It seemed impossible that they would descend, but they did—the ritual chamber was below sea-level, water held out with a lattice of spell-work that was centuries in the making. Every generation of necromancers added their own layers to maintain the sanctum’s integrity. The altar room at the Hideout was a similar space—tucked into the depths beneath to shield it from prying eyes. Cold continued to assault them as they made their way deeper into the necromancers’ lair. Cressia’s breath fogged past her veil. Elisabeth’s didn’t, her body temperature adjusting to the magic-laden air. It was a relief to let some of her shields drop. Seawater might have been held at bay, but moisture still clung to walls that glowed with witch-orbs and a dense growth of bioluminescent fungi.

  “When you tried to find the Atlas Stone, what happened?” Emilia walked a step ahead of Elisabeth, her body turned halfway to face her sister as she asked her question, clearly eager to hear the answer.

  “I asked, but they couldn’t find it. Just showed the damn thing to me, next to a skeleton’s hand, under water. And then told me to seek.”

  “Hmm. Did you try with blood?”

  “No.”

  “Why not, sister dear?”

  “The ghosts left no room for bargaining. Their message was clear.” She didn’t add that blood rarely enticed her shades. Emilia fell into silence, clearly thinking about the unsuccessful attempt to locate the Atlas Stone. Elisabeth didn’t like admitting that she wasn’t able to convince her own coterie of ghosts to give her the information. It felt like failure.

  At the bottom of the stairwell, a narrow landing led to a door, its perimeter carved with runes and sigils. To Elisabeth’s eyes, a faint shimmer covered the opening, but she knew that Cressia only saw an open doorway. A spell sealed the entry, visible only to the magically inclined. Captain Wolf motioned for the bodyguard to stop, and they both waited. In this situation, the necromancer took the lead over the former royal assassin. The two guests watched as the three sisters joined hands, and began to chant, their voices so low that Elisabeth couldn’t make out the words. Her skin itched as their magic rose, and the symbols around the opening flared a bright blue for a long moment, and then abruptly dimmed. The hags stopped chanting, and walked into the chamber beyond.

  “It’s safe to enter now,” Elisabeth assured her companion, and followed the group into the ritual room.

  Unlike the ostentatiously decorated upper level, the walls here were bare of bones, left naturally smooth from the constant seeping moisture. Three interconnected altars sat at the center of the room, each covered in bones—mostly rib cages—and topped with a handful of skulls—all of them anointed with the brown stains of old blood. Candles sat scattered between the relics. Their wicks ignited with a hiss, sparking up in blue flames. The floor around the pillars was carved with more symbols, their grooves filled with a dark sludge—remnants of old rituals. On the far side of the room, a large alcove contained shelves lined with jars brimming with blood and old organs alongside ornately carved boxes. The sisters crossed the room, each brushing a hand over their altar. They assembled in front of the niche and began to whisper to each other—planning how to approach the summoning, Elisabeth guessed, and left them to it. She stayed near the door, her back to the wall, Cressia between her and the opening, her eyes darting around the chamber, scanning for threats even in the seeming safety of the enclosed space. After the encounter with the abomination, Elisabeth didn’t blame the bodyguard. Nowhere was safe on Hag’s Rock.

  “Come here, Elisabeth,” Eve summoned her to the center of the room, gesturing toward the middle altar. “We’ll need your little lassy to show us what she showed you, and then we’ll take it from there.”

  Elisabeth sighed. “She won’t be able to help you.”

  “Just do as we ask. Can’t expect us to start with nothing. Not when you want answers to such difficult questions.”

  “Give me a minute, then.” She ground her teeth, not keen on bringing her coterie into this chamber. They might end up trapped, but if that was part of the sacrifice needed to gain the location of the Atlas Stone, she was willing to make it. Standing near the altars, she felt her sisters’ magic, and allowed her own to unfurl again. Elisabeth sank into the cool current of necromancy and beckoned to the ghosts that she called her own. Cerulean shapes flickered at the edge of her vision, but the spirits didn’t materialize.

