Page 170 of Vicious Is My Throne

And princess? Tristan’s eyes glinted like garnets. Make every second count.

72

RAZIEL

Holy fucking gods.

Maybe if I said that enough times he’d disappear into the ether, because…holy fucking gods.

Against the enormity of Corvus, everything became insignificant, including us.

Especially us.

He was the biggest living thing I’d ever seen, so big, I was having trouble wrapping my head around how, exactly, we were supposed to get close enough to kill him.

This would be like leveling a mountain with a pickaxe.

The strangely shrine-like pile of stones and bones hid me well enough, but he was so focused on belching his rot out into the world, I highly doubted he noticed me any more than I’d notice an ant beneath my boot.

I slid down and pressed my back against the rocks, gathering my thoughts into something coherent. From the moment I’d opened my eyes this morning, I’d fallen effortlessly into the role that had once defined me but now I hated with all my heart, because I knew where today would end.

One last command.

One last campaign against an unbeatable enemy.

One final duty for my queen. My love. My life.

Then we’d arrived and I’d grasped—too fucking late—the enormity of the task we faced.

But fear would get us killed. Worse, fear would get Anaria killed.

We had a plan. Nothing adequate for the situation, not one that took all the variables—including the fact Corvus was nearly as big as the entire fucking Keep—into account, but a shite plan and a little luck were better than no plan at all.

Stuttering fear turned to clear, calm focus as I barked out orders I knew would be followed to a tee, Anaria’s rage building to a boiling crescendo in the background.

But everyone had to be in position.

Everyone had to give everything they had to make this work.

And then, once she understood the hard reality—we were her warriors to shield our queen—we told Anaria the only thing that mattered.

That if we fell, if all the dreams and plans we’d made turned to ash, then we’d find her again. No matter how far we had to go or how long we had to wait.

Then I closed off my connection to her and sent one final message to Zor and Tristan.

If this goes south and I fall, one of you fly her out. No matter how hard she fights, she is the only one of us who really matters.

Corvus slithered closer to the opening, dragging a train of dripping vines and shadows behind him like he’d crawled out of the bowels of the earth.

I ducked behind the yellowed bones jutting up from the stone pile, the floor beneath my feet polished to an almost mirror finish, the mica-flecked stone glittering, along with the hair-thin bands of gold that echoed the circumference of the room.

I knew there were symbols inlaid here as well; I’d seen them in the room Anaria had re-created this morning. All of our markings, hidden beneath a sticky coating of rot.

Somewhere, in the center, was one made out of pure Cassiopian silver.

And all we had to do was make sure Anaria was standing on that symbol once we had Corvus pinned down between us.

Bex had walked us through the plan last night while Anaria slept.

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