Page 69 of In Darkness Forged

It occurred to Aislin as she took her first steps down that dark hole in the mountain that she should still be terrified. But terror seemed little more than a blurred and distant memory beside the urgency of her errand.

With the faintly glowing dagger held low in front of her, she took one grim step after another, past the evidence of Tal’s initial victories and into the unknown territory beyond. She had no idea how far it might be to the queen’s lair, or even if this was the right tunnel, only that she had no time to waste. Tal’s life might even now be slipping away, and the residual magic in the dagger would eventually subside, leaving her in darkness.

So she pressed on, stumbling over the uneven floor, peering into the shadows ahead, hoping not to see movement. Praying that there were no more guards for her to encounter.

The tunnel delved deeper and deeper until she was no longer certain how long she’d been walking. Possibly mere minutes, perhaps for days. It was like moving through a waking nightmare, where nothing seemed quite real and only the next step forward mattered.

She was so focused on that next step that she almost didn’t realize when she stumbled out of the tunnel and into a cavern so vast that her light could not reach the other side.

The moment her chin lifted, she saw the walls. Watched as they seemed to ripple in the reflected light from the dagger—as if they were not made of rock, but…

Aislin tried to deny her own eyes, but it was impossible. The cavern walls were entirely shrouded in ghostly silken strands that vibrated gently with the disturbance of her entry. Every surface she could see, stretching out far beyond her into the darkness, shone dimly with an almost imperceptible radiance.

She had stepped right into a trap—a vast web made of millions of threads, all woven together to create a shimmering cocoon. Or, more accurately, a nest.

After nearly dying so many times, after believing her quest was all but impossible, she’d actually found the aranthas’ hiding place. And at first glance, it seemed abandoned. No chitinous legs scurried out of the corners, no eyes reflected the glow of her blade.

Was she too late? There was no sign of battle, no blood or remnants of mangled arantha corpses.

So she took another step, and her foot sank slightly into the elastic threads of the vast web. It jerked beneath her weight, and something in the darkness in front of her began to move.

An immense, dark shape unfolded from where it rested in the center of that silken cocoon. It spread out its legs with graceful deliberation, rising from them to a height several times Aislin’s own before turning toward the source of the disturbance.

Aislin choked, her hand shaking so hard she nearly dropped the dagger, her breath turned to lead in her lungs.

It was coming. Gliding forward effortlessly across the slender strands of silk covering the floor.

And as it loomed over her, Aislin could only stare, dumbfounded, at a creature she could not have conjured even in her darkest imaginings.

It was a spider, and yet it was not. The dark, swollen body and eight jointed legs were much the same, yes. But rising out of that body was a torso that looked for all the world like a human woman.

From the waist up, it was covered in dusky gray skin, and its claw-fingered arms were dusted with fine dark hairs. A long, graceful neck supported a shapely head with wildly tangled dark hair and an eerily human face, out of which two golden eyes regarded her with a pitiless stare.

She had found the Arantha Queen.

Aislin could no more have killed her than she could have flown across the sea.

The Queen’s wide, fanged mouth opened, but she did not bite.

She spoke.

“You have come far only to seek your death.”

Whatever language it might be, Aislin did not know the words, but the meaning echoed inside her head and tasted of magic.

“I did not come here to die,” she responded, and if her voice shook, there was no one to hear her but the Queen.

“To die or to kill, those are the only reasons,” the Queen replied. “And you, little one, are not a killer.”

How could she know? How was this even happening? Had Aislin, too, been bitten, and was she now lying in a dreaming sleep, awaiting her own death?

But even if it was a dream, what did she have to lose?

“I came not to take a life, but to save one,” she said, tilting up her chin to look the Arantha Queen in her eerie golden eyes. “My companion has saved my life many times over, and now he lies near death. I had heard…”

It struck her suddenly that telling the Queen she’d come to steal her venom might be unwise.

“You heard that my venom might save him.”