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Blood… more blood. A lot of it. It filled the room, flooding my nostrils and my other stunted senses.

Oh Ancestors… I couldn’t even hear Parys, couldn’t get to him to help.

Arran tugged on my hand, and I had no answer but to follow him. The movements around me were too much, too scattered. He stopped suddenly, catching me against him. I felt a tickle on my hand—hair. Long hair. Lyrena.

She must have recognized me as well, because a second later a blast of fire filled the room.

I wished then that I couldn’t see.

Hundreds—no, thousands—of shiny green lizards crawled across the floors, over our feet and around our ankles. But they weren’t just on the floor. They covered the walls, the ceiling, so that we were surrounded by an undulating mass of shimmering green.

No bigger than my palm, they might have been kept as pets—if not for the inch-long fangs they sported. And the bloodlust.

That rush I’d felt had been them converging on Parys. I couldn’t even see his body, it was covered in the vicious little reptiles, small streams of blood shooting from his huddled form. One might have been nothing… but thousands of them… they’d eat him alive.

I felt the bile rising in my throat, but Arran caught my chin. He shook his head and shoved my hand down to my waist. To my scabbards.

With one hand, Lyrena’s fire lit the room while her other wielded her sword. We swiped and stabbed, ripping the filthy, vicious vermin in half. But it wasn’t fast enough. There were too many of them.

It was Arran who realized what truly needed to be done. He grabbed Lyrena’s sword arm, pointing across the room to where her pillar of flame was driving into the stone wall. Where a space had cleared, no more than a yard wide—but free of the little beasts.

She nodded understanding immediately. She’d burn them away with her fire.

I turned back to Parys, determined to cut my way through the mass to get to him.

But Arran caught my hand. He dragged me away, even as I screamed. But he didn’t hear a single one of the vile epithets I hurled at him. He tugged me over the threshold, and Lyrena’s fire followed, sealing the vicious creatures inside. And sealing us out.

I opened my mouth to scream at Arran, but I couldn’t.

Because while Lyrena’s flame sealed the door, it didn’t block out the sound. Parys’ screams echoed through the stairwell.

Make it stop.

But Arran didn’t let me stop. He shoved my weapons into my hands and pushed me up the stairs. Coward that I was, I ran.

80

ARRAN

Lyrena’s fire chased us up the staircase, blocking the way for any of the vile little creatures who might try to follow. Veyka charged ahead, blades drawn, trying to escape Parys’ screams. I filtered them out, like I had hundreds of times on the battlefield. To listen to your friends die… there was no room for the damage that would inflict. Not now.

We hit the landing, pausing long enough to search the room for threats. No smart-ass paintings, no looming darkness. The walls of the circular tower room were completely unadorned. No windows, either. Only a singular mirror, taller than Veyka, leaning against the wall directly opposite the door. I could see the glint of my axe reflected in it, Veyka’s white hair.

Until we stepped into the room.

The image shifted entirely, a black-cloaked figure replacing our reflection.

Not a figure, I realized as I marked the shifting, the huffed breaths.

“What is it?” The chill in Veyka’s voice told me she was making her own assessments.

“A creature,” I said slowly. “Likely a deadly one.”

“Says the male who killed a skoupuma with blades of grass,” she said, a poor attempt at flippancy.

“Do you see any grass here?” I shot back, examining the room again for other potential threats.

“I guess I was technically the one to kill it—”