Flashback ( PDFDrive )

Even Alvar looked shocked by the revelation.
But no one was as stunned as Tarina. “It can’t be,” she whispered,
stumbling forward and running her hand across the smooth metal.
“I assure you, it is,” Vespera told her.
“What is it?” Biana asked.
Tarina leaned closer, sniffing the earth around the curve of the
door. “It’s . . . a hive.”
Sophie frowned. “I thought your hives were connected to trees.”
“They don’t have to be,” Tarina told her, still sniffing the ground.
“All we actually need is a suitable space. But this . . . shouldn’t be
here.”
“No,” Vespera agreed. “It shouldn’t. And yet, here it is.”
“So this is the old hive, then?” Fitz asked. “That’s why I couldn’t
find it?”
Tarina shook her head, and her voice cracked as she said, “No, this
is something else.”
“It is indeed.” The smile on Vespera’s lips glowed in the dim light,
and it looked like there was actually some emotion behind it.
But it was a cold, vindictive kind of glee that had Sophie pulling her
cloak tighter around herself and checking to make sure the few
weapons she’d held on to were easily within reach.
“How did you know about this place?” Fitz asked, directing the
question to Alvar, who was making a slow circle around the shadowy
mound, still looking a little dazed—like maybe he’d only heard that
something was hidden there but had never actually seen it.
Vespera answered for him. “He learned from the same person who
told me: Orem.”