Chapter 4: Bloodlines and Foxes (2)

"Because I just remembered what's behind it." He was watching the door like it was watching him back. "The priests didn't bury the thing in the mountain. They buried it in the covenant — in the bloodline. That door doesn't hold a monster, Iris. It holds the first priest. The one who started all of it. And he's been waiting a thousand years for the key to come back so he can walk out of the mountain wearing whatever he finds on the other side."

The stone in her pocket grew hotter. The door's hollow began to glow, soft and patient, and the fog far above sighed her name in a voice that was almost friendly.

"Iris… come and open me…"

Rex's ears flattened. "Nope. Nope, I know that tone, that's a 'I've been trapped for a millennium and I'm about to make it everyone's problem' tone, we should go."

"Kael." Iris's voice was tight. "How do I make it stop?"

"You don't." He was already moving toward her, black cracks blazing up both arms. "You leave the stone in the tunnel and let the mountain close over it. It'll sleep another thousand years."

"And the thing calling my name?"

"Will keep calling." He stopped a foot from her, silver eyes burning. "But it won't be answered. That's the deal I made a thousand years ago, and that's the deal I'll keep. Now give me the stone."

The door's glow brightened. The pool began to ripple.

Iris looked at the stone in her palm, then at the door, then at the man whose arms were literally burning because he was close to her again, because he'd chosen to stand between her and a thousand-year-old nightmare that wanted to wear her skin.

She took a breath. "Okay. New deal."

"There is no new deal."

"You're wrong." She stepped past him, toward the door, and Kael's hand closed on her wrist — gentle, urgent, burning with black cracks.

"Iris—"

"Trust me for once." She looked back at him, and she smiled, and it was the smile of a woman who had spent eighteen years walking into locked rooms. "I'm a forensic scientist. I don't open doors. I read them."

She didn't put the stone in the door.

She turned it edge-on, like a scalpel, and ran it along the symbols on the doorframe — fast, precise, following the pattern her mother's letter had burned into her memory. The glow on the door stuttered, flickered, hissed — like a thing that had been promised a meal and was being handed a menu instead.

The pool's ripples stopped. The fog's sigh cut off mid-word.

The mountain, offended, went silent.

Rex exhaled a breath he'd been holding for his entire life. "She read the door. She read the door. Do you know how long I've been waiting to see someone read that door instead of opening it? A thousand years! Me, and apparently also the scary one!"

Kael was staring at her. The black cracks on his arms were receding — slowly, like the curse itself was confused. "How did you know the pattern?"

"My mother." Iris slid the stone back into her jacket. "She taught me a nursery rhyme when I was six. I forgot it for eighteen years. It came back just now, word for word, while the door was trying to eat me." She looked at him. "She knew this would happen. She knew I'd come back. She locked my memory on purpose so the mountain couldn't read it — so I'd be a key the door couldn't open."

For a long moment, Kael said nothing. Then he said, quietly: "Your mother was the best of them."

"Don't." Her voice cracked, just once. "Don't make me feel things about this. We're in a tunnel with a haunted door and a con-artist fox, I don't have time for feelings."

"I take offense at 'con-artist.'" Rex's tail puffed. "I prefer 'opportunity engineer.' Also we should leave, because the door is mad and mad doors have friends."

The fog above them screamed again — closer this time, and this scream was personal.

They ran. Rex led, Kael covered, and Iris carried the stone that a thousand-year-old ghost had tried to steal from her pocket. They burst out of the seam into grey dawn, rain-soaked and gasping, and behind them the valley's fog closed over the crack like a wound healing.

And waiting for them at the tree line, white dress immaculate despite the rain, was the woman from last night.

Luna smiled at Iris with a warmth that did not reach her eyes. "So. You read the door." She clapped, softly, like a hostess applauding a parlor trick. "How wonderful. The first priest's favorite game was never the lock, you know. It was the reader. He fed on the ones who thought they could outsmart him." She tilted her head. "You've just made yourself the most interesting person in this valley, Iris Voss. Congratulations."

"And the most flammable," Rex muttered.

Luna's gaze slid to Kael, and the warmth in her voice went one degree colder. "The clan elders are convening, Kael. They've heard the mountain call your witch's name. They want to know whose side you're on." A pause. "So do I."

She turned and walked into the fog, and the fog swallowed her without a sound.

Back at the lodge, Iris sat on the bed, the stone in her lap, and tried to order the night's data: a door that wanted to eat her, a rhyme from her mother, a fox who knew the seam better than the valley's king, and a woman in white who smiled like a blade.

Her phone buzzed.

She's awake. Bring her to the church at midnight. Or we'll come to you. — V.

Iris looked at the text for a long time. Then she walked to the window, where Kael stood watching the valley, and held up the phone.

"Tell me about Victor," she said. "And tell me why the sheriff of Black Pine is taking orders from a name that isn't in any record I've ever found."

Kael looked at the screen. For a long moment, he said nothing.

Then he said: "Victor isn't a man, Iris. He's the name the priests left behind. The first one." His silver eyes met hers through the glass. "And tonight, he's going to walk into that church and ask you to open the door for him."

"Then I'll do what I did to the door." Iris slid the phone into her pocket. "I'll read him."

"Destiny is just a lie told by the winners," Kael said, and the ghost of something — almost a smile — moved at the corner of his mouth. "You told me that the first night. I've been thinking about it."

"Iris." She corrected him, and she was smiling too, and neither of them knew why it felt like a promise. "If you're going to quote me, get the name right."

— End of Chapter Four —

Volume Two: The Blood-Bound Cage