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Thankfully, Bael’s room wasn’t far—something I hadn’t known in all the years I’d spent haunting these halls and hardly would have expected, given his status. Now, it was the only thing that made me put one foot in front of the other.
It’s not much further, I chanted to myself.Only another few paces.
I put out a hand and felt for the sharp corner of the corridor and turned, thundering down a second hallway.
We would not die here.
Bael’s door swam into view far, far ahead of me, and my lungs strained harder to reach it.Just a bit further. Only a few more steps.
My foot caught against something lying across the floor, and I stumbled, lurching forward with enough force to send me sprawling. The jolt was so sudden it felt as if I’d swallowed my tongue. As if my breath had been knocked out of me. I remained on my knees for a quick moment, the warmth of the stone floor unnatural against my skin as I fought to regain my composure. I supposed I should be grateful that I hadn’t broken my nose.
After several long seconds, I looked back, scowling at whatever had caused me to fall.
My heart dropped.
I should have been accustomed to the sight of corpses by now; it wasn’t the first time I’d run across one, and the gods knew it wouldn’t be the last.
In the first hunt, there had been all those who had fallen to their peril over the cliff. More recently, there were the bloated, half-eaten victims of my serpent friend and the servants who had not escaped the tremors caused by the coming of the afflicted. There was the guard in the dungeon, the fate of the incubus, the unavoidable reality of death that hung over the city at every moment.
Yet nothing, not even the tragedy of my sister’s passing, could have prepared me for the sight before me. It was almost too much.
Some things should remain unseen.
They’d been devoured, I realized once my mind had grasped the full extent of the terror. Flesh hung from exposed skeletons; scraps of skin still clung to bones that seemed to have been gnawed on. Still more bones lay scattered among an enormous pool of blood. Whoever this once was had been torn to pieces.Mauled.
The gruesome sight made me recoil in horror, retching.
This was not the work of the fire, nor surely of any rebel soldiers…but I couldn’t think of anything…couldn’t imagine…
It was only then that I realized the door to Bael’s room stood open. The bodies that had stolen my attention lay on the threshold, propping the door wide, the darkness within making it impossible to see. Not that it mattered, but in my dream, the door stood closed before I’d reached it, venturing into unknown darkness.
A deafening roar, like some enormous beast, shattered the silence of the hall.
The walls quivered, the shadows of the corridor seeming to flicker. Instinctively, I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the pain in my knees, the strain in my lungs, and took a few stumbling steps back, away from the open door.
The ground seemed to shake in a small tremor, and I trembled, awed, as my eyes met a huge pair of glowing, catlike, golden eyes only seconds before an enormous shape leapt out of the darkness and fixed its gaze more firmly on me.
My mouth fell open, my knees beginning to tremble uncontrollably.
The creature that stared at me looked a bit like an enormous mountain lion—if that lion had been sculpted from memory by an artist who had only their childhood nightmares as reference.
The face and body were unmistakably feline and covered in a familiar reddish-gold fur. The paws, however, were black, as if dipped in shadow, with long, almost talon-like claws that I’d guess were longer than my entire hand. The beast overall was larger than any lion I’d ever seen in the wild mountains near the Source—perhaps three times the size of a wolf and far more muscular. The teeth were too sharp, the eyes too intelligent, almost humorous. Mocking.
Smoke rose and swirled near the floor as the enormous feline-looking beast prowled toward me on soft paws, too quiet to match its gigantic size. I blinked a few times and realized the smoke had nothing to do with the disaster going on in the castle.
My heart started to pound harder, faster, out of control. My fear took over, my eyes darting to the mauled bodies on the ground. I let out a tiny whimper.
Run,a voice in the back of my mind whispered.Run, run!
But just as quickly, another thought answered the first, as if I was arguing with myself:
The mountain lions of Aftermath never gave up their prey. They hunted them for days on end, stalking, watching, waiting, until finally they struck. You should never run from cats, as they viewed it as a game and would turn the hunt into your ultimate torture.
You should never run from monsters.
I gasped and was unable to keep the tremble out of my voice as I whispered, “Bael?”
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