around me, swallowing me down its throat, and I made myself small to fit, keeping my gaze ever on the moth.

There were more, I realized. Dozens of moths on the walls of the tunnel, their pale, fluttering wings beckoning me. I was on my hands and knees now, the tunnel so constrictive I thought it might strangle me. But the moths kept fluttering, and I kept following, and suddenly I was spat out into a new cavern.

I expected more darkness. And there was. But there was also the night sky. An opening in the cliff, roots and moonlight pouring in. I was in an oblong chamber, with walls of crude rock. Hundreds of weavings hung like tapestries around me. And from the weavings—

Little white sacks hung. Cocoons. Beneath them was a stone bench, stationed against the wall, and upon it—

A woman.

A naked woman, who lay supine and still, a shroud over her eyes.

The world went still. “One?”

I stumbled forward. Banged my knees upon the stone bench. “One.”

Mottled skin. Gray lips. Hands folded over her breasts, One lay upon the bench, her short brown hair fanning around her like a burned-out halo. When I touched her neck, searching for a pulse that was not there, her skin was as cold as stone.

She looked like she was resting, but it wasn’t rest. Whatever dream One walked in now brooked no awakening. She was lost, adrift, gone. No, it wasn’t rest.

It was sleep, eternal.

A cry ripped up my throat.

“Shhh,” came a woman’s low, craggy voice. “Not all have woken.”

I reeled.

Out of shadow, slow and rigid, a figure came, her steps an ominous clack, clack against the cave floor. “It’s been a long time since anyone’s tripped my little snare,” she said. “Or made it out of my pit.”

She didn’t wear a cloak like she had when she’d come to my room last night. It was the same face I’d seen.

But it wasn’t a woman.

She looked like one of Aisling Cathedral’s gargoyles—hewn entirely of limestone. She had wings, tucked against jagged shoulder blades. A head like a goat, with gnarled four-digit paws for hands and hooves for feet. And her eyes, wide and pallid…

Were just like the other Omens’. Just like my batlike gargoyle’s.

Just like mine.

“You—” My armor clattered as I rose to my feet, standing in front of One. “You’re the Heartsore Weaver?”

“Weaver, I was. Heartsore, I am eternally.” The Omen came forward, looking at neither me nor One. She was peering upon her wall. Staring through stone eyes at the white silken cocoons attached to the thread. “You must be quiet. My moths are still sleeping,” she rasped. “Frail little things, they are.”

She began to hum. Tuneless, cacophonous.

I watched her, skin crawling. I did not want her to know how well she terrified me. “Where is your loom stone, Omen?”

“No loom. No loom stone.” She nodded at the tapestry upon the wall. “Once, I wove the finest garments in Traum. Silk robes, I made. But that was a long time ago.”

She kept staring at her tapestry, and I followed her eyes. The cocoons had attached themselves to one particular weaving, as if the sprites favored it. It was fashioned in a beautiful braid that ran along the wall. Not woolen, but fine. Thin, sheer, and pale.

Gossamer.

Diviner shrouds.

I let out a wretched sound.

“Hush,” the Heartsore Weaver rasped, looking down at One. “They come to me every ten years, Aisling’s Diviners, brought by gargoyles. Naked but for their shrouds, and always, always, dead. Still, they smell of spring water.” Her throat hitched. “Taste of it, too, I imagine.”