Reia watched the mule train and half the cohort disappear into the ice fog with Roanstrike spearheading the soldiers. Her stomach rolled to watch them go.

She wanted to be the one heading back. Instead, she was forced to weather the cold looks of the men left behind. To endure Fagan's black nose and even blacker looks, knowing she had no allies in her cohort. Even after a fortnight, his nose was still askew—a constant reminder to her and those who supported him.

And then there was the added torture of feeling like a trapped fly as the outland's silent maw slowly closed in around her. Something was off with this place. The last thing she needed was for the cohort to split up.

Yet despite her wants, the freight carts were loaded with nixrath ore. A pall fell over the remaining cohort who watched the others withdraw into the mist. The mules strained at their collars, the traces taught as bowstrings. Their load was nothing to the mournful weight overshadowing the minefields.

Notwithstanding all the times she'd locked horns with Roanstrike the last two weeks, her throat tightened to see him fading from view.

He'd pulled her aside only moments ago and, without preamble, told her to watch her back. At first, she'd thought it a threat, but his face had been grim and he'd shot a troubled glare over her shoulder. He wasn't threatening her. He was warning her.

"What do you mean?" she'd asked, the hairs on her nape stiff. But she knew. She didn't need to hear the whispers. Not when she was confronted daily by speaking looks and abrupt silences whenever she drew near.

His gaze shifted back to meet hers, mouth tight beneath that unruly mustache coated in ice. "I mean what I say, Prefect. Keep alert...and try to make some fucking friends while I'm gone. If you want the men to warm to you, thaw up a bit."

How could she thaw up when her belly was filled with ice? "Roanstrike—"

"I mean it." He'd held her gaze a moment longer, one brow edging minutely upward. "Out here is where honor goes to die and men become wolves." He backed away. "Just watch your back. In a fortnight we'll return with fresh supplies." Then, before she could say anything else, he'd bellowed orders and the cohort had split in two.

Now, as she stood watching the bleak horizon, she felt more alone than ever before. As much as Roanstrike challenged and needled her, his absence was a far more insidious thing.

She turned her head slightly, her eyes pinning Fagan eating gruel by the fireside. He was throwing scraps at Matilda. The other tracker had departed with Roanstrike. Though she wished it otherwise, she'd been left with the worst of the two trackers. After Basil's birth, Matilda still wasn't fit enough for the trek home.

He glanced up at Reia as though he could feel her watching him. She forced herself not to look away even though his wormy glares unnerved her. At length, he finally turned away and she expelled a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. But the fact that he was first to look away was hardly a victory. Not with the grin making his face obscene. It curdled her blood to see it.

"Prefect!"

She turned to see Vestor striding toward her, his face coated in an unhealthy sheen. The first blade seemed agitated and his expression instantly lanced her with dread. "What is it," she asked as he reached her.

"We found another one," he said, his throat raspy. And then he turned away, his chest rattling with a wet cough. A cough that seemed to be getting steadily worse.

"Another body?" Her chest tightened. She didn't need to ask where.

Vestor nodded, catching his breath. He told her anyway. "South zone."

The crosscut tunnel on the north side was largely undamaged. On the south side, the first level in the vertical shaft was waterlogged and the support beams in ruin. They couldn't even begin repairs on the second level yet. Every day she was more and more behind schedule.

Another godsdamned body. That was twenty-three now. She wondered fleetingly about the significance of that number. She was twenty-three. It'd been twenty-three days since she'd departed North Gate. And tonight they'd be burning the twenty-third body excavated from the east mine.

Her brow furrowed as Vestor was seized by another fit of coughing, his face turning pallid. "Have you seen the physician?" she asked him, dread making her voice curt. Thaw up, she told herself. She thought about patting his shoulder.

"He gave me a poultice," said Vestor, "to sleep with on my chest and a tonic to drink."

"What tonic?" She watched as he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a leather flask. She took it from him and uncorked it, taking a dubious sniff.

The first blade watched her curiously. "I'm told it's some or other mushroom from an apothecary in South Gate."

It smelled putrid. Like ghoul fungus that tended to sprout on decomposing bodies. She pulled it away from her nose, grimacing. "I'll make you..." She stopped herself and cleared her throat awkwardly. "I'll make sure you're brought something a little better tasting." Something better smelling, too. It was a herb-infused honey she'd made the eve before they'd departed North Gate, and she still had a fair bit left over after treating her own cough last week. "My personal physician sent me out here with an excellent cough brew. I'll have Stellin deliver it to your barracks within the hour."

He seemed surprised by her solicitous offer. Maybe now she ought to pat him? "Thank you, Prefect."

She nodded, finally giving him an awkward pat on the shoulder. The ice in her belly thawed a little. He shifted, so she dropped her hand.

She couldn't spare him any spindle fern, though, she needed every drop of the rich herb for Basil's milk. But she'd noticed what looked like wild cherry growing on the south side of the camp kitchen. She'd use the bark to make him a tea. Frowning, she emptied his flask in the snow, half expecting vile mushrooms to sprout in the goop.

Vestor's brow creased, too, as he watched his tonic stain the snow a greenish brown.

"Go rest, Vestor. I need you strong and hearty."

"But, Prefect—"

"Go," she demanded again. "I can manage without you for a day." He didn't look well at all.

He cast her an assessing look. "Level one's still heavily flooded, Prefect. I'm needed down there—five of the miner boys took ill."

She kept her face blank, but she could already feel her brow breaking out in a cold slick. She'd made every excuse to avoid the south shaft. And it wasn't so much the waxy brown bodies they exhumed almost daily so much as the noxious water and darkness that served as their tombs. Every time a water-logged body was hauled to the surface, embalmed in mud, all she could see was her own face in the featureless mush.

