When the door to the staircase slid back into place and shut out the sun, I shivered but kept going. I made a Faerie flame dance on my palm, but it didn't do much to dispel the gloom around me. It did enlighten the words on the arch at the end of the small chamber at the bottom of the stairs: Memento Mori—remember, you will die. Fae didn't like the reminder. We preferred to think our long lives made us immortal, and so we put off thinking about death as long as possible. A ten-thousand-year sleep before reincarnation felt the same as death, for we wouldn't necessarily remember who we'd been. The old lady in Aoine's castle was an exception, which made her powerful.
But that still didn't answer my question—what was Ellerin doing down here?
I'd been to the catacombs once, when I was a girl.
