Chapter 25 — The Reliquary (Kade)
Kade went into the crypts three nights later, alone, against the healer's orders and everyone else's.
He told Cole it was because forty-one stitches don't stop a man walking. That was a lie. The truth was that he'd spent five years unable to protect anyone from anything, and there was a hole in his territory that a scentless thing had walked through to stand outside his sons' door, and he was not going to sleep until he had put his own hands in it.
The Pierce wine cellar smelled of vinegar and old money. The crawl behind the barrels was exactly where the royal search party's report said — a brick throat, waist-high, breathing cold air.
He went in with a shuttered lamp and his good arm forward.
Fifty yards of stooping, and the tunnel opened enough to s
