The sun came up red over the Northern Crags and dragged its light down the peaks like something bleeding. From the last ridge they could see the den: a plateau of scorched rock below them, the stone melted and run in places like wax, vents in it breathing yellow steam.Stumps of burned pine stuck up out of the ground at angles. The air stank of brimstone; it got into Ethan's mouth and stayed there. He found his knuckles had gone white on the grip of the sword, and made them loosen, and they didn't stay loose.They're close. Celestia hadn't moved her lips. Her claw rested on the silver moon-script across her breastplate as if feeling for a pulse. There's heat moving under the rock.He nodded once. "Let's see if the plan survives contact."They went down a slope of loose shale on their heels and came to the plateau's edge. Below them, the pack moved among the vents—lean, heavy-shouldered hounds with eyes like dying embers. Some breathed fire. Some breathed a white cold that frosted the r

The Guild threw a celebration for him whether he liked it or not.They hung the great hall with banners. Torches blazed along the marble columns. Somebody had set up stalls along one wall selling food on sticks and, to Ethan's horror, little painted wooden figures of a man in blue armor holding a sword over his head, three coppers each, and broadsheets of the song about the Dragon Knight with all eleven verses printed on them. The story of the hellhound den had gone around Avelline twice and come back bigger each time. He had heard, that week, that he'd killed forty of them with one blow; that he wore the armor of a dead god; that he could open holes in the air and put people in them. People who'd looked at him with curiosity a fortnight ago now looked at him as if he might at any moment do something they could tell their grandchildren about.Celestia stood at the edge of it all with her back to a pillar, her long hair loose down her scaled shoulders, watching the crowd drift toward hi

They left Avelline at first light in the moss-colored cloaks the Guild issued for the marsh road—waxed, heavy, stitched along every seam with charms against damp and fever and the kind of bad air that settles over places where too many things have died. By noon Ethan understood why they'd bothered.The trail to the Eastern Marshes wound through reed beds taller than his head and pools of black brine that took his boots to the knee and sucked at them on the way out. Celestia walked with her wings half-lowered for balance, placing every step. His cloak dragged behind him through the water and left a wake of slow ripples, like fingers trailing."Stay close," she said. Her nostrils flared, and she didn't seem to like what came in through them. "Something died here that wasn't allowed to finish."Half-sunk ruins leaned up out of the reeds, arches and pillars and broken walls, green to the tops with slime, like the ribs of something enormous that had lain down here to rot a very long time ag

The deeper they went, the heavier the air became. Mist came up the steps to meet them and clung to their cloaks and did not let go. It pressed on Ethan's head as well as his shoulders—a weight behind the eyes, like the beginning of a fever—and the stones under his boots were wet, and when he put a hand on the wall to steady himself it came away wet too, and the wet was not water.Celestia went ahead of him with her wings half-open for balance. The only sound was the small, sharp click of her claws on the steps.She looked back. "Stay close. This place has been cursed so long it's forgotten how to be anything else."The sword in Ethan's hand was humming faintly against his palm, as it had on the first day in the clearing. He didn't like what it sounded like. It sounded eager."If this place is hungry," he said, "it's picked the wrong meal."It sounded less brave out loud than it had in his head.The stair ended and the dark opened out, and they were standing at the back of a cathedral.

The Eastern Marsh still stank of death when they came back to it, cloaked in the Guild's green once more, with three vials of bottled noon wrapped in cloth against Ethan's ribs. Seraphina's little bag of petals hung on its drawstring inside his collar. It helped. A little.The curse over the marsh had thinned since they'd broken the altar. The fog had fewer voices in it. The red vines on the tower had gone slack and grey and hung off the stones like dead hair. But it was still a graveyard, and it still felt like one, and every step toward the tower was a step back toward the pit."We're close," said Celestia. Her wings were half-spread, and her eyes moved over the mist.He felt the sword hum in the pouch at his hip. It had been waiting for this. "This time," he said, "we finish it."Down through the broken tower. Down the green spiral. Past the cavern with the split altar, where the dragon's skull still lay with its jaw closed. Down the old steps with the stale incense and old blood co