Two girls. Two secrets.
Only one can survive.
Years before Nelle Wychthorn plans her escape, Tabitha Catt may unearth something in a Horned God's lair that is the key to freedom.
Desperate to save her beloved aunt from a dark curse, Tabitha is out t...
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My blazing sword was a twin to my sister's blade of flaming blue.
I dodged crossbow bolts as they flew and thudded into their targets—
Hacked and slashed and gutted—
Kill, move on, kill, move on. Those were the words that replayed in my mind as I gave in to rage and bloodlust.
Black gunk splattered my clothes and my skin. Blood crusted my fingers and my exposed neck from the hunters or servants I'd caught before they'd fallen.
And on I fought and hacked and slew—
Limbs hewn cleanly and spinning away—
Feral mutts tipping over, their dismembered bodies skidding across the soot-coated grass.
Slowly, so slowly, the tide of war was turning in our favor.
The barking and snarling became less and less.
And hope...hope flowed through my veins and made the heaviness bearing down upon my chest ease a little at the thought that we were going to make it through this hellish night.
But when I'd rounded wide, and came to the edge of the warzone nearest the Hemmlok forest, my pace faltered when I saw the witch closing in, and all that rage and anger and fury bled from my pounding heart. All the hope I'd only just latched onto dissolved and was replaced with frost-biting dread.
Jurgana's heinous power pooled about her slender legs, spitting and bubbling like a mud pool geyser. The monstrous beasts in front of her, with their half-formed bodies that looked like they'd been shattered and reformed wrong, began to surge forward.
As the Horned God walked with a swaying, dreamy gait, her fingers dipped into a skinned pouch and she drew out fingertips coated in malicious red dust. She wove a spell, the ancient language spinning musical notes that danced in the air.
My stomach fell and kept falling as a cloud darker than a void, that made pitch-black seem a pitiful, pale shade, burst from her well of power as she birthed an enormous world-eating cloud of locusts.
I stumbled to a halt in mute horror, the killing around me continuing, oblivious to what awaited us. My sword lowered to my side of its own accord. It was over. We'd never survive the hells Jurgana had unleashed upon us.
The locusts swarmed on a buzz of wings, their chittering deafening everything, even the bleating and screaming and snapping of jaws as they flew across the lawn, greedy to feast on us until there was nothing left, not even bones.
As the first wave of Jurgana's nightmare rose up like a tsunami, rising up, up, up, cresting, and about to crash upon us, my heart speared to my sister and then to Tabitha.
I cursed Zrenyth and Skalki and Brangwene that I'd only just encountered the servant girl with her prim manners and dimpled grin and ferocious soul. Who kissed like a fucking wild cat, and refreshingly reprimanded me with a curt tone. A girl whom, at that moment I realized only too late, that I wished I'd met years ago.
