Slátra.
A presence dashes past me like a lofty shadow heavy with a masculine musk, the frayed hem of his black cloak dragging across the ash-dusted ground.
The stranger moves up the dais with silent steps, flicks around, and drapes upon the throne, setting a pale crown upon its broad armrest. A crown fashioned from what appears to be the many tapered teeth of some beast.
I frown, studying the newcomer now balling his fist, using it as a chin-perch. Though his face is hidden within the shadow of his floppy hood, blazing eyes glint in the dark.
Watching.
“Those who wander beneath my mountain rarely leave …Veya Vaegor.”
The baritone words drone into my skin, through muscle, sinew, and bone.
He knows my name …
I battle to keep my voice steady, strong as I ask, “Who are you?”
“Your only hope of salvation, it seems, based on the reek of that wound in your shoulder.”
A moment of still before I lift my shackles and jolt them, making the chains rattle. A sound that echoes so much I get a haunting sense of the cavern’s lofty size. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“Precautions.” His skeletal fingers dance across the pointed tips of that pale crown. “It is my understanding that you knelt to Bulder many phases ago. Though you may not hear him as well as your siblings, given your heritage and somewhat staunch devotion, I have no doubt he’d favor you above most of my underlings.”
His words slash shards of ice through my veins.
I’m not sure how he learned such things, but it doesn’t bode well.
My smile is sour, pinching my cheeks. “Perhaps you overestimate me.”
“I doubt it.”
A gaping silence ensues.
He watches me, tap-tap-tapping across those pointed tips. My gaze flicks to his fingers, heart slamming to a halt as I notice they’re bloodied at the ends. Chewed raw.
He’s bloodlusting.
Badly—
“Tell me, Veya.” My gaze snaps to his fiery eyes, my vision splitting. Converging again. “Do you like my palace?” He dashes his hands wide, flourishing his hoard in such a way I’m reminded of the velvet trogg. Only somehow, I felt safer in her lair.
More in control.
“You, ah—” I wobble, shaking my head as I regain my balance. “You have a lot of things.”
“I do.” Another stint of watchful silence. “Scavenged treasures. All tossed away over the phases. Discarded.”
Scavenged—
Fuck.
“You’re the Scavenger King.” I look to his crown, the tips of his fingers, back to his red, glinting eyes. “You govern the under-mountain fighting pits with the razah.”
“Call me Arkyn.”His fingers still. “When you look around, what doyousee?”
“Loneliness.”
I blast the word without thinking it through, internally chastising myself for being so stupid. I’m in the presence of a male renown for feeding folk to the blazing Pits of Khindard. Whose to say he won’t toss me in there for the blunt rebuttal?
