Kaelen strained against the web.

His massive muscles bulged. His claws sawed at the white strands wrapped around his torso, his arms, his neck. But the web was so fucking strong that all his efforts were in vain. The blades of his axes, still strapped to his belt, couldn’t reach the binding strands. His claws, sharp enough to rend steel, barely scratched the surface.

He growled in frustration but he soon stopped moving.

The darkness around him was absolute. Pitch black. Not even the glow of phosphorescent moss penetrated this deep. But Kaelen could feel the floor beneath him—slimy, wet, warm. It pulsed faintly, like something alive. Like something breathing.

Like something salivating on him.

His yellow eyes adjusted to the dark, but there was nothing to see. Just shadows upon shadows upon shadows.

And then he knew.

This must be the nest.

Whatever had brought him here—the web, the yank, the endless drag through winding tunnels—had brought him to the center of it all. To the place where the queen spider laid her eggs. To the place where she fed.

To the place where she would devour him.

Kaelen stopped struggling.

He felt himself being lifted from the ground. The web around him tightened, pulling him upward, suspending him in the darkness. More strands wrapped around his legs, his tail, his snout. They covered his eyes, his mouth, his nostrils.

He couldn’t breathe.

The web constricted. Tighter. Tighter. A cocoon formed around him—thick, white, suffocating. He could feel the pressure building in his chest, his head, his claws.

Then something pierced his skin.

A stinger. Long. Thin. Sharp.

It injected something into him—cold, burning, spreading through his veins like liquid ice. Kaelen tried to roar, but no sound came out. His muscles went slack. His vision blurred. His mind slipped away.

Consciousness left him almost immediately.

He didn’t feel the stinger retract. He didn’t feel the web lower him onto the slimy floor. He didn’t feel the warmth of the chamber or the skittering of tiny legs around him.

He didn’t feel the egg being implanted into his body.

But it was there.

And there was no doubt that he was about to suffer the same fate as the bodies Jason and the others had found. The corpses with their torsos ripped open. The cavities filled with larvae. The squirming, pulsing, hungry things that grew inside the living.

Kaelen hung in the darkness, cocooned and unconscious, as the queen’s children began to feed.

-

At least a hundred spiders rushed in.

They poured from the tunnel ceiling, walls, and floor—a tidal wave of chitin and legs and dripping mandibles. Their eyes gleamed in the dim firelight, dozens of them, hundreds, reflecting the flames like tiny mirrors.

Ylva took the front.

She positioned herself at the entrance of the corpse chamber, her claws extended, her body low to the ground. The first three spiders lunged at her simultaneously. She didn’t flinch. Her claws slashed across their abdomens in a single fluid motion—left, right, then a spinning backhand that decapitated the third.

Three bodies hit the stone floor, legs twitching but more rushed in from above.

They dropped from the ceiling on thin silk threads, landing on Ylva’s shoulders, her back, her legs. She shook them off with a growl, crushing one under her boot, tearing another in half with her bare hands. The spiders showed that they didn’t have any durability. They were weak. Frail. Their chitin cracked like eggshells under her claws.

Mae took the back.

She positioned herself behind Ylva, her sword drawn, her eyes scanning for any spider that slipped past the werewolf’s defenses. As a healer, she could not fall. This was crucial. One injury to Mae and their only source of recovery would be gone.

Thalion stood in the middle, his pale hands clenched at his sides. His silver hair whipped around his face. His jaw tightened.

He was contemplating disobeying Jason.

He knew he could kill all of them in one fell swoop. A single spell. A flick of his wrist. Every spider in this chamber would detonate like overripe fruit, their guts painting the walls. It would be easy. It would be over.

But he had to obey Jason.

Jason, for some reason, kept him controlled. Kept him grounded. Kept him from becoming the monster that Tauriel had molded.

So Thalion fought with his hands.

He stepped forward and grabbed the nearest spider by its legs. He ripped them off—one, two, three, four—then used the creature’s own mandible to stab it through its eye. Another spider lunged at his back. He caught it mid-air, crushed its skull between his palms, and threw the corpse at three more.

