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“I’d like to go back to my room now,” I said. “I think I can find the way on my own.”
“I’ll come with you,” Beks said quickly. Clearly, he didn’t want to stay either. “Just in case.”
I nodded and let him lead the way back down the passage.
“I guess that’s why they call it the Killing Throne,” Beks mumbled as he walked along the dusty stone corridor, his little back hunched in a way I found heartbreaking. I wished he hadn’t had to see any of what we had just seen.
The only comfort I could take from it was that he had also witnessed his future emperor defending the weak.
I paused. “Excuse me?”
“The Killing Throne. That’s what they call it. The real name for the Umbral Throne,” Beks elaborated.
The Killing Throne. My heart sank. And soon Draven would be seated upon it.
CHAPTER 6
That night I foundmyself within a chilling tableau.
I lay upon a cold stone floor. A boy kneeled over me. His face was pallid and his eyes were strange.
I opened my mouth to ask him what was wrong, just as he lowered his face to my stomach and sank sharp teeth into my skin.
As I cried out with pain, I realized the boy was not alone. Other children crowded around me. Each one was more nightmarish in appearance than the next. Their eyes were devoid of life and yet an insatiable hunger lingered in their vacant stares.
Their gnarled hands clawed at me, tearing into my skin, as a cacophony of distorted cries and guttural moans filled the air, further intensifying my sense of terrible dread.
Piece by piece, they consumed me.
I felt each bite. Each pull of flesh torn from my bones.
The putrid stench of decay hovered around me. Was it the scent of my own devoured body or the macabre children who held me captive in this hellish torment?
Wave after wave of agony washed over me until I could bear no more. I opened my mouth and to my horror felt a breeze of air from a hole in my cheek.
Into the void, I screamed and screamed.
