For the key had come at a price. And, rightly or wrongly, she felt a debt was owed for the betrayal.
Perhaps he sensed this and wished to spare her (although he need not have, for she wanted him; in every way a woman could want a man, she wanted him), because he took her face gently in his hands, and, nose to nose with her in the flickering dark, asked, “Are you scared?”
She glanced up and down his face. “Of what has been put before us?” She shook her head slowly. “Not so long as we face it together.” She wiggled against him, shivering slightly. “It has grown cold; the great vent we passed upon first entering Cuniculum Amoris, and the others we have seen? It is as though they blow cold air ... as though the quake has disrupted something in the bowels of Ursathrax herself.” She moved the
