“Uhhhnnhnnn.” A groan rolls out from the southeastern corner of the great hall, where Grand Cleric Beneveto’s cadaver is strapped to a chair with leather binds.
Vale’s jaw snaps shut, frustration sparking in his icy blue eyes. He draws in a long breath to find his patience. “As I was saying, if we are to take?—”
“Uhhnnhhhnnnnhn.”
His words halt. again. He grimaces. “If we?—”
“Huuhhhnnhhuhh.”
Vale tosses up his hands, sitting back with his own groan. “Can’t someone shut up that fucking cadaver?”
Immortal Samaur leans forward, showing off a flash of his golden front tooth. “How exactly do you propose it, brother? Slit his throat? The man is already dead.”
Another moan rattles out of Beneveto’s body, this time punctuated with some phlegm-filled gagging, then a loud hiss of gas from somewhere I’d prefer to remain a mystery.
Captain Tatarin hides her snicker behind her hand, turning toward the window as though something has suddenly caught her eye.
“Then get a damn Deathraiser in here,” Vale demands, “and find out how to kill an already dead man!”
“I can silence him,” Woudix utters, resting his hands flat on the table.
I fight the urge to roll my eyes. Oh, fantastic. Woudix is the last person I want to hear from. I fight the urge to tighten my fists on the table as I imagine how good it would feel to slam it into his pale face.
It’s a toss up, really. Which one I hate most.
Immortal Iyre stole my memories.
Immortal Artain tried to kill me.
Immortal Valealsotried to kill me.
Apparently, it’s open hunting season on Basten Bowborn.
But right now, my ire fixes on the handsome God of Death who justhasto put his hands all over Sabine to unlock her powers.
“Do it,” Vale mutters, massaging the bridge of his nose.
Woudix pushes back his chair, scraping the hard stone, and stalks toward Beneveto like a wolf. The cadaver’s jaw snaps hard, his broken and bloodied teeth glistening, like he wants to take a bite out of the god.
Fuck.
I recoil, leaning back in the throne. No wonder he was brought to Volkany in chains.
The woken dead have a taste for…flesh?
Woudix approaches in deathly-calm steps, circling the bound and chained cleric. Slowly, his human glamour falls away. Black fey lines break out on his exposed wrists and neck, climbing up his pale temples. His eyes turn entirely black, like window glass at night.
Beneveto snaps his jaw, almost biting Woudix’s outstretched hand.
Woudix doesn’t fucking blink.
He whispers low, in a language that doesn’t seem a part of this world, and sparking black fey shoots out from his fingertips straight into Beneveto’s gaping mouth.
Beneveto’s body goes rigid, then jerks wildly as if fey is bouncing around inside him from throat to belly, dissolving his guts from the inside out. The cadaver begins to weep thick, gelatinous tears. More of the clear substance, swirling with faint pearlescent sheen, drips from his ears, nose, and mouth.
Whatever the thick substance is continues to ooze out of his pores until his rotting skin gleams and his clothes are soaked.
Woudix snaps, and the substance begins to boil right there on the cadaver’s skin. Wisps of vapor rise into the air to disappear into nothing.
