Page 64 of Children of Fallen Gods

Then we rounded another corner, and saw her.

The figure was at the end of one of the hallways, her back facing us. I could tell it was a female by the long flow of braided hair, the sweep of fine chiffon skirts, the delicate curve of her body. She was kneeling, hunched over — hunched over at an angle that, the closer I got, seemed more and more gut-wrenchinglywrong, the twist of her spine too severe, the wrench in her shoulders unnatural.

“Don’t take them…! Don’t take them…!”

“My Lady—” Ishqa called out.

“Don’t take them…!”

I didn’t even see her move. One moment, she was there, kneeling on the ground. The next, she was lunging towards us.

I had to stifle a gasp of sheer horror.

She didn’t have aface.

At first, I thought it was some trick of the mind, as if she was moving so quickly her features had simply smeared in movement. But no — it was like there was something intangible justmissingwhere her face should have been, flesh instead turning to strange blurry mist. My eyes couldn’t focus on her.

Not that I had time to stand there and try.

“Stop!” Ishqa commanded. “We come to—”

He barely got the words out. She was upon us, all shrieks and spindly limbs. Ishqa’s sword was raised in seconds. He looked beautiful wielding it — the kind of image that seemed it should be carved in polished stone, unlike me, who fought like a creature that crawled out of the dirt. One graceful strike, and the woman should have fallen.

Should have.

I flinched at the hot spray of blood across my face. It took me a few addled seconds to realize it: she had not stopped.

She continued to runthroughIshqa’s blade.

“Don’t take them…!”

The words came in the exact same intonation every time, like a fragment of a memory stuck in a cycle.

I swore under my breath as she barreled into me. I dodged just in time, my shortsword striking her gut and the dagger glancing her shoulder. The blades cut through her, but not the way I was used to feeling steel slice through flesh. The resistance was strangely weak, as if I was slicing through the half-rotten meat of a dead deer already ravaged by wolves.

And when she touched me? The pain was so intense that my breath shriveled in my lungs.

I leaped away from her. Her strange, faceless stare was locked on me. She lunged, and I dropped. Ishqa seized upon that distraction, dancing forward with another blow of his sword, another blow that the woman — the creature — barely reacted to. So quick —Mathira, so quick — she whirled around and reached for him.

“Don’t take them…!”

Ishqa’s sword impaled her, and she let out a chilling, wordless shriek as her fingers clutched at him. I could see pain in the hard set of his jaw. Her hands were clawing at his exposed shoulders, leaving bloody gouges.

I took my opening.

My blades plunged into her back. Then I pulled them up, splitting her. I should have felt the resistance of bone and cartilage, but her flesh parted easily.

For a terrible moment, she remained that way, clinging to Ishqa, and I thought we were dealing with something truly invincible.

But then, she let out an inhuman wail that sounded more akin to the whistle of wind through the rocks.

Don’t take them, don’t take them, don’t take them…

The intonation never changed, but the words faded like dissipating echoes.

The creature fell to a heap on the ground. Unmoving, she looked even stranger.

I swore, lowering myself to take a closer look, and—

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