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They weren’t eyes at all.

Where pupils and irises should have been, two smooth stone orbs had been lodged into her eye sockets, sapphire and obsidian, glittering with an unearthly sheen in the faded light.

Sapphire and obsidian.

Blue and black.

I found myself unable to breathe for an endless moment, gaping at those lifeless, inhuman surfaces.

Then her chin jerked up, and I couldn’t jump back fast enough – away, out of reach, feet tangling as I fled … The girl didn’t come after me. She just sat there, tiny and vulnerable, staring at me like a macabre doll come to life.

Her lips parted.

I grabbed reflexively for my mostly-black trousers.

‘Emelin,’ she sang, a bright, clear child’s voice, melodious but devoid of all sentiment. ‘The Mother is expecting you, Emelin.’

Goosebumps were crawling down my spine, my arms – down every inch of skin I hadn’t known could prickle at all. I slowly inched back, closer to Creon. Those sapphire and obsidian eyes followed me with every step, the face around them showing not the faintest trace of emotion – a blank, maimed mask.

Could she attack us? Harm us?

And if she could … then how in the world would I stop her without damaging the innocent child in whose body she moved?

‘You’re making them wait, Emelin.’ She pronounced my name like some exotic delicacy, every syllable savoured by her grey lips. ‘They have asurprisefor you, Emelin.’

‘Ah,’ I managed, wrestling against my gag reflex. On the edge of my sight, Creon was prowling closer, a dark, lean shape against the backdrop of white marble. ‘This … this isn’t the surprise yet, I suppose?’

She laughed, scrambling up from the floor – a high, unnatural laugh. Her arms jerked back and forth as she ambled towards us, as if her puppet master had not yet learned precisely which strings to pull to move which limbs.

‘Stay back,’ I snapped, raising my right hand towards her. ‘Don’t come closer or … or …’

‘Or what, Emelin?’ Again that laugh, sending the hairs rising on my neck. It didn’t fit her sweet, childish voice in the slightest. ‘Are you going to hurt a poor, innocent little human if—'

Creon shot forward.

He was so fast I could do nothing but cry out in that split second between leap and landing, between blade and target – a flicker of steel in the sunlight and the sickening squelch of a weapon digging into flesh …

Her little head tumbled to the ground first.

The rest of her body followed a long heartbeat later.

‘No!’ I gasped, pathetically late – and now Iwasgagging, the sight of her severed neck too much for my unravelling nerves to bear. The girl’s corpse barely bled, as if she’d been drained long before Creon’s blade came sweeping in. ‘No, I could have— I wanted—’

Creon’s expression made me fall quiet.

Heal her, I’d wanted to say … but the barely restrained rage in his dark eyes cut effortlessly through the disgust and the desperate hope clouding my own mind. Hell, what were the chances healing her would even have been possible? The girl’s body had been irreparably maimed. Her mind had been at least partly invaded. Even if we managed to kill the Mother …

How much humanity would have been left in this little puppet?

This swift beheading hadn’t just been a way to protect me, the taut edge of Creon’s jaw said. It had been a mercy kill too.

I swallowed something bitter, tore my gaze away from the little corpse, and mumbled a choked, ‘Thank you.’

He squeezed my shoulder but didn’t speak.Ready to move?

No.

‘Yes,’ I whispered.