Everyone thought her terrified of the bodies because she refused to inspect the south shaft. They thought her too good to get her hands dirty, despite that she'd worked long hours in the north zone, digging ventilation shafts, scurrying through low tunnels till her back ached, relaying buckets of ore alongside sick miner boys, all while sucking in bad air. But it was never enough. She was a woman, so she had the added weight of having to excel and work twice as hard, lest she be judged as weak and useless.

And the constant darkness above and below ground was wearing on her. The sun was spending less and less time above the horizon. The only light in her life, besides struggling campfires and abysmal oil lamps, was Basil. Every time she left the mines to check on him, to nurse him with the milk she'd made, she knew they all thought she was escaping the drudgery.

At least Roanstrike had taken it upon himself to oversee the south zone. It suited him to seem the brave and fearless one ready to muck in the black water. For once, it'd suited her, too. But he was gone now.

"We're behind schedule, Prefect."

"I know," she growled, feeling sick herself.

"I can't afford to take to a sickbed." The knowing prod of Vestor's gaze was making her squirm. And the only way she knew how to answer the obtrusion was to meet his eyes with a superior look she'd learned from Rafen. "I'll...I'll go. I'll take your place."

His eyes narrowed as though he'd mistaken her words. "You'll go down to first level?"

"You heard aright, Vestor."

He seemed surprised. "You're sure?"

Sweat turned to ice on her brow. Of course she wasn't fucking sure. "How" —she licked her chapped lips— "how deep is...the water?"

"Only waist deep, Prefect." His heavy gloves flew to his mouth, beset with another round of violent coughing.

She nodded, her stomach threatening to oust the cold porridge she'd forced down.

Nearby, a dog whined. It wasn't the only one who sensed a menace in the air. More than just the dogs were acting...off. A shadow lingered, pulling at the fine hairs on her nape—an almost constant ache.

Wheezing, Vestor said, "Something's got the dogs in a fret."

"It's a fretful place," she said, masking her fear behind a scowl. The birds had stopped chirping since yesterday.

Vestor barked another cough.

"For Maeda's sake, Vestor, get to bed before you cough up a lung."

He answered with a snort which relapsed into another round of ugly coughing. But he did as he was told and took his leave, his barking coughs fading as she headed off to her tent to check on Basil and to grab the cough tonic she'd promised Vestor.

But there was only so long she could put off the inevitable. Once she'd sent Stellin off with the tonic, she left her tent. Her breathing turned violent as she neared the south shaft, passing a man who was pushing a cart. He wheezed under the load, his face palled in mud. She tried not to look at the brown corpse in the cart, her brows pinched tight as she acknowledged the miner's tired salute.

Twenty-three. That's how many years she felt she'd aged in the last fortnight. The sound of the little cart moving off was swallowed by the roar of blood rushing in her ears. She was almost to the entrance, the wooden frame like a cage. Soon she'd be descending, gibbeted from that same rope ladder disappearing into the dark.

It was black as hek. And since they'd been excavating more dead bodies than silver ore, it'd become known as the Mouth of Hek. North zone had its own challenges, but at least it was dry and the entrance cut into the mountainside at a slight angle, so it was mostly horizontal. And there was noise and activity, unlike the gallows-deep silence that permeated this side. This shaft was nothing but a gullet, belching rotten fumes and gurgling with insidious black water.

Twenty-three. That's how many breaths she took before leaning in. She felt her gorge rise as she reached for the rope ladder. Her hands were shaking so fiercely that she clenched them tight and looked up to make sure no one was watching. Through the din of blood swarming in her ears, she heard the lunch bell toll. Her breath wheezed out, making her light-headed, and she staggered backward, hating what a coward she was.

One by one, the miners began to creep out of the hole like phantoms from a tomb. She stood aside, watching their little lamps yawn to life below, blinking in the eerie void. Tiny pinprick lights sputtering under the weight of darkness. They were hauling up water in their bronze buckets, emptying them down the hill once they'd emerged. And then they hurried into the hutch nearby to shed their tools and wet over-trews. There to don the warm gear before trudging downhill, rank and starving.

Reia watched the hapless crew, guilt tugging at her conscience. No wonder miners endured such short lifetimes. Her eyes crept back down into the mouth, her skin prickling with ice.

But movement in her periphery on the ridge up ahead tugged her from the darkness. Shivers crawled up her arms as she noticed the pansy. She'd not seen the awful plants since the night Basil was born. Had it moved? Impossible.

This one's head peered down at her from the ledge as though it was crouching for a closer look (Gods above, she was losing her mind, giving a flower a mind and a purpose). She could see nothing of it's body.

She wanted to rush over and take a closer look—sketch the petals, and pestle the roots to powder. To marvel at a flower that thrived in the snow. It was like nothing she'd ever seen—a giant, grinning pansy! But the hairs on her flesh raised the alarm, so she stood rooted. She'd learned from a young age to always heed her sense of fear.

To her right another two seemed to pop up out of nowhere. The hollow eyes stood out like a smear of inky black against the camouflaging white of its petal face. Evil leers for flowers. Their dual toned faces blended with the stark landscape of black rock and white snow. She ought to have noticed them in all this time. Or had the plants crept up overnight when no one was looking?, she noticed with a gasp, there were more to the left! She darted a look back at the one on the ledge and her heart dropped. It was gone!

A trickle of cold sweat slithered down her back. She was at the edge of the shaft now, but her eyes were transfixed by the grisly pansies who were creeping closer.

It was such a terrible, unbelievable sight that she gave little thought to the presence behind her. The crunch of snow at her back.

And then the world tilted violently—her body whiplashing forward. She screamed as she plummeted, tumbling into the dark. Panic and terror roared in her ears. It was as though the Mouth of Hek lunged up to swallowed her from the world.