Chapter 14 · Borrowed Shadow

The drop's maybe ten feet but it feels like fifty.

Rona hits packed dirt and her knees scream. Above her Grimm's yelling something but the hole swallows it. The walls down here aren't dirt anymore. They're slick and black and they're moving.

Not moving. Breathing.

"Don't touch the wall!" Ghost's voice comes from deeper in, ragged and wrong. "Kid, I said don't—"

"Shut up." Rona pushes to her feet. Her blood-bond system's already awake, that itch under her sternum she's learned to hate. It wants Ghost. It wants her alive. "Where are you?"

"Doesn't matter. Climb back up."

"Can't." Rona squints into the dark. The hole extends back into a tunnel, low and narrow. The walls pulse with something that isn't light. "My dad's up there and he's not letting me out until you're dead or he is."

Ghost laughs. It's a broken sound. "Smart man."

"You knew my mom."

Silence. Then, "Yeah."

"You called her something. A name."

"I called her a lot of things." Ghost's voice is closer now. Rona edges forward, one hand on the tunnel roof, careful not to brush the walls. "Most of them got her killed."

The itch under Rona's ribs kicks harder.