Page 110 of Merciless Is My Crown

Something shifted in the darkness behind the creature, Zephryn disappearing from my line of sight as he lost his balance and went down. My perfectly aimed arrow missed completely as the creature lunged at the dragon shifter, pincers clicking, the horrific sound echoing against the distant mountains.

Snow flew as the bug-like monster hurtled toward Zephryn then crushed him beneath its soft, slithering weight, legs slashing and stabbing like a thousand little daggers until the snow was painted red.

My next arrow didn’t miss, taking out an eye and the back of the thing’s head before I rushed over and heaved the still-twitching corpse off Zeph. Gods, less than ten seconds and he was shredded, blood and muscle gleaming through what remained of his clothes.

Another one hurtled from the darkness, and I took that one down, too.

Then the next one. And the next.

“They’re being spawned by the shadows.” Zephryn heaved himself unsteadily to his feet. “No wards to protect this place, but darkness that gives birth to protectors.” His eyes were wild. “Find Torin. Get Simon out of there.”

His teeth gleamed as they grew longer and longer. “Find her,” he roared, and I shot another arrow, barely taking down another one about to snap those venom-coated pincers into his leg.

Then a black dragon stomped the bodies into steaming piles of sticky green goo as Zephryn hurtled around the edge of the mausoleum into those deep shadows…and disappeared.

Like the darkness-that-wasn’t-darkness swallowed him whole.

“Fuck.” I knocked another arrow. I had two more after this one.

They wouldn’t be enough.

“I got the pendant.” Simon stuck his arm out the window, the only part of him that would fit since his shoulders were too wide. “It took me long enough, but here it is.” Something red and glittering dangled from his fist.

Then he spotted the crushed corpses littering the churned-up ground.

“What the fuck are those?”

“Guards. Protectors. I don’t fucking know but get down here and help,” I hissed up at him, listening hard for any indication of skittering insectile feet, a dragon’s deafening roar, or a female’s frantic scream. But nothing came out of those deep shadows, like they not only swallowed all the light but every sound.

I didn’t dare take my eyes off that darkness. “Shift and circle around Ashbane. Tell me what you see. Stay high if you know what’s good for you.”

Simon disappeared, then his owl sailed out into the night and made a tight, swift circle around the building. When he made another round, I knew there was nothing there.

Nothing…and yet such malice throbbed from that abiding darkness…as if the shadows contained every evil thing the Oracle could come up with.

“Fuck.” Snow flew as Simon landed behind me. “Explain. Make it fast because I’m freezing my fucking arse off.”

“Torin was double-checking the warding. She never reappeared, but these protectors started emerging from that shadow. Zephryn went in after her…and never came out.”

“The shadows are a magic sort of…prison and they can’t get out because they’re trapped in the darkness. No light can penetrate.”

“Where does that leave us?”

Simon drew even with me, arms wrapped around himself, his teeth chattering. “We go in there, we get trapped, too.” His gaze drifted to the darkness. “You have fire magic. Send a plume of flame into that darkness.”

“I’d have to drop the bow.”

“You’ve only got two arrows left and I expect fire can kill them as easily as iron.” Simon nudged the nearest creature with his bare foot, sending a gush of steaming green liquid into the snow before it melted down through the rock beneath, sending up a putrid cloud. “Fuck. That’s every bit as disgusting as last time.”

“I thought you’d never been up here?”

“Only once. Cosimo had one of these things strapped down to a table in his laboratory. Said it crept down out of the mountains, but now…now I’m not so sure the Oracle hadn’t sent one of her minions to spy on him.”

“Hold this.” I handed him my bow and conjured an orb of fire as we picked our way around the carcasses, careful not to touch them or any of that green venom.

I stopped a few feet from the shadows then sent the tentative flicker of fire inside. The darkness smothered every ember, snuffing my magic out like a match.

“Again. More.”

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