Page 37 of On Brutal Thrones

He doesn’t answer, and that worries me more than any joke he could have made. I give his hand a gentle squeeze before letting go so we can navigate the uneven ground.

Ahead, the land continues sloping downward. With every step, the smell intensifies, and I find myself wondering what could possibly produce this much blood.

An injured animal? No. It’s too strong. A battlefield? My skin prickles.

The ground grows steep enough that I have to shorten my steps in places to keep from sliding. The trees grow thinner the farther we descend, giving way to scrubby bushes and tall grass that brushes against my thighs. The morning sun has climbed higher, and without the heavier canopy above us, heat settles across my shoulders and the back of my neck.

The smell only gets worse.

It seems to gather in the low ground, growing thicker as we descend. The sweetness has become cloying, almost syrupy, with that unmistakable coppery edge beneath it. Even breathing through my mouth doesn’t help anymore. I can taste it on the back of my tongue.

Fenric still has the collar of his shirt pulled over his nose. “Gods, that’s foul.”

No one answers him.

There isn’t much energy left for conversation. We’ve been walking downhill long enough that my thighs ache from constantly holding myself back against the slope, and the heat and humidity make my clothes cling unpleasantly to my skin. Sweat gathers beneath my hair and trickles down the back of my neck.

Ahead of us, Talon keeps moving. He’s been quiet for so long that his silence has started to feel like another presence traveling with us.

Thorian slows.

Not enough to stop us, but enough that I notice.

“What is it?”

He doesn’t answer immediately. His gaze is fixed somewhere ahead, beyond the grass. I follow it. For a few more steps, I see nothing unusual. Just pale stalks shifting back and forth, their feathery tops glowing almost gold beneath the sun. Then the breeze pushes them aside, and a flash of red appears between the stalks.

I stop.

It’s gone almost immediately when the grass sways back into place.

“What was that?”

Fenric lowers his shirt slightly. “What?”

“I saw something.”

Thorian has seen it too. I can tell from his expression.

We keep moving, slower now.

Another gust bends the grass. More red appears. Not flowers. Not stone. A flat, wet surface that catches the sunlight.

A terrible feeling settles into my stomach.

The grass grows shorter with every step until it barely reaches my knees. The trees disappear entirely. There’s nothing ahead of us now except a final uneven stretch of yellowing vegetation, and beyond it, a strange red shine.

Then we reach the bottom of the slope. The grass ends. And all four of us stop.

I can’t make sense of what I’m looking at. An enormous expanse of red stretches out in front of us. It fills the lowland from one side to the other, spreading so far into the distance that the opposite edge is difficult to make out through the haze. Sunlight gleams across its wet surface, catching in hundreds of tiny places and making them shine.

My first thought is that it’s mud. It has to be… except, it’s not.

The surface is divided into enormous irregular sections by pale lines that stretch across it like cracks, some forming shapes that are almost hexagonal. Except nothing here is dry. The entire field has a slick, wet sheen.

And it isn’t brown.

Near the grassy edge, it’s a dark maroon. Farther out, the color deepens and brightens until great portions of the field are a rich ruby red.