Page 35

MEZOR

For a moment he’s drowning. Suffocated by water, fur, and scales amid deafening silence, he struggles against the aether for the first time. Then noise comes rushing back, and Mezor stumbles into a circle of ruins at the edge of the pit. A ring of demons surrounds him, holding pikes and torches.

Serpents explode into existence, writhing as they hit the ground. The demons shout in surprise and their thicket of pikes clatter.

“Hold!” their captain roars.

The serpents scatter the soldiers like frightened rats, and for a moment there’s chaos. The pike wall quickly reforms. But the serpents are too disoriented to fight, and they’re already disappearing into the gloom with a clatter. Before Mezor can decide his move, the soldiers closed on him. In the dim light, their faces are uncertain.

Rage rises in his veins. It has to have been an ambush.

No doubt they expected to flush out the King himself—not his Hunter. Mezor bares his teeth. He’ll waste no arrows on them—if they want a fight, he’ll take them with his bare claws.

The demon captain steps forward. “Hunter. Where is the King?”

“Brutus, is it not?” Mezor bares his teeth, and he’s horribly gratified by the fear that flashes across the demon captain’s face. “Try your pikes on me.”

“Surrender, and I won’t have my soldiers run you through,” Brutus sneers.

Mezor takes off the bow and sets it aside. He cracks his knuckles. “I’m very angry right now, Brutus. Try me.”

CYRUS

Thunder chases Cyrus up the stairs. Wreathed in shadow, he squeezes through the exit. His heart slams against his ribs. Mezor will be alright. He repeats it over and over, as if that makes it true. Mezor will find him.

His feet pound the stone as he runs. Breath tears at his throat. The splintering crack of the cottage being destroyed rings in his ears. Get somewhere safe, Mezor told him. Every nook and cranny he’s ever huddled in rushes through his mind, only to be discarded as he imagines being dragged out of a crack in some wall like an animal.

It’s not until he runs head-first into Magnus and three soldiers that he realizes the shadows Mezor sent with him have long since dissipated. He’s hurtled right into a trap.

“Get him!” someone snarls as Cyrus darts toward the gap in their guard.

Clawed hands grab him roughly. They drag him upright and pin him to the wall. He struggles, but it only serves to make the soldiers jerk him around.

“Hold him there! Filthy traitor.” Magnus’s voice is gleeful.

“No!” he howls, but the whip silences him.

The first slice opens him from shoulder to flank. His back bursts into flame. The second blow makes him wrench away from the wall.

“It’s fifty lashes for a traitor,” Magnus hisses. Cyrus gasps for air, sick with fear. “But you’re a lucky rat. You’ll live to see the coronation.”

At five lashes, his knees buckle. The soldiers holding him up grunt and lift him higher so his shoulders pull and his horns scrape the wall. He heaves dryly from the pain. Again. gain. His vision blurs into nothing. There’s bitter ichor in his mouth.

Ten lashes. He sucks in wet, gasping breaths, his cries stolen by agony. Magnus’s laugh echoes round the hall. The scrape of boots is dull beneath the deafening noise of his own panic.

“No tongue left on him! Chain him with the rest now. He’ll get the other forty before Leuther puts his head on a pike next to the others.”

“Yes, sir.”

The soldiers drag him away from the wall. They cuff his wrists in front of him, the sudden pull on his back making the hallway swim. He tries to breathe as he’s marched up the stone way, but it’s as if a boulder sits in the middle of his chest.

Safe? Nowhere is safe now.

Mercifully, the pain wipes any more coherent thoughts from his head.

Outside the feast hall is a line of demons chained together, battered and smeared with ichor: the remnants of General Talos’s patrol, the original Grey Company. They sneer at the soldiers as Cyrus is dragged past, some spitting at their feet. By contrast, their gazes pass over him as if he’s invisible.

The soldiers chain him to the end of the line. There’s not a moment of respite—the line begins moving before he can catch his breath. He’s jerked along as they marched up the hall, and he quickly learns that if he stumbles the demons in front of him won’t pause. He forces his feet to lift, every step making his back throb with fresh pain.

The procession of prisoners pauses in the wide, open halls of the mid-levels. They stand that way for long enough that Cyrus grows dizzy with the effort of holding himself upright. He tries to focus on taking the next breath. But he can’t help noticing how the hall fills with demons. An uneasy hush falls over the hall, like they’re waiting for something. Before long it seems like every demon in the Court is gathered.

At the far end of the hall General Leuther strides in. Tall and imposing, he wears a neat uniform in coal black and a cloak that flares behind him as he walks. At his right hand is General Andeolus, tall and dolorous. At his left is Magnus, his single eye flicking to and fro.

The whip in Magnus’s hand is black with ichor. Cyrus’s stomach heaves. He has to look away. When he can raise his eyes again, Leuther is almost upon them. His eyes slide past the prisoners. He looks different—he’s thin, almost sunken. Shadows eat away at his features. His normally sharp gestures are muted as he waves to the pikemen to move ahead.

“Keep going!” Leuther snarls, booming above the unnatural quiet. “There’s no time to waste.”

The demon ahead of Cyrus leans in to his neighbor. “He’s sick.”

“The Hellspring will cure whatever ails him,” the other demon mutters.

“Not anymore, remember?”

But the second only shakes his head. Their chatter is cut short as the chain jerks, and a soldier jabs the first demon with his pike. “No talking!”

The demon sneers. “Yeah? What are you gonna do?”

With no hesitation, the soldier stabs him clear through the stomach with his pike. The demon gurgles wetly and crumples, and the sudden extra weight makes Cyrus stumble. The second demon grunts, turning away quickly.

The soldier pulls his pike free, ichor smearing across the stone. He snaps open the catch on the dead demon’s cuffs and the body falls free from the chain.

Cyrus makes the mistake of meeting the soldier’s eyes.

“You want to be next?”

He shakes his head with a jerk. The soldier turns away in disgust. Cyrus steps over the body, and a whisper of cold wind brushes his skin—the void, opening for the demon’s soul. He shudders and hurries onward.

He’ll find me.

But will Mezor find him alive…or dead?