2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

So I dressed for battle once again.
Rhys flew us in close to low tide, dropping us off before taking to the skies, where he’d
circle, monitoring the guards on the island and mainland, while we hunted.
The muck reeked, squelching and squeezing us with every step from the narrow
causeway road to the little temple ruin. Barnacles, seaweed, and limpets clung to the dark
gray stones—and every step into the sole interior chamber had that thing in my chest
saying where are you, where are you, where are you?
Rhys and Amren had checked for wards around the site—but found none. Odd, but
fortunate. Thanks to the open doorway, we didn’t dare risk a light, but with the cracks in
the stone overhead, the moonlight provided enough illumination.
Knee-deep in muck, the tidal water slinking out over the stones, Amren and I surveyed
the chamber, barely more than forty feet wide.
“I can feel it,” I breathed. “Like a clawed hand running down my spine.” Indeed, my
skin tingled, hair standing on end beneath my warm leathers. “It’s—sleeping.”
“No wonder they hid it beneath stone and mud and sea,” Amren muttered, the muck
squelching as she turned in place.
I shivered, the Illyrian knives on me now feeling as useful as toothpicks, and again
turned in place. “I don’t feel anything in the walls. But it’s here.”
Indeed, we both looked down at the same moment and cringed.
“We should have brought a shovel,” she said.
“No time to get one.” The tide was fully out now. Every minute counted. Not just for
the returning water—but the sunrise that was not too far off.
Every step an effort through the firm grip of the mud, I honed in on that feeling, that
call. I stopped in the center of the room—dead center. Here, here, here, it whispered.
I leaned down, shuddering at the icy muck, at the bits of shell and debris that scraped
my bare hands as I began hauling it away. “Hurry.”
Amren hissed, but stooped to claw at the heavy, dense mud. Crabs and skittering things
tickled my fingers. I refused to think about them.
So we dug, and dug, until we were covered in salty mud that burned our countless little
cuts as we panted at a stone floor. And a lead door.
Amren swore. “Lead to keep its full force in, to preserve it. They used to line the
sarcophagi of the great rulers with it—because they thought they’d one day awaken.”
“If the King of Hybern goes unchecked with that Cauldron, they might very well.”
Amren shuddered, and pointed. “The door is sealed.”
I wiped my hand on the only clean part of me—my neck—and used the other to scrape
away the last bit of mud from the round door. Every brush against the lead sent pangs of