It wasn’t real.
Couldn’t be.
The horror was too vibrant to be anything more than a mushroom-induced hallucination.
A lump of half-sentient flesh and deformed bone that heaved for breath. Mutated beyond all recognition, except where hair bristled in a rough imitation of a mane, it was a nightmare walking. One that huffed and groaned, rattling in some hideous rendition of a growl. Heavy jaws stretched wide enough to swallow her legs all the way up to her navel and still draw breath, it rippled as she watched.
Tendons snapping, it hauled that heavy club up, back, letting her see where flesh had been stretched too thin over muscles that had grown at an unbelievable pace. She could plainly see arteries and veins through that papery skin, red and blue ropes that had grown thick enough that she could plug one with the tip of her finger and still have room to wriggle.
Bile splashed the back of her throat as she darted to the left—and saw a thing that stole her breath.
A single watery blue eye. Glassy. Pupils skating between a tiny prick of seething black, and widely blown.
Claiming slow millimeters of blue as that pupil yawned wide and swallowed everything that she’d been in a single greedy gulp. Twitching in the socket, it rolled toward her, beaming with hateful accusation.
A poor attempt at a smile spread over sagging lips. Drooping heavily on the left side, this mask was a mockery of a face she’d loved, once. Before she’d been a queen.
The beast rumbled as it hefted its bulk another step closer.
Renegade’s feet slid apart. And she let the horror of her past slip away with a wet splat, stiffening her spine even as she braced. “I’ll do better,” she murmured, a eulogy whispered too late to offer comfort to any but herself. “For the others. Our sisters… our daughters. For the matrons who guide us and all who come next.Better. That’s what this feral court is. A chance for more. And…” The queen’s throat flexed around an ache, but despite the urge, she didn’t fight the sob. Fought to truly feel the tears as they ran hot and salty down her cheeks. “And I’m sorry.”
Groaning, making a terrible mess of the grotto, the beast planted one grotesquely mutated arm and struck the earth with a hollow thud. Fetid breath foaming and spitting, it’s hideous skull tipped to one side.
“Balkazar?” Renegade gasped, because in the right light, it was obvious. “By the Nine…” she said, too shocked to do more than gape at what the war chief had become.
And there as something about the way his single eye had fixed to her face. Something in the manner he pulled a breath through sagging jaw and let his tongue flick back… along the roof of his mouth.
Tasting her…
… for he wasGiaus’ creation.
Not hers.
Swallowing back the terror, the queen stood before the monster and let him take her in with senses he’d inherited from a line that would be noble. Fought to ignore the urge to submit, to turn tail and flee into the welcoming dark, she allowed him to fall into the Sight and see just how far above him she perched.
This grievance between them needed an ending, unsavory as it was.
“Mmmm,” the beast moaned, huffing at the place where she’d been. His monstrous jaws sagging as he panted and drank the wind. “Tassssste…” Lurching, Balkazar lifted one clumsy club, peering down at her as he tried to aim a mass far too heavy to wield with anything resembling accuracy.
Wanted another taste, did he?
Feet planted, knuckles dirty with the glitter of rich, dark soil, she reached for the tie binding her cloak about her shoulders. Not daring so much as a blink as the beast bothered itself to close the distance between them.
But still, she waited.
Relaxed, if ready.
Waiting for the truth to penetrate that thick, mutated skull.
Knowing she could out-pace what had once been a formidable Anhur, before he’d become…this.
Ugly. Only half as hideous in death as he’d been in life.
For a moment, he did nothing but pant for breath. Balancing a weight that should not have been as he glared down at her. Murder gleaming bright and furious from that ring of icy blue.
Hatred.
Loathing for all that she was. What she’d been born into… that she’d never behis.
