Page 43 of Merciless Is My Crown

My wife and I were going to finish things between us tonight.

And since she already had such a low, low opinion of me, I didn’t much care where that left us at the end.

17

RAZIEL

The ledge we perched on was barely wide enough for my boots. The enormous obsidian spikes had pierced through both the parapet and the mountainside overhead, leaving piles of tumbled rock for us to crawl over. There was no hint of an entrance, no sign of life. I slid my boots along the rock shelf and sent a shower of rock tumbling down.

I winced at the echo rippling across the cavernous space.

We might as well have shouted our announcement up into those dark clouds.

“I don’t see a way inside.” Zor didn’t feel the same necessity for silence as he clawed out loose stone between the gleaming pillars, sending debris bouncing down the mountainside. “Are we in the right place?”

“This was the entrance to Zephryn’s den, but the obsidian spikes were still…growing when we left. Those stones were nowhere near this big.” Torin stepped up and flattened her palms against the stones, shuddering before she snatched her hands back, her face contorted in pain.

“They’re full of foul magic. Like iron bars on a prison cell, so I can’t tell if Zephryn’s inside.”

I mimicked her pose and laid my palms against the glass-like stone, cold biting into my skin with a flash of bone-chilling pain.

Ancient, cruel magic, the kind that devoured until nothing was left. But I was no stranger to death, and my own power rose up to counter the foul darkness. Out of instinct I shoved back, cracks spiderwebbing beneath my palms before the obsidian pillar shattered with an earsplitting crack.

Razor-sharp splinters exploded around me, blowing me away from the stones and my feet off the narrow ledge. I plunged straight down the mountainside, Zor’s shouted warning trailing behind me as I tumbled over loose stone, losing fingernails and skin as I fought to find a handhold, anything to slow my plummet toward those sharp, unforgiving rocks below.

Debris rocketed down the incline alongside me from the exploded pillar, chunks of black stone shattering into smaller, deadlier projectiles.

Even my leathers couldn’t stand up to the abrasive rock, the skin beneath shredding, none of my training or magic or skill doing me a fucking bit of good as I tumbled over and down some more, the world a tangled mess of spinning darkness.

I reached for my magic, but something about the soul sucking nature of this place made my magic elusive. I bounced off a jagged rock, narrowly missing caving in my skull.

Finally—fucking finally—my torn-up hand caught an outcropping, my body swinging out over a vast emptiness, tearing two more fingernails off in the process, but I wasn’t dying.

Not immediately, anyhow.

No, I’d just hang here like a ham drying in the summer sun.

I stared up at Zor’s, Simon’s, and Torin’s pale faces outlined against the mountain’s dark silhouette and peering down at me in shock. And no wonder. One of the pillars was completely gone, the ground beneath me littered with gleaming glass-like shards, each and every one sharp enough to carve flesh from bone.

Fuck, if any of us fell, we’d be ripped apart.

I was gathering enough magic to dematerialize when I glimpsed the creature dropping down behind Zorander onto the ledge. “Zorander, look out.” The wind ripped the warning from my mouth.

Crafted out of darkness and evil, the thing sank its teeth into the side of Zor’s throat and sending his foot skidding off the ledge. I threw my arm over my face as obsidian slivers, sharper than razors, hurtled toward me.

“Fuck.” I swung my body to the side, using the momentum to lunge with my other hand and catch another jutting stone. Only when I’d stabilized myself did I gather enough magic to fling myself through space, moving through time like it was second nature.

I landed badly, arms pinwheeling to catch my balance.

Torin and a snarling Simon were to my right, pinned down by two creatures, Zor on my left, slicing the thing’s hideously snapping head from its muscular body in one clean sweep.

They were made for rocky terrain, with five long, dexterous fingers, each terminating in a sharp talon, and lean dark gray bodies with powerful limbs made for climbing and navigating the sheer faces of the cliffs. Large, opaque eyes, perfect for the misty dim, and double rows of sharp, shredding teeth, meant to rip and tear.

“Fucking do something,” Simon shouted, catching one around the throat as it lunged at Torin.

I launched a blade of my own—made from blue-black magic—straight into those gray chests, blowing the two creatures off the mountain and out into open air. “Should have grown wings, you little fuckers,” I muttered as their shrill cries echoed through the crater.

The entire mountain went quiet, the last echoing howls dying away, the creatures’ crumpled forms broken on the rocks below.

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