Page 35 of A Spell of Bones and Madness (Nostos #2)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Below the Mountain of Cyther

P ale skin—made even more so from the lack of sunlight—radiated in a faint golden glow. The buzzing was incessant. Damning, even. One of many constants in the cave.

Everything else was black and red. The obsidian rock that lined the walls, ancient letters scrawled in thick crimson liquid. A matted three-headed creature lay at the entrance to the cave, its heavy breathing the only reprieve for the buzzing—no, not buzzing—hissing.

She thrashed, trying to send the creatures scattering below, but it was to no avail.

Her wrists were shackled together and a chain threaded between the cuffs at her wrists and the ones around her ankles.

Lying on the floor of the cave, she was nothing more than a lamb out for slaughter, skewered and hung on a spit for others to devour.

Her voice abandoned her—no way to cry for help, not that she expected anyone here would want to help her. There had been no movement other than the three-headed creature and what daimons lay below her, not since she was brought here days before.

Was it better than the cage they kept her in before? Its golden metal searing fire into her flesh with every touch? Was the hissing better than the maddening screams she could not escape? It wasn’t as if she could escape wherever this was.

Thin, writhing snakes lined the floor, so she could not tell what lay below.

If she was just lying on a mountain of the creatures or if something was covered deep underneath.

Their fiery gold eyes illuminated as they bit into her flesh, drinking what little power she had left, draining her of blood and soul.

Do not come for me. Do not come for me , she repeated over and over. Grasping at the frayed tether in her mind.

I must , a voice echoed back.

Smoke and starlight swirled around the cave and a shadowy figure appeared before her. No, she thought, I told you not to come. You cannot be here. Not now. Not when he is so close.

“Hello, kardiá mou ,” he rasped, before her love, her Fated, Aidoneus, collapsed to the ground below.

The veil between realms was too thin.

It was the end. It was the end for all of them.

How had they fallen so far?

How had the gods been betrayed?