Page 132 of Lore of the Tides

The force flung her backward like a marionette; she slid across the freshly waxed floor. Lore pressed her hand to her cheek, trying to contain a whimper, but it slipped unbidden between ruined lips. She covered her face; afraid another blow was coming.

Coretha stepped over to where Lore lay on the ground. “Stupid girl. I don’t see why you returned at all. You had the grimoires; you could have gone anywhere. You could have been free.”

“I am not free until we are all free.” Lore fought back against a wave of nausea. “While my people remain shackled in Duskmere under your uncle’s rule, and soon, your rule, I cannot be free. I cannot rest.” Lore gritted her teeth against the pain of speaking. Her mouth was filling up with blood again. “Iwill notrest.” Lore spit blood and saliva at Coretha’s feet, daring her with her eyes to say one more insipid thing to her.

“Insolent witch,” Commander Arelas shouted, stalking toward her. Lore tried to dodge the hit, but he moved like a cheetah.

The world went dark for a moment as her lips shredded against her teeth, and her jaw made a sickening popping sound. Lore cowered, covering her head with her arms.

When no more blows came, she peeked out through spread fingers.

Arelas had shifted, making room for the king, who rose from his throne like a god.

No, a demon.

Lore shrank back from him in horror as he changed form with each step toward her.

His skin contracted, the pallid color warming, turning brown and smooth with youth as it formed over rippling muscles. His hair turned black as night, thickened, his coils shining. And his wings—gods, his wings—lifted, fanning out behind him like death, his feathers as oily black as a crow’s. Beneath his skeletal disguise was power incarnate.

It was a sham to trick his enemies into underestimating him. And Lore had fallen for it. She should have cast her magic out the moment she was in his presence. It would have been the only way she could have had a sliver of a chance. But instead, she’d seen only his facade, and she’d walked right into his trap.

His eyes tripped delightedly across her face, soaking up her pain as if it were a decadent feast.

For a moment, all she could see was the yellow glow of his irises.

Hewasa demon.

And she was his prey to be devoured.

Chapter 45

Lore forgot that she had battled sea monsters and braved a volcano. Had faced griffins, a reverie, and caves bursting with insects. That she had done all this to become powerful, more powerful thanhim.

She couldn’t remember any of that as he pinned her with his gaze.

His pupils were blown wide, but his yellow irises were all she could see.

She was only a twenty-one-year-old human. Her feats werenothingto him, whose age was unknowable. Her life was a blip. He would blink, and she would be gone.He would sleep, and her children would be dust.

He would crush her skull beneath his boot and then devour her whole. And when he was done with her, he would hunt down every single person that she loved and consume them too.

For her kind were toys to him. Something to pass the time, and now his playthings had grown unruly. They needed to be crushed.

The king said all of this with a look in the span of one step.

He did not need to speak aloud for his thoughts to be known. He was a king; what he wanted, he got. He need not worry about how, only that it simplywas.

His thoughts conquered her mind, and he impressed onto her visions of what he planned to do with the vermin problem up north.

Lore rolled onto her back, scrambling away from him—or she tried to. She couldn’t make her body listen.

I’ll show you what became of Syrelle first.The king’s voice was mind-shattering in her head—she was swept into a vision.

—He’d arrived at the castle days ago, collapsing to his knees at the king’s feet from exhaustion. He was on the brink of death from the journey already, but Syrelle had mustered up every last ounce of life remaining to plead for his family’s lives, to beg for mercy on Lore and the people of Duskmere. The king had laughed in Syrelle’s face, and then the king’s hands changed; claws sprouted from where his fingers had been; and with one swipe, he’d shredded his nephew’s beautiful, feathered wings. Syrelle convulsed, rolling back onto his ruined wings—

Syrelle’s howl of agony ripped through Lore’s heart like a saw. The only thing she could do was blink away tears as they rolled down her cheeks, mixing with blood and bone and tissue from her crumbling face.

—The king crouched over a writhing Syrelle and slashed through his leathers and his shirt, parting his skin and bones—