“I’m glad you approve.”
He turns his attention on me, ripping into the organ again, stuffing his cheeks full of steaming, wet flesh. “Questions, questions don’t ask themselves,” he says through a bulging bite.
My nerves rattle.
I clear my throat and cast my stare on the stone beside me, its toothed tip high in the sky. Chest tight, I study the chiseled depths of countless prophecies—half filled with a thick, black substance.
Though some are not.
In some, the blackness has whittled away, leaving plain, gutless scriptures. Not many, butsome.A handful.
Hope.
Crouching, I find the writings that are carved into my heart just as much as they’re carved into this fucking stone and jab my finger at Orlaith’s morbid life map. “This,” I growl. “Has this changed?”
Another bite. More unsightly chewing while my patience frays.
He swallows a gulp so large I can see the mound of it working down his lanky throat as he tips his head to the side. “The more you know, the more you woe. Be happy you’re not chained to the truth as I, Rhordyn. Ignorance is a gift.”
“Has. It. Changed?” I snarl past the monstrous-size fangs punching through my gums.
Maars goes as still as one of the many statues littering the lakeside. “No.”
The word is a nail hammered deep into my soul.
“And no matter how much you distance yourself or try to wrestle fate in your favor,heryou will not savor. The world will keep trying to kill her until you’re forced to seal the bond, cradling borrowed months before the final lines draw their fangs. Matters will be taken out of your hands.”
I’m certain he just shoved his iron-tipped fingers into my chest and tore out my heart. Like it’sminehe’s now sinking his teeth into—feasting on.
I fall to my knees, suddenly starved for air, my vision stirring like the mist that muddies the mountain.
“You know, those words called to me like they wanted to be free,” he says through the sloshy sounds of his chewing.
Hasn’t. Fucking. Changed.
I slam my hands against the stone to steady myself while my beast rages inside, tipping his head to gnaw at my ribs with his back molars. I close my eyes and heave through rumbling breaths as I work to regain my composure.
“I went down to the bowl with my fishing pole, and the wee thing justflickedout of the water and wrapped around my arm like an eel. It never wiggled in pain as I chiseled it into the rock. Never screamed. It just slipped into its stony grave like it was too tired to misbehave. Only once before have one of my scriptures acted that way, and you know how that came to play. Decay and dismay.”
I look over my swelling shoulder into the hollow sockets of his soulless eyes. See a fresh wave of hunger igniting his blood-splashed features.
“With you diving into my bowl after your sister, then being spat out like a trout on the shore bearing Kvath’s prized sword,Endagh Ath Mahn,” he says, boasting that haunting smile again.
The Sword of End.
I swallow, forcing the slur of bile back down into my gut as I bunch my hands into fists, knuckles grating against stone.
Maars tips his head to the other side, clicking his tongue. “Wonder, wonder, I often do. How didyouend up with such a …spectacularweapon?”
I say nothing, content on letting silence hang while I growl through thick breaths, trying to keep my skin from splitting.
Joints from popping.
Maars makes a low humming sound. “It caused quite a shake, you know.” He points to the darkening sky with his chisel. “I felt it from below. In my bones. A rattle I’ve felt again …recently.”
My brows collide. “The sword is useless to me now. I am bound. I am nothreatto any of them.” Besides—they spawned a perfectdefenseright in my path.
The markings around Maars’s throat flicker as he opens his mouth, though all that comes out is a bloody, hacked splat. Snarling, he reaches into the cowl of his hood and massages his neck. “We are equals,” he sneers. “If you are ever in need of an end, you have a friend. Perhaps, one day, you will crave it as I do, and we can do each other a great deed of service.”
