Page 302 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

A guttural sob lodged in my throat.

Blood.

Everywhere I looked, there was blood.

The men hadn’t been killed. They’d been slaughtered. Torn apart as though talons had raked ribbons from their skin.

And standing before me, the masked monster pinned to the wall, was Adrastos.

Air flooded my lungs in serrated pants as my gaze snapped to Smith, Barry, and Kade behind him—blood-spattered, chests heaving, eyes nearly black as they swept the corridor.

No. Kade’s were black. Engulfed entirely. Where the whites should’ve been, there was only onyx.

Barry shifted through the shadows, materializing beside me with his bloodied button-down in hand. He wrapped it around my shoulders as my gaze lifted to the whimpering man pinned to the wall by a blade.

Darkness poured from Adrastos’ shoulders like smoke from wet kindling, furling around his feet and reaching for me in spindly fingers. He didn’t look at me. Not once. His chest heaved, eyes locked on the man in front of him as he snarled one inhumanly vicious word: “Mine.”

“I’m sorry, my⁠—”

Adrastos lunged, sinking his canines into the man’s flesh and garbling the words into a wet gurgle that might’ve been a scream.

It ended just as abruptly… when he ripped out his throat.

FIFTY-NINE

PRETTY SHELLS

BLYTHE

Memories of my mother were so distant it physically hurt to dredge them up most days—as though the muscles needed to find her laugh or remember the touch of her hands had atrophied. But not today. Not as the betrayer—the monster who kept saving me—knelt before me, eyes and hair wild, chest heaving, blood dripping down his chin. Not as he snarled something at the men behind him, or as the king I’d been meant to win over crouched and offered his peacoat while the black receded from his eyes.

So. I hadn’t imagined that, then.

But in their harsh gentleness—the rough scrape of bloodied hands over my face, the tight wrap of Kade’s jacket around my chest to cover my bare skin—the echo of my mother’s careful hands settled over me.

They were speaking—voices so gruff they reminded me of dogs snarling—but I couldn’t understand them.

Frantic eyes scoured my face and body, his hands following, and I remembered my mother doing the same thing.

We’d gone to the beach, where she’d nurtured my love of the water, the creatures within it, the freedom of a board atop it. And I’d found a shell. We loved shells. My mother, with her gentle hands and bright eyes, was particularly enamored with the iridescent ones Auntie Rey and I dug from the sand. But that day was different.

That day, I wandered down the beach as they talked about boring things. As my pudgy little hands shoved through the dense sand, I stumbled upon the most beautiful shell I’d ever seen. It wasn’t the color so much as the pattern that drew me in. Burnt orange with spots of cream, wrapped into a tight little ice cream cone.

I tucked it into my bucket and continued sorting, despite knowing my prize for the day had already been found.

Within a few minutes, my fingers were tingling.

The shells blurred as I dug, my head throbbing, my belly turning.

I clumsily walked up to Mamma and Auntie, the world tilting around me. I must’ve looked as strange as I felt because they both panicked. Within a heartbeat, Auntie had scooped me into her arms and whisked us away, where Mamma and the healers laid hands on me.

I’d never heard her pray so hard.

Adrastos’ eyes held that same frenetic terror now, his pupils devouring his irises as his broad hands coasted over my face, the back of my head, my neck, jaw, and shoulders.

His mouth was moving.

I watched intently, but no sound came from those full lips. Not even as he leaned forward, scooped an arm beneath my legs, and hauled me against the broad plane of his chest. I curled tighter into myself, determined to hide from the world. From him. Them.