Sable, it said. She lied to you. Let me tell you what your mother really was.
I want to tell you I pulled my hand back. I want to tell you that every warning I'd been given, from the Goddess, from Alaric, from nine generations of warden fear soaked into those black walls, came to me in that moment and I did the wise thing.
I didn't. I was on my knees on a cold floor with Della's blood still in my nose and a hole in me where the last of my childhood used to be, and something in the dark had just said the one word I'd have crawled into a fire for.
"Then tell me," I whispered.
The voice sighed. Up through the stone, into my palm, into my chest, and it was warm. That's what nobody warns you about. You expect the thing under the door to sound like teeth. It sounded like a fire in a hearth.