  “Fuck,” she growled. Her sisters left their shields up—another damn test. Of course they wouldn’t just open the damn door. They always insisted on seeing how much power Elisabeth was able to wield. With a wrench, she pulled the woman’s spectre through the web protecting the chamber, and left the other ghosts hovering on the periphery. She needed just the one, and Elisabeth knew that this one was the most lucid. She was the one who had provided what little information they were willing to give back on the Silence. The wraith’s hair moved around its blue body as if floating, and her black eyes searched the room, an anxious gesture uncommon in the dead. Coming through the protective shield must have unsettled the ghost.

  “Tell them what you told me about the Atlas Stone. Show them what you showed me,” Elisabeth commanded. She ignored the spectre’s disheveled appearance, wrapping tendrils of magic around the spirit to keep her tethered to the room. The hags watched, hunger written across their faces that had nothing to do with food. They were greedy for the knowledge the ghost possessed.

  Images flooded into Elisabeth’s mind: a desiccated hand clutching a glittering jewel. A sarcophagus, its decorative adornments smoothed into oblivion by the water washing over the stone edifice—this part was new, and Elisabeth did her best to commit it to memory.

  “You must seek.” The spirit’s voice was quiet even in the silent chamber. “Seek.” The wraith appeared to be struggling, black eyes wild, hair whipping around her in an onslaught of movement. Its mouth opened in a silent scream, and then she lunged at Elisabeth, flickering out of existence before making contact with the necromancer.

  “Fascinating,” Eve observed.

  “It was attacked,” Emilia added.

  “In this chamber? Unlikely.” The words portrayed a certainty that wasn’t present in Eve’s tone and posture—her usually still hands tapped on the top of one of the skulls on her altar, and her normally straight back rounded.

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  “But what could harm a dead thing in here?” Esther wondered.

  “No matter.” Eve dismissed the speculation with a wave of her hand. “We know where to start.” Tension moved through the three for a moment, and ended when Emilia sighed, clearly unwilling to push the topic in front of their guests. Elisabeth suspected that the three hags would investigate the assault once there were no prying eyes and ears present to observe. Emilia moved back to the alcove, opened one of the ornate boxes, and pulled out a curved knife, its gold hilt set with sapphires, its edge honed. Next, she took one of the jars of blood. Hands full, she returned to her altar, muttering under her breath. Esther moved as well, taking a blade and jar from her own stash. Eve waited, studying Elisabeth while her sisters worked.

  “We’ll need fresh blood,” she said finally, gaze not leaving Elisabeth’s.

  “I brought you tributes.”

  “We’re saving those for something nicer than this little bit of magic.”

  “Then you’ll have to use your own.”

  “Give us a bit of your knife-bitch.” Eve’s eyes shifted to the bodyguard, assessing the woman who stood to the right of the door, ready to intercept anything that came into the chamber.

  “No.” Potentially sacrificing her coterie of ghosts was one thing, but Elisabeth wasn’t willing to give more than the bargain struck upstairs when it came to the living. “You have your gifts. And you’ve bargained for your payment. The terms are agreed.” Tension thrummed for a moment, and then Eve chuckled.

  “Oh, very well.” She turned her back on Elisabeth and made her way to the alcove, selecting her own items of power—a jar of blood, and a wicked-looking dagger. Its handle was carved bone, shaped so only someone familiar with the weapon could wield it without injuring themselves. With all three hags at their altars, the hum and itch of magic rose, and the temperature dropped. Elisabeth pulled a protective charm from one of the braids in her hair, walking back to Cressia as she pushed a touch of power into the trinket so it came to life.

  “Trust me,” she whispered to the guard and then quickly wove it into Cressia’s soft, fine hair. Whatever the three sisters conjured, the bodyguard now had some small protection from the magic coming into being within the chamber. Elisabeth turned back to watch the hags work.

  A rhythmic drone started from the three necromancers as they anointed the skulls on their altars with blood—each pricking their thumbs with the needles they kept tucked into the edifices for that purpose. Cressia’s breath fogged in the rapidly cooling air. The chant and slow build of power raised the hairs on Elisabeth’s arms. A cold tug of unexpected longing shot through her: she was part of no coven, and for an instant she regretted her solitary practice. The moment passed quickly, as Esther began to splash the blood from her jar across the floor; the crimson liquid quickly filled the grooves of the symbols etched there. The spell grew stronger. Emilia did the same. The spell grew stronger. Finally, Eve upended her jar as well. The spell grew stronger.

