I hurtled across the road strewn with the rubble of steel and glass, the acrid stench of burning rubber assailing my nostrils. Wrath burned a righteous path of bloodshed through my veins. How dare she threaten my family. The knotted hilt of my wyrmbone blade, warm in my grip, sang a violent song of death.
A loud buzzing noise made the sky sound as if it were blanketed with bees. The Horned God, formed from shadowy wind, struck out with force.
But I’d been born a storm. As swift as a gale. As unpredictable as a squall.
I dodged, twisting midair, a spinning whirlwind. The razor-sharp sword in my hand carved through the dark magic right to the buzzing humanoid figure at its center.
A bellow of outrage, of howling pain, as the wyrmblade sank into unnatural flesh.
But I wasn’t facing one Horned God—I was facing three.
Mistress Lyressa advanced, her fingers lengthening and thinning, becoming like long, vicious sewing needles.
In my periphery, I realized my mother had risen. She punched out with both arms toward the Frankenstein monster, and golden filaments of magic wove around her outstretched fingers. But she looked confused, as if struggling to understand the why of it all.
All it took was a split-second distraction.
For the Horned God with the vibrant red hair and moonlit skin to fling a lasso of might around my forearm. She flicked the cord of power like a whip.
And I was hurled backward through the air, far, fast, crashing bodily like a fragile insect against the armored limousine.
My spine snapped. Fiery pain erupted, and the world turned black as I screamed in pain.
My mother’s petrified shriek joined mine.
It didn’t stop.
The Horned God slammed me against the wall of unforgiving steel. Until almost every single bone fractured, then shattered, my body pummeled until I was a mess of bruised, bloodied flesh.
Released, I fell with one last blood-gurgled gasp, thudding onto the road in a tangle of broken limbs. The mind-splitting agony so excruciating I wavered in and out of consciousness.
My vision swam with black dots edging my sight, and I dazedly came to with my mother’s voice spearing through the savagepounding in my head as she frantically begged the Horned Gods to spare my life. The lives of my entire family.
She bowed low, her upper body curved across mine to protect me. Blood splattered all over her face, and tears thinned the bright red flecks, washing them down her cheeks in watery streaks. “Draxxon! Hamon! They sacrificed their lives to save yours. Without Great House Crowther, all would have been lost. Please, I beg you for mercy. For Draxxon’s Covenant. I’ll do anything you ask. Spare my son. Spare my family!”
“MOM! NO!”
I was distantly aware that I muttered in my sleep, that my clammy body was shivering and twitchy.
A soft voice pierced through the shroud of the nightmare.“I’m here…I’m here…”A delicate hand ran soothing strokes gently up and down my arm, and warm lips nuzzled into my throat.“It’s okay…I’ve got you…”My arms tightened around Nelle’s willowy body as I shifted in my sleep to rest my cheek on the crown of her tangled hair, the satiny strands tickling beneath my chin.
Her calming presence eased my erratic breathing and stifled the trembling. With comforting words and soft touches, she banished the nightmare, and it faded away to settle like sand into a new dreamworld painted in rich, opulent colors.
No, not quite a dream, but rather a recently unearthed memory that expanded until it was fully realized and I fell back in time.
Fell back to when I was five years old, standing inside a strange lair with fabrics lining the walls and vibrant rugs underfoot.
A hand with talon-tipped fingers clapped heavily on my shoulder. “Caught you, Sticky Fingers,” a deep voice rumbled.
I gulped and whipped my hand from the enormous glass jar I’d been dipping my fingers into, trying to reach the dried willwips at the bottom of the container. They were tiny, otherworldlycreatures that came out at night to dance across the sky in a rainbow of light, and I was eager to see them better. Even dried, they looked like colorful, cottony clouds.
I craned my head back and stared into a pair of narrowed, blood-red eyes glaring down at me. Fine wisps of smoke roiled off Florin’s feathered figure.
“I’ll handle this, Florin,” I heard my mother call out sharply as she marched from the back of the lair toward me.
Florin gave a grunt of acknowledgment. The pressure of his taloned hand left my shoulder as he let me go and turned away. Thick rugs muffled the clunk of his walking cane as he hobbled toward his office, where warmth rolled out from the fierce fire set in a huge hearth and brought with it a stinky smell from something simmering inside the blackened pot perched over the flames.
I twisted around to face my mother. She came to a standstill in front of a gigantic shelf lined with jars. Honeyed candlelight struck off the curved glass and made the fronds of the feather duster she held in her hand shimmer as if aflame.