They went down in a heap.

Thalion killed seven spiders in the span of ten seconds. His movements were precise, efficient, brutal. Centuries of torture had not erased his combat training. If anything, it had sharpened it.

Jason, on the other hand, couldn’t even kill one.

He swung his short sword at a spider that had crawled too close. The blade bounced off its chitin, barely scratching the surface. The spider turned to face him, its mandibles clicking.

Jason swung again but missed.

The spider lunged. Jason jumped back—and was surprised to find that he was actually agile. His feet moved faster than he expected. His body reacted before his brain could catch up. He dodged left, then right, then ducked under a spray of webbing that shot toward his face.

The web sailed past him, sticking to the wall behind.

"Did I just... dodge that?"

Ylva slashed through the web that was shot in her direction, her claws severing the strands before they could bind her. She glanced at Jason, nodded once, then returned to the swarm.

Jason gripped his sword tighter.

He saw an opening. A spider had overextended, its legs spread wide, its soft underside exposed. He lunged forward and drove the blade into its belly.

The spider screeched. Green ichor sprayed across Jason’s arm. He pulled the sword out and stabbed again. And again. The spider collapsed, twitching.

He managed to kill one but he realized his body was stronger.

Another spider rushed him from the side. Jason spun, swung, and caught it across the legs. It stumbled. He finished it with a downward thrust through its eye bringing his kill count to two.

He was breathing hard. His arms were shaking. But he had done it. He had killed two of them.

Then something sharp pierced his shoulder.

A stinger. Thin, long and very sharp.

Jason looked down. A small spider—no bigger than his fist—had attached itself to his armor, its stinger buried deep in the gap between his cuirass and his neck.

He tried to swat it away, but his arm wouldn’t move.

His vision blurred and his knees buckled.

"Jason?" Mae’s voice, distant. "Jason!"

The floor rushed up to meet him. His sword clattered out of his hand. The last thing he saw before his eyes closed was Ylva’s face, twisted in horror.

Then everything went black.

-

Mae held her own.

She wasn’t a fighter—she had said as much back in the market district. But she was fast. Her hooves kicked spiders away from Jason’s unconscious body. Her short blade stabbed at anything that came too close. She managed to kill four of them before the swarm thinned.

But she couldn’t heal Jason. Not here. Not now.

Ylva screamed.

"JASON!"

It was a raw, primal sound—a mate’s anguish, a wolf’s fury. She turned toward his fallen body, her claws raised, her teeth bared.

But this moment of distraction was all the spiders needed.

Webs shot from three directions at once, wrapping around Ylva’s arms, her legs, her torso. She struggled against them, but more strands came. And more. Within seconds, she was cocooned from neck to ankle, her eyes wide with fury and fear.

Thalion watched it all happen.

The spiders were still coming. Dozens of them. The swarm had thinned, but it hadn’t stopped. Jason was unconscious. Ylva was bound. Mae was barely holding the line.

He could feel it all coming down.

His control. His restraint. His promise to Jason.

It didn’t matter anymore.

Thalion let out an aggressive scream—a sound that wasn’t entirely elven, wasn’t entirely human, wasn’t entirely sane. It echoed off the walls, shaking the stones, rattling everything within it.

And in that instant, every spider in the vicinity detonated.

Their bodies burst like overripe fruit. Chitin and ichor sprayed across the chamber. Legs twitched. Mandibles clicked and then finally, silence.

Mae stood frozen, her sword raised, her brown eyes wide. Ichor dripped from her face, her hair, her leather armor.

She looked at Thalion.

"Why the hell," she said slowly, "didn’t you do that from the get go?"

Thalion didn’t answer but his nose began to bleed.

Thick, dark blood poured from his nostrils, dripping onto his torn robe, onto the stone floor. His pale face was even paler. His hands were shaking.

And Mae understood why in that moment.