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A ripple of magic passes through the market, a wave of powers that mirror my own. Hell, that surge tastes like mine, but I didn’t do this. I wouldn’t have.
The coverings over the stalls sway, and the merchants’ goods rattle. Jars and bottles break and spill, burning my nostrils with the pungent odor. A swell of the earth below my hooves has me staggering to keep my stance. Fear erupts like Greek fire in my gut, and my heart rate explodes into a pounding beat louder than any drum.
Meg.
I race toward where I left her, dodging scared vendors and terrified shoppers. She’s near the armorer’s stall, holding Oggie in the crook of her arm. A massive breastplate hangs at her side, her knuckles white where she clutches it. Her face is pale, and when her wide gaze meets mine, I go faster.
The earth shakes violently, pitching me backward and opening a chasm where Meg stands. I call out to her, but she’s looking up at the star mosaic on the ceiling above. The plaster splits and cracks apart, an enormous piece flying toward Meg. My breath sticks in my chest, and panic wraps its icy fingers around my spine.
She ducks, covering herself and Oggie with the armor, which won’t save her from hurtling chunks of the mosaic. Shouts and screams come from all around, and the stall owners closest to Meg point at the wall of the maze that divides the castle from the market. It rocks like a domino about to fall. The ground beneath us separates into long rifts, the cracks tearing apart on fault lines that didn’t exist before now.
Tauren, the blacksmith, charges toward Meg, trying to get to her. He won’t make it before the rupturing ground swallows her. But neither will I.
Pushing harder, I shove my magic toward her to catch her, but the powers that once flowed through me with the ease of breathing? They won’t come. It’s as if I’m tapped out from overuse or exhaustion. No, it can’t be. I recuperated from the trip with a few hours of sleep, enough to save my mate. I had it only moments ago. There’s no way I imagined the shine on her skin.
For the first time that I can remember, I don’t focus on my people, on my kingdom. They can crumble to dust so long as she lives.
“Leander?” She relies on me to keep her safe and yet I’m failing her as I’ve failed the entire kingdom.
The ground shakes and she shrieks, her piercing cry cut off as she falls to her knees.
“No.” I hurl every ounce of energy I have into saving her, but it’s not enough. My roar drowns out everything else, and my vision narrows to her.
The earth splits beneath her, and Meg tumbles into the void.
10
MEG
I freefall into nothing in a spin that has me losing all sense of direction. My heart stutter-stops before galloping into a panicked flutter pace. My breath whooshes out, and I squeeze my eyes against the darkness. Leander’s face was the last thing I remember before plummeting down, down, down. I clutch the armor and Oggie close, as if I can save them when I can’t even help myself.
Time seems to slow, unwinding in ribbons smaller than the tiny slivers I carve from my game pieces. Books and movies talk about life flashing before a person’s eyes when they’re dying. My highlights reel doesn’t take long—my mom’s hair growing back after remission, my friends at graduation, and Leander.
I’d been distracted by Tauren the bull blacksmith and how different he looked from his minotaur king. Then, I’d gotten caught up in the fact that the royal crest on the front of Leander’s armor looks exactly like the logo I designed for my Mutter Udder Maniacs game. Before I’d recovered, the world literally fell apart.
I’ve lived through a few earthquakes, but this was nothing like those. No, this was way more than frames falling off the wall, plates jangling in the cupboards, and a few books pitching off shelves. When I’d realized the pseudo sky was falling, I’d had about half a second to notice the wall coming down and the ground opening beneath my feet. Maybe this is how Alice would’ve felt if she’d tumbled down the rabbit hole to some hell dimension.
If only I’d gotten to tell my mom goodbye, to check on my friends, to test Leander’s sex magic theory.
Oggie wiggles out of my hold, his fur sliding against my skin. “No—” The fall cuts off my scream. The scent of sulfur hits me in the face. Great, I’ll die a smelly death, and I’ve dropped my kitten protector.
Big claws snatch me from the air, and a strong tail snakes around my waist. My stomach lurches as we rise so fast that I taste sour bile on my tongue. Did I die? I glance up and wish I hadn’t. A huge beast has me in his hold, zooming upward. What the actual fuck? Wrapping my arms around Leander’s armor, I realize a racing heartbeat later that nothing would shield me from the monster flapping me out of this chasm.
With wings like the pterodactyls I traced in grade school and the crimson body of a pot-bellied demon, the creature flies me higher and higher until I’m back at the market. Or the dust-covered shambles of what’s left. The demon sets me gently on my feet so that I stand at the edge of the abyss.
A red-tinged shadow engulfs me, and the sulfur stench retreats, leaving the scents of the market. A fluffy form drops from where the demon had been, and I race to catch the poofball.
Innocent kitten eyes blink back at me. “Mwrar.”
Oggdalon. A sentinel demon indeed. Telling myself it doesn’t matter what he looked like a second ago, I hug him to me, being careful to avoid the tiny black horns by his ears and the little dark wings that sprout from his back. Fangs peek out that look sharper than before he changed forms. He saved us. “Thanks, Oggie.”
Moans and shouts fill the air. My heart latches onto one yell—Leander calling my name.
“Meg.” He yanks me tight against the tense muscles of his broad chest. “Thank the gods.” I sag into his hold, enjoying the thrill of pleasure that runs beneath my shaking limbs when he lifts me and Oggie. He studies me as if I outrank everyone and everything in his life. “Are you hurt?”
“I don’t think so.” My stomach aches, and my heart thrashes in my chest like a rodeo bronco, but I can’t feel anything broken or cut. If I suffered an injury, the firm grip of Leander’s hand on my butt distracts me from it. He’s solid and safe, and I want to curl up in his arms and never move again. Except the market has fallen silent, other than sobs. I peek around my minotaur. “Oh no.” This part of his realm has crumbled into chaos.
Buried beneath fallen plaster and upturned earth, the stalls nearby lie scattered in pieces. Long, jagged cracks split the ground. Whole sections of the maze’s wall have toppled to crush carts and booths. Torn fabric tangles in broken shards of pottery and glass. The gorgeous tapestries that had hung on every surface now bunch in stomped and strewn wads. Spilled food and drink soak the dirt, turning the path we walked into a muddy mess.
