Page 37 of The Princes of Stone and Steel

Not because of the purple smoke.

I’d grown accustomed to that.

No, what had me doing a double-take was the way the hags levitated above the floor and their beady, black raven eyes started to glow an iridescent blue. I stood stunned, gawking at them yet unable to move or make another sound.

And when they began to speak, not with age as before, but clear—monotone—they once again spoke in an eerie unison. Every word.

“Look to the caldron,” the hags ordered.

Steele and I tore our eyes from the strange site before us to look down into the old, black pot. Iridescent light shot up from the mouth of the pot, hanging there, suspended. An image appeared in the light.

“Kori?” I gasped. She was on the ground, crying, bleeding.

My best friend.

The prince let out a low guttural grunt. He grasped my hand and squeezed tight enough to cut off circulation. Where was she? Who had her? Would her father be so cruel as to hurt his only daughter?

Neither Steele nor I could tell from the vision. What we did know was we had to get back to Roshambo. “We have to go.” I voiced what I knew we both were thinking.

“The road home is fraught with danger,” the hags warned. “The beast has been released. She will hunt you.”

“I can’t risk your safety, Mils,” my prince said. “I’ll go back by myself to try to help her. But I need to know you’re safe.”

“No. You promised me. We’re anus. Partners. You go, I go.”

“But, Mils…”

“Shut it, prince. We’re not separating. You go,Igo. ’Nuff said.”

“Go to the witch of the wood. She is expecting you. She will assist you,” the hags, still in unison, interjected into our semi-private argument.

“The witch of the wood?” I asked. That bit of new information appeared to be enough to end our little lovers’ spat. But the hags didn’t answer, instead transforming back into those unnerving raven forms.

“I’ve heard of her,” Steele whispered. “They call her the witch of the wood, she’s very powerful. Her name is Baba Yaga. I’m not sure why no one uses it.”

I started to ask him another question about the witch when the mouth of the cavern opened up. The ravens gave great, loud caws before picking both Steele and me up by the shoulders once again. Despite all the trials we’d already gone through to get here, I got the ominous feeling that those had actually been the easy part.

Heaven help us.

Sixteen

Go to the witch of the wood

WE FLEW THROUGH THE AIR. I MADE THE MISTAKE of looking down to the sounds of horns honking and then, people screaming. For the sounds to reach us among the clouds, hundreds of people had to be voicing their fear or pain… or possibly both. I hoped with everything in me not both.

Though, as the screams rose from a town below us, I feared the worst. Louder and louder, the piercing, sorrowful sounds assaulted my ears.God, what’s happening down there?

Black smoke billowed up from several buildings. I watched in horror as the top stories of a tall building collapsed in on itself. I should’ve been paying attention to the bigger picture because it was when you didn’t that the really bad things happened. And that was the exact moment when a giant explosion rocked the air surrounding us, causing the ravens to lose altitude momentarily, proving my point.

Then a second explosion boomed, and I watched as the air rippled. The birds’ feathers whooshed back, tangled up in one another, unable to ride on the wind, making us incapable of keeping flight and we dropped.

At the last minute, the ravens recovered, but not before I saw a terrible beast, no kidