Page 216 of Brimstone

My head breached the pool, and I immediately sucked down a lungful of—

PAIN.

I’d inhaled razor blades.

I—

I couldn’t—

Easy, Osha. Don’t panic.Khydan was close.

I didn’t so much rise from the pool as find myself being spat out by it. On my hands and knees, I crawled forward, gasping and choking as I tried to make sense of the sensations assaulting my body.

The reek of sulfur and a wall of tremendous heat slapped me in the face. Until very recently, I’d spent my life in a desert. I’d never imagined anything could be hotter than the Third during reckoning . . . but this? This was unimaginable.

I was in shock. Panic spiraling up and down my spine as waves of adrenaline warned me to move, to stepoutof the fire, to retreat to safety. But there was no retreat. There was no safety. There was only a crushing dark, and air so superheated that it felt like it was tearing my lungs to ribbons.

My eyes stung—either from the sulfur or from the heat, I couldn’t tell. It seemed as though they should be watering. Perhaps they were, and the moisture wicking from the surface of my eyes was the source of the unbearable stinging.

“Osha? Can you stand?” Khydan’s voice was low and quiet, but the worry in his words made them loud as a shout. I felt his hand on my back, then on my arm. He helped me to my feet as I tried to hack the tar-like, disgusting filth up and out of my throat. “That’s it. Spit it out. Whatever you do, don’t swallow it.”

Oh, gods. “Whatisit?” I rasped.

Khy took longer than I would have liked to answer. “It’s probably best if you don’t ask,” he said. His voice was too quiet, as if it were being carried away by an invisible wind. “Are you okay?”

His hand found mine in the dark again; the squeeze he gave me calmed my nerves enough that my voice only shook a little when I spoke. “I’m fine. At least IthinkI am. I can’t see anything. And I feel like I’m being cooked.”

Pale green light flared next to me, almost white but not quite. Khydan held a thin tube in his other hand, the top half of which glowed with evenlight. He held it out to me. Once I’d accepted it, he produced another of the strange tubes from his pocket and shook it hard, activating it so that he held one, too.

My mate’s eyes were dark as drowning pools, the brilliant green muted almost to black. His hair dripped with foul liquid that still churned in the pool behind us. It mottled his skin, viscous and thick, his fighting leathers sticky with it. My own hair was plastered to my skull, the liquid soaking all the way through my leathers.

I would have taken that fall into the lake outside Gillethrye all over again, broken ribs and everything, if it meant that I could wash this filth from my body. It wasn’tright.

Shooting me a lopsided smile that was probably supposed to be reassuring, Khydan said, “Two hours. That’s all the time we can spend here, otherwise youwillwind up cooked. Your body wasn’t made for this place.”

“Then we’d better get moving. But . . . where do we need to go?” Had I really been so foolish?“You’ll need to pass through the gate at Ajun,”Lorreth had said.“You’ll need to bargain with the creatures there for access to their brimstone.”I had accepted that doing so would be gravely dangerous—but I hadn’t thought to ask how to find these creatures. Didn’t know where they would be . . . or wherewewould be when we stepped out of the pool, for that matter. Our evenlight torches were far from enough to fully illuminate our surroundings. A six-foot-wide sphere of light embraced us, but on the other side of it waited the unwavering darkness.

Roiling beyond the bounds of evenlight, it felt sentient. Cold and cruel. Khydan swept a hand over his face, smearing the black muck in a futile attempt to wipe it away. His eyes roved, sharp, staring out into the dark. The moment he opened his mouth to speak again, a thunderous rumble split the fetid air, and two glowing orange-red points blazed to life in the near distance, piercing the veil of dark.

They were balls of living flame, those twin points of orange and red. Only they weren’t, because they wereeyes, and theyburned with hate. The ground shook beneath our feet as a booming voice spoke:“Bolddddd.”

The darkness retreated, unveiling a cavernous stone hall draped in shadows and littered with bones. When the beast ahead opened its maw, its giant jaws parting to reveal the glowing glands at the back of its raw, bleeding throat, the air buzzed with sulfur so badly that the stench nearly upended my stomach.

I knew what it was.

The name of the monster bounced around inside my head.

I didn’t dare speak it out loud.

It was seventy feet tall from its huge, taloned feet to its withers. Its long, articulated neck was stooped thanks to the rough rock ceiling. The gods only knew—possiblyfeared—how tall it might have been if it was able to rise to its full height. My breath stoppered in my lungs as I took it in.

Flashing scales of gold? No—black. It was hard to tell, given that the beast itself was the only source of light. A horned ridge protruded from its wide, bony head like a crown. Enormous bulky wings were tucked tightly into its sides. And itsteeth. They were three feet long and jagged, like the edge of one of Elroy’s saws.

I had been filled with awe at the sight of the massive skull that had loomed behind Belikon’s throne at the Winter Palace, but it hadn’t translated, not truly: just how big the rest of the creature would have to be to warrant a head that monstrous. I understood now . . . and I was afraid.

The temperature climbed, fresh waves of sweat breaking across my brow and evaporating as the dragon slowly propped itself up on taloned elbows and then pushed itself up from the ground. “Bolddddindeed,” it rumbled.

Don’t . . . run.Khydan’s warning was fortuitously timed. I’d been considering it. The noxious pool was right behind us,still open. How many seconds would it take to turn and dive back below the choppy surface? Two? Three at most? From the edge in my mate’s voice,anyamount of time wouldn’t be long enough. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as Khy slowly reached over his shoulder and drew his blade.