Page 165 of Serpent and Shadow

He stepped closer and stood over me, blocking my view of the ceiling.

“Kneel, bitch, or I’ll make you.”

When I still didn’t move, he kicked me in the side, hard enough to make me gasp. I rolled reluctantly to my side, startled when I could move again. I pulled myself over and onto my hands and knees. When I pushed myself up, I found myself facing a different Magical.

I could see now, what stood at the end of the hall that I hadn’t been able to see before. An altar stood there, consisting of a heavy-looking black table covered in what must be dozens of candles. They’d erected a platform with steps for the table to sit on, and somehow moved the enormous statue of Anubis so that it stood at the very back, just behind the rows and rows of candles. A huge, golden ankh stood in the center of the table, with a red jewel in its center.

I stared up at the Anubis statue.

The black, volcanic-looking stone had been altered with spells, likely more than one. Its obsidian eyes glowed red, and red and black smoke drifted out between its lips as it stared coldly across the length of the enormous hall.

“Aren’t you going to greet me, daughter?” a voice inquired coldly.

I looked back to the mage who stood there, admitting to myself only then that I’d avoided looking at him. The rest of the hall fell hushed and quiet, the moment he spoke.

My gaze followed heavy black robes up his body, gold flashing in bejeweled armbands and a thick chest plate etched with the face of Anubis in the center surrounded by detailed hieroglyphics and the same skull and pyramid symbol I’d seen branded into Alaric and later, Bones. He gripped a bejeweled dagger in one black-gloved hand, and a small scythe-looking implement in the other.

I finally reached his head, which was shaped like a jackal, and nearly identical to the head of the enormous Anubis statue that nearly touched the ceiling behind where he stood. I’d never seen him like this before, in the visions I’d shared with Blackstone in his office, but never up close, never in the flesh. His eyes shone red through the mask, which seemed to actually bleed into his shoulders like a second skin. Gold detail outlined the eyes, ears, and the lines of the mask’s jaw and mouth.

It looked like an actual beast up close. It didn’t look human, or Magical, or even like an animal, but like some supernatural being that had been stitched together out of blood and dark magic. Something about seeing it from this close horrified. me. I stared at those burning red eyes and fought a scream building in my chest.

Staring at his face felt like being trapped in a nightmare I couldn’t wake from.

Everything about him looked dead.

His eyes stared at me with nothing approaching empathy, or even emotion.

The bone dragon sat on his muscular shoulder.

It stretched out its bone wings and clacked its jaw, its black eyes burning at me as coldly as its master’s. It struck me again how different his dragon looked compared to Caelum’s, how one of those skeletal creatures could hold real expression and interest and feeling in its eyes, while the other exuded only emptiness.

That was the last thought I had when his first spell hit.

Pain ripped through me so intensely my suppressed scream broke in my throat. It made Mordopast’s lightning spells a few days earlier feel like a summer breeze. I’d never experienced so much pain in my life. I couldn’t breathe through it, couldn’t think through it, couldn’t move any part of my body of my own will.

Somewhere in that, I felt something else, though.

Unlike pain alone, that other sensation was the thing to break through.

Malefic’s mind and magic were probing the edges of mine. He wasn’t hurting me just because he could, or even because he wanted to; he was using my pain as a way inside.

He was forcing his way inside my magic.

Inside my mind.

Instinctively, I tried to fight him at the edges of my consciousness, to hide my memories and thoughts from him, but his spell only grew more brutal. Flashes of my life and memory rose to my awareness even as he consumed them. I saw Caelum and I having sex in the early morning hours of his birthday, his face hanging over me as he told me he loved me. I felt his father’s disgust mix with obsessive, cloying interest, felt him watch our magic entwine and grow brighter with a sick satisfaction that unnerved me even more.

More memories darted forward and got consumed in that dark.

My worry and fear for Bones grew horrifyingly intense, my terror and rage that he was being tortured by his father, that he would be changed irreparably by the things his father was forcing him to do.

I saw myself and Alaric bent over the coffee table in Bones’s tower, talking about different ways we could get into the Bones estate and into the dungeons, different things he and the others could do to rescue Bones and Varya out while I went looking for Malefic. I saw Darragh agreeing to help, and Jolie listening thoughtfully as we talked about ways we could distract Malefic’s followers while I went looking for Malefic himself.

I saw time flash forward and backwards as he flipped through my mind.

More memories came, faster now, in no particular order.

Me jumping out the tower window to force my magic to phase.