Page 66 of A Frozen Pyre (Villains #2)
Thirty-Nine
Three Hours Following the Wedding
Gwydir, Raascot
Sedit’s head shot up in sudden alarm. He pounced from the luxurious feather bed with feline grace as he ran for the door. With the high, alarming whine of nails on slate, he began to scratch at the door as he attempted to escape into the corridors of Castle Gwydir.
Tyr was on his feet a second later.
“I’m sure you miss her, but she’s coming right back,” he promised the vageth. His words came out in a hushed plea for the creature to be quiet. Sedit had never made a commotion like this of his own accord.
Sedit sprinted to the window and jumped up on his hind legs.
He pressed his large paws into the glass as he surveyed the three-story drop below.
With a huff, talons shot out from his paws as he began to bring his weight down on the windowpane.
His glossy, amphibious skin matched the blue-black labradorite of the castle, making him look like a gargoyle perched at the window, carved from the stone itself, rather than a demonic dog attempting escape.
“What the hell,” Tyr gasped. “What are you doing?”
He watched in horror as the demonic hound pounded at the window, throwing his weight into it again and again.
He turned to Tyr and bared the venom-slick rows of his needlelike teeth.
His eyes were solid black as they reflected sheer, feral urgency.
Sedit abandoned the window and ran for the door once more, this time throwing his entire body into the barricade as if he were a battering ram.
“Is it Ophir?” Tyr asked. He knew the vageth couldn’t talk.
He hadn’t particularly cared for the hound, but it had been his only connection to Ophir after Dwyn had banished him.
Any wishes for vengeance or hopes of returning to Sulgrave to track down the men who deserved their long-cold revenge simmered in a distant pot in the back of his mind.
He’d barely removed himself from the cabin for fifteen minutes before he’d returned in the space between things.
Heartbroken, Ophir hadn’t looked for him.
With no one to drain and no reason to believe that Tyr would remain with a princess who didn’t want him, Dwyn hadn’t posed a threat.
Sedit hadn’t been fooled for a second. He’d raised his head to look at Tyr the moment he’d slipped back into the cabin.
He’d also promptly decided he didn’t care, and he had allowed Tyr to carry on in obscurity while he napped by the fire.
The vageth had remained his tether to Ophir as they’d returned to the castle, his partner in avoidance as they’d glared at Dwyn from the washroom when the siren had sunk her greedy claws into the princess, and his only companion as she’d departed for Aubade.
With her ability to craft doors, he hadn’t expected her to be gone for long.
The castle had remained quiet, and the attendants were too afraid of Sedit to do much more than shove piles of food into Ophir’s chambers and leave. Fortunately, this kept Tyr fed while doing markedly little for his own survival.
Sedit rammed himself into the door again.
Tyr had known the creature to be sloth-like in Ophir’s absence.
It was content to sleep all day, graze on the food provided, and warm itself by the fire.
It would occasionally curl up next to Tyr when it wanted attention.
More or less, the demon hound kept to itself.
He’d only seen Sedit strike or act in violence when Ophir had commanded it.
He threw his body into the door again.
“Is she calling you?” he demanded of the vageth. “For fuck’s sake,” he mumbled to himself, “the dog isn’t going to answer.”
If he had to, he’d open the door and sprint after the vageth until his legs could carry him no farther.
He took four steps across the room, but he wasn’t fast enough.
Sedit had given up on the door again and bolted across the room with full force, thrusting his body into the window.
It shattered into a million pieces as he burst through the glass.
It cut into him, blackened blood spurting into the air in streaks as gravity claimed him.
Tyr ran for the window in shock. He’d scarcely reached its lip when the loud, horrid thwack of meat hit the frozen earth. His stomach roiled in horror at the limp, smattered remains of the dog on the ground below.
Ophir’s door flew open as an attendant responded to the commotion within.
The woman barely had time to scream before Tyr slipped out around her.
He snagged a cloak and gloves and tugged them into the unseen place between things with him as he slipped out of the castle.
It took him less than a minute to round the corner and slide through the snow-slick lawn to where pieces of Sedit twitched.
From overhead, the servant was still screaming.
He wasn’t sure as to the wisdom of what he was about to do next.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered to Sedit. The vageth whimpered, white, phantom tendrils emanating from his jaw as they attempted to stitch the upper and lower halves together.
Tyr took off in the opposite direction as he ran for the stables.
He didn’t know how much time he had before Sedit put himself back together, but two horses were tethered to the back, ready for riders.
Whether it was dumb luck or the goddess was blessing his haste, he had no idea.
Still unseen, he unwrapped the reins from the post, swung into a saddle, and clicked his tongue, kicking the horse to spur it into action.
He’d made it around the castle before a shout from the stables alerted others to a runaway horse.
By the time he made it to Sedit, the hound was missing vital pieces.
Tyr knew he only had a few moments before his horse was snatched. He jumped down from the saddle and scooped what he could of the vageth into a pile. “How does this work?” he hissed urgently.
He flinched away from the searching, prodding cobwebs that reached from one piece of the demon to another.
The hound’s head was whole. His front legs were working.
The wounded split in his torso was nearly knit.
He pulled back his teeth in a snarl, but not at Tyr.
A loud, threatening growl rumbled from his throat as he stared down two attendants who’d taken off after the horse.
Tyr counted on Sedit to keep them at bay, letting the hound bark and snap as he pushed the vageth’s back leg back into its socket, allowing the ghostly vines to sew it back together.
Sedit got up onto unsteady feet and took a testing step forward.
The attendants cried out in horror as the demon rose from the dead, unable to be killed by glass or heights or dismemberment.
Tyr was in the saddle before Sedit took his first lunging steps away from the castle, over the bridge, and into the city. People screamed and parted like the sea as a rabid hellhound tore through the streets, a stallion without a rider quick on its trail.
Tyr pushed the horse faster and faster but knew he’d lose the vageth soon.
He looked up at the mountains stretching to the west and cautiously eyed the land beyond the city.
Days of rugged terrain, rocky foothills, and useless soil separated Gwydir from Gyrradin’s unknown northern lands.
From the looks of his arrow-slick body and the intensity of his speed, it looked like Sedit was barreling straight for the Unclaimed Wilds.