The beast turns, dashes a fluffy tail across my face, androars.
The Gray Guards are no longer shooting. They’rerunning.
Screaming.
The beast pounces, talons punching from his paws. He charges toward the trees in long, ground-shaking strides, disappearing.
My darkness slithers back into the chasm, and I realize my creature is no longer screaming; bound in its wings, tail coiled around one of my ribs. It hangs, face tucked into its puffed plumage as I scramble to my feet.
Sobbing through winced half breaths, I stumble over a series of backward steps, moving toward the smashing sounds of the ocean at my back, not wanting to take my stare off the tree line. With my injured arm tucked close to my chest, I glance at the hole Rhordyn punched in the ground. At the vein of glass that forks toward the two soldiers eternally running.
He told me there were things I still didn’t know, but this …
I wasn’t expecting this.
The fever continues to squish through my veins in hot pumps, my heart and head and body battling entirely different wars as I shuffle toward the thump of crashing waves. Piercing screams and agonized cries come to me on a whip of wind before they’re snipped brutally fast, and that chilling, thunderous roar battles the howl of the storm. Rattles my heart.
He’s out there … killing them.
Ripping them apart.
I remember the way he ate the men my power dismantled, crunching through them like a ravenous beast, and another shudder shakes my bones.
My heel edges over the sharp fall of the cliff, and my heart leaps into my throat. I lurch forward— away from the edge—knees crumbling. Wincing from the bolt of pain that splits my arm as I plant both hands firmly on the ground, blood dribbling.
I try to pull out the arrow, screaming when the tug burns through the wound like a fiery poker.
Dropping my bloody, trembling hand, I glance over my shoulder to a churning torrent of waves thrashing against the sheer blue-stone cliff, the water dull and gray bar the white, frothy swirls.
There are no more shrill screams ripping through the stormy haze. No more sadistic, ground-shuddering roars.
It’s just me, the rain, the crackling sky, and the heavy pound in my ears.
The hairs on the backs of my arms lift, and in my peripheral, a black smudge pushes free of the jungle. A hoarse sob bursts up my throat at the sight of the beast prowling toward me in slow, stalking strides, low on his haunches, maw splashed in so much blood it’s dribbling from the slick fur at his chin. His leathery, frost-kissed scent comes to me, melded with the coppery tang of his slain victims.
“Don’t come any closer,” I say, shoving to a stand, and his lips pull back as he releases a grating rumble that ripples through me.
The talons retract from his blood-slicked paws, and he drops so close to the ground his belly brushes the grass, his unnerving eyes paving across me like icy blades.
He comes within an arm’s length, one crawled motion at a time, every shift of his body making his meaty muscles ripple and swell.
So much power. So much might.
So much death.
“Please,” I whisper, raising my good hand between us, not even sure he can understand me. “Please stop…”
The beast whines, dropping his chin upon the ground, like he’s trying to make himself smaller. Less frightening.
Impossible when his sable eyes are hammering me into a quivering pulp.
There’s a shrillcrack, and my eyes widen, heart tripping.
Fissures claw toward me from that glassy crater, carving off a giant half-moon chunk of the cliff that captures me perfectly.
Terribly.
I have a split second to take in the flash of raw, primal agony in the beast’s eyes before the ground beneath me plummets to the tune of his aching lament, his paws whipping out to snatch at thin air. Wind tears at my body.
