But the question clung to me like a burr. What was troubling me? What about this—this man—was bothering me? I’d always known who I was—what I wanted. I was a connoisseur of women. And not masculine women either. The type I hungered for were generous in their proportions—ample breasts, ample hips, ample asses. They were generous in the characteristics thatmade them women.
The type of woman I bedded was the woman for whom all other men lusted. The type of woman who filled every space she entered with heat. What was more, I hungered for the very thing that made a woman exactly that. There was nothing I enjoyed more than tasting a woman's cunt, thrusting my tongue insideher sweetness and covering my face with that slick ambrosia. In truth, I could never get enough.
My tastes had never wavered.
Yet here I was, drawn toward this quiet, graceful knight with fine bones and a voice that always seemed pitched just below certainty. I couldn’t explain it. And I didn’t want to. It seemed the harder I tried to deny it, the feeling only deepened—like a thread tightening between us.
“Did you hear that?” Lioran whispered, and I realized I hadn't been paying any damned attention to my surroundings.
Gods, what the fuck was wrong with me?
"Hear what?"
"There was a—"
But Lioran never finished. From behind a massive boulder to our left, something exploded into motion—a thunderous crash of displaced stone and splintering branches.
Tristan's flesh golem.
The thing was a grotesque mockery of human shape that stood nearly nine feet tall. Its body was a patchwork of mismatched flesh—some pieces pale as death, others mottled with decay, still more bearing the gray-green tinge of rot. The seams where different segments met were crudely stitched together with what looked like wire, the metal glinting dully. In places, the wire had torn through the flesh entirely, leaving gaping wounds that wept viscous black.
One arm was massive and corded with muscle—clearly taken from some warrior or laborer—while the other was skeletal and withered, ending in fingers that had been sharpened to points like claws. Its legs were equally mismatched, causing it to lurch forward in a horrible, uneven gait that somehow didn't slow its charge.
But the face. Christ, the face.
It had no single face at all, but rather a collection of features torn from different victims and assembled without regard for symmetry or sense. Three eyes stared out from various points on its skull—one blue, one brown, one milky white and clearly blind. Two mouths gaped where they had been sewn into the flesh, one screaming silently while the other hung slack and drooling. The entire head seemed to shift and pulse as if the pieces were still trying to reject each other, the flesh writhing beneath the surface.
The stench hit me then, and I took a step back—rot and chemicals and something else, something metallic and wrong that spoke of dark magic and forbidden rituals.
My battle sense kicked in immediately, that familiar precognition that had saved my life countless times before. I saw the thing's massive arm sweeping toward me, saw myself dodging left, saw—movement beside me. Lioran stepping forward, ice already forming at his fingertips.
"No!" I shouted, grabbing his shoulder and yanking him back just as the golem's fist crashed through the space where he had been standing. The blow pulverized a tree trunk behind us, sending splinters flying like arrows.
"Stay behind me," I commanded, drawing my sword in one fluid motion. The blade sang as it cleared the scabbard.
The golem wheeled toward us again, both mouths now working in tandem to produce a sound that was part shriek, part groan—a chorus of the dying that made my skin crawl. Black ichor dripped from its wounds, hissing where it struck the ground, leaving small scorched patches in the earth.
I'd faced golems before, but never one so large, and never one so clearly pieced together from so many different victims. Tristan's necromancer magic was impressive, though it wasn't going to be any fun trying to slay the bloody thing. I'd haveto give Tristan a good solid punch to the stomach later in repayment.
"How do we kill it?" Lioran's voice was steady despite the horror before us, and I felt a flash of approval even as I positioned myself between him and the creature.
Why in the fuck are you protecting him?
The thought struck me like lightning, and I immediately stepped aside.
"Fire or dismemberment," I answered, watching the thing circle us with those repellent eyes. "Magic won't hold it for long. These things were built to resist spells."
The golem charged, and my vision split. My precognition acted as a ghostly overlay that showed me its massive arm arcing downward toward my left side while the skeletal claw reached for my throat. Two seconds. That's all I had.
"Ice wall, now!" I barked at Lioran. "Three feet to your right!"
To his credit, he didn't question it. Frost erupted from the ground exactly where I'd indicated, a crystalline barrier rising just as the golem's momentum carried it forward. The thing crashed into the ice with enough force to crack the barrier, but it bought us precious time.
I saw the next move before it happened—the creature would pivot left, sweeping low with that grotesque arm.
"Down!"
We both dropped as the limb whistled overhead, close enough that I felt the displacement of air. As I rolled to my feet, my precognition showed me the opening—a gap of three seconds where the thing would be off-balance from its swing.