  Ice formed on the wet walls, but the blood steamed as it covered the sigils. The three hags raised their voices. Pressure built in the room.

  “We implore you to seek,” Eve droned, the first words Elisabeth understood, all the others were in a language only the hags and their spirits knew. “Show us the location of the Atlas Stone.”

  A ghost flashed into being in front of the three altars—dressed in officer’s garb of some sort, his head held high. An immaterial grey-blue hand rested on the hilt of a sword hung at his side.

  “My liege.” He swept a bow to Eve. “What you seek is not easily found.”

  “We know, but still, you will find it. Now seek.” The last word held a push of power that felt like a gutpunch to Elisabeth. The apparition disappeared, scattered into flecks of blue light around the room. Esther and Emilia continued to chant. Eve waited, eyes glowing with power and her connection to the wraith. He reappeared after only a few minutes. The same images floated through the room just above the altars: the desiccated hand, the jewel, the sarcophagus. But then a wider view: a large room, with crumbling stone walls, the ceiling letting water in through a gaping hole right above the stone coffin. The vision pulled back further, and the building was revealed to be an old keep, surrounded by forest on all sides but one. The open side was on a cliff above a wide bay, a deserted town nestled at its base.

  “The Atlas Stone is buried inside a sarcophagus,” the navy officer’s ghost informed his mistress.

  “We know this already.” Eve’s tone was impatient.

  “The sarcophagus is inside Herald’s Keep.” Silence greeted this statement. All of them knew that Herald’s Keep was lost when Rowan’s Shroud appeared.

  “Thrice-cursed bootlicker,” Elisabeth cursed the Skeleton King, again. Even if she could find Rowan’s Shroud, it was impenetrable. The only source of information about the place were old songs, and they all agreed that it was unreachable, and unbreachable. It had been an old pirate stronghold. A hundred years ago, or so the shanties say, it fell to a navy—none of the singers agreed on which one—and in its final, desperate moments a spell was cast. The songs also didn’t quite agree on who did it, but it didn’t matter. They all said it was the last pirate captain left standing. And he allowed something into the world that wasn’t meant to be here. All of the sources were vague on the beast's nature, as well. Once summoned, the pirates and navy did the only thing they could: they joined forces to contain the new threat.

  Elisabeth understood now that the Skeleton King’s errand was lunacy. He tasked her to find a mythical place, circumvent its equally mythical shield, locate a mythical trinket, all while also avoiding the notorious monster that guards the place, and is undoubtedly looking for a way to escape its prison. It was complete madness. And it was a quest destined to fail. Elisabeth ground her teeth. Determination blooming in her chest—she would find the Atlas Stone, and then she was going to kill the Skeleton King.

  “And where is Rowan’s Shroud?” Eve ignored Elisabeth’s outburst.

  “South, south, south and west.”

  “How many leagues?”

  “Many. Days and days south, days and days west. The sun rises, the sun sets, but not in Rowan’s Shroud.”

  “Cryptic nonsense.” Emilia’s comment drew her sister’s stare. Eve frowned.

  “Tell me. Where is the Atlas Stone?” She tried one more time.

  “Buried in a sarcophagus, beneath falling water, in Rowan’s Shroud.”

  “Very well. You are released.” Eve sliced the air over her altar with the dagger, and the ghost vanished. The pressure in the room released. The temperature rose by a few degrees, enough that the ice melted off the walls in slow drips and rivulets.

  The room stayed silent. All three hags stared at Elisabeth, their gazes hungry. The candles guttered, throwing smoke and nearly dying. When they recovered, their flames were black. A tremor ran through the room, the blood in the sigils crystalizing as it passed. The stone floor began to split, crumbling away beneath the altars. Something was coming. Elisabeth considered for a moment, looking around at the shivering walls, assessing the flow of magic in the room, its icy currents interwoven with something hot as lava. She locked eyes with Emilia, and saw her sister give an almost imperceptible nod. The decision was made. Elisabeth grabbed Cressia’s arm and pushed the bodyguard to the door.

  “Run!” She commanded. And they cleared the room just as a loud booming sound drowned out the renewed chanting of the necromancers.