Phryne would not have lied in any case—not about this or anything else that had to do with accepting a dare. She was still trying to find her place in the family, her mother recently dead, and her father already beginning to drift away. What confidence she possessed derived in part from her legacy as part Amarantyne and part Belloruus and from an iron resolve that got her through everything difficult. She employed that resolve on this night and went into the tombs and touched the one that belonged to her father’s people.

She was on her way back again, feeling strong and steady as a result of her accomplishment when she encountered the dog, a creature fully six feet high at the shoulder and perhaps a dozen feet long. It came out of nowhere to confront her, blood dripping from its jaws and eyes burning like live coals. She froze where she was, unable to move, unable to do anything but stand there and wait to see what it intended. For a long time, it regarded her, as if measuring her value against its interest. But in the end, it turned away and vanished.

She came out of the Ashenell shaking in terror, unable to do anything but run home and cower under her sheets. When morning came she was herself again and decided it must have been an apparition.

But then she heard that a man engaged in breaking into one of the tombs had been killed that same night, his wounds indicating that he had been torn apart by a creature the like of which no one could even imagine.

So she did not discount the presence of magic and of things born of that magic. She did not think the Elven people brought such things to life intentionally, but she did think their use of magic left a residue and a legacy that allowed such things to come alive on their own.

“You should wait here,” she told Xac Wen, looking at the dark shadows of the mix of trees and tombs and markers.

“You should stop talking and just follow me,” he answered back.

Without waiting to see what she would do, he walked right through the gates and into the Ashenell. That boy’s got more courage than good sense, she thought. But she hurried after him.

She caught up to him and took over the lead. She knew in what section of the cemetery the Belloruus family was buried; she had been there more than once, although always in daylight except for that one unfortunate time. She also knew about the Belloruusian Arch. Constructed not long after the city and its populace had been carried out of the Cintra and resituated in this valley, it was the monument that defined the section reserved for the whole of the family and its various members.