Page 14 of A Kiss of Hammer and Flame (Fated for Hael #1)
No, no, no, not again!
Cahra was back, in that place, with the blackness and its chink of light, and the biting stone beneath her fingertips, icy raw, and that smell , that reminded her of the tannery in Kolyath, with its acrid reek of curing skin—
She crammed her eyes shut and forced one ravaged breath after another.
She was here, in the echoing emptiness of this room that confined her with the terror seeping into her soul at being trapped in the dark forever.
Then she remembered the bone piles, trembling.
This was no room, or vault, or even dungeon.
It was a tomb.
And she was not alone. Cahra was on her feet now, her muscles tensed to fight, to run, but unlike when fleeing the Steward and Kolyath, there was no escape. She stood, listening but hearing nothing at all. Yet she sensed silent feet padding towards her. Something was coming.
The whisker of light between the doors may as well have been a horizon away in the pitch distance, offering no answers as she begged her eyes to adjust to the dark.
She assumed it to be a torch’s flame, and she searched for another, only to glimpse the harrowing bones.
Her breath snagged in her chest as Cahra really noticed for the first time how dank, how stale, how positively ancient everything felt here.
Then she saw it. A silhouette. She could just make out its tattered garments, swaying as it advanced upon her step by step. Like a cat, with grace, intention, an animal’s gait. Only with the height, the contours of a man. But this was no man, no soldier, no Kolyath guard.
No. This was a predator.
A predator… With fire for eyes.
Fists raised, Cahra leapt back over the dusty, crusty bones that crunched and clattered, and snatched a leg bone from the floor. Those eyes – by the Seers, those eyes – they were burning ! And she was going to die here, in this Hael-forsaken place—
The flaming eyes narrowed, followed by a gleaming flash of white teeth, and fangs, fangs like a beast too. Was the creature smiling?
It opened its mouth, licking its lower lip before uttering in a low, unearthly voice like the crackle of crashing thunder and lightning combined: ‘ Scion… ’
Cahra felt the urge to shriek then, but she shoved the impulse down, down into the ball of her back foot – then pitched herself forward and into the path of the creature, wielding the bone and swinging it like a blacksmith’s hammer.
The creature shifted so fast it locked her arm in place before she’d taken a full step, and she gasped at how quickly it moved.
Not to mention those eyes, like smouldering rubies, the flames pointing downwards like the Sigil of the Seers’ inverted triangle, straight to Hael.
The creature effortlessly levered the bone from her grasp, hurling it into a pillar beside them, dust flaking from the unseen ceiling as the tomb trembled in reply.
‘ I do not wish to harm you, Scion .’
It was not of this world! Cahra refused to drop her fists. ‘What do you want then?’ Apparently, not to kill her… Yet. ‘And what do you mean, “Scion”? Where in Hael am I, and what is going on?’
Curiously, the creature tilted its head at her. Then it froze.
‘ They are coming, ’ it snarled, its timbre thawing with each sentence, despite the rancour of its words.
‘Who’s coming?’ Cahra spun, eyes flashing around them.
The creature shook its head, vexed, the flash of skin so white and bright she blinked.
Then, teeth gnashing, its eyes exploded into black flames as it dissolved into smoke.
Cahra raised her arm in defence, the air around her lashing with savage power, as a petrifying shriek, a real-life scream in the actual world, finally awoke her.
It was coming from her mouth.