“Someone left a message,” he replied. “No one saw who placed it.”
“What kind?” Gwin pressed.
He shook his head. “All I know is they found it by the gate.”
“They’re heading there now,” I said, following the direction of the patrollers. “But they’re not running. It must not be urgent.”
The man blinked at me.
“Hi,” I added, because it felt like the normal thing to do. “I’m Jane.”
“Freddy,” he said, offering a tight nod, his eyes keen and assessing me for a moment.
We reached the surge of patrollers spilling through the iron gates and around a stone pillar. A flicker of pressure filled my ears as we passed the dampening wards.
Outside, pinewoods circled Mountheim Hall. To the left, the city was close enough for us to glimpse its outline.
Battle mages rounded in front of the gate, their ashen faces telling me it would be bad.
It was worse.
Bile rose at the back of my throat. Multiple people gasped.
I covered my mouth, like I could keep myself from retching. The stench was overwhelming, clinging to the air like rot sealed in a closed room.
I searched for Joy, feeling relieved when I didn’t find her among the others. Then I forced myself to look again.
“Oh gods,” I breathed.
Gwin’s face hardened, her eyes wide in shock.
A glimpse of red and dark hair marked Heil and Reagan at the front of the scene.
“Two of Heil’s found her,” another battle mage murmured to Gwin and Freddy. “They said she wasn’t there one moment, and the next she was.”
“It’s not only a message,” Gwin said quietly. “It’s a threat.”
High above us, suspended between two iron beams, hung a woman. Her eyes were closed, as though she was sleeping. Her red hair, streaked with something darker, clung to her face in wet strands. Blood matted her skin, drying across her cheeks and bare chest like paint. It dripped from her head, which had been stitched at the hairline with what appeared to be real rabbit ears. It was a grotesque resemblance to the animal features that every citizen of this estate bore just months ago.
The wind picked up again, rattling the metal beams until they moaned.
Her burgundy cloak had been pulled wide behind her like a broken wing, its corners pierced onto the iron tips. Words were burned deeply into the fabric.
THE CURSED BREED STILL BLEEDS FOR THEIR SAVIOUR, LORD OF FILTH
Chapter 25
Jane
Four people had taken her down.
Reagan had carried the body toward the Hall, bearing her through the melee of patrollers. He didn’t fling with her, only walked.
Gwin had said it was a threat, a warning. But a warning of what? It didn’t seem like a threat tohislife. It sounded more like a threat to his subjects. Or rather, a specificbreedof subjects. I remembered Varian calling Gwin a half-breed once.
Perhaps it was retaliation for the Scions Reagan had hunted from the outpost. Caius, Dexter, and Goyle were in Pavilion now because of him. Or perhaps the warning was that the enemies of Mountheim would not stop even if the curse had been broken.
“I spoke with the father,” Cerridwen said, her voice grimly as we gathered around the dining table. “His daughter was a seamstress from this city. She was twenty-one. Their last name is Foley. It’s a hybrid line.”
