She looked at her hands. Her fingernails had blackened into claws. She could smell the fear on him—acrid, electric—and beneath that, something sweeter. His heartbeat. She could hear it. She could taste it.
Now she understood. The soil had not healed her. It had marked her. A seed, planted in childhood, waiting fourteen years for rain. The contamination had not invaded her. It had returned to her, like a debt called due. contamination corrupting queens body and soul
The wound had closed within an hour. She had never told anyone. She looked at her hands
Elara dismissed him. She was wrong to do so. His heartbeat
She opened her mouth. The thing beneath the city opened its mouth. They were the same mouth now.
Not the city of stone and steel and cathedral spires. The other city. The one beneath. The warren of catacombs and sewers and forgotten foundations. She saw the roots of the city—not tree roots, but something else. Veins. Arteries. The city was not built on soil. The city was built on something that had been sleeping.
“It’s the soil,” said the gardener, whose name had been Tomas until his eyes turned the color of tarnished copper. He stood in the queen’s audience chamber, his fingernails black with earth. “The soil beneath the city. It’s hungry.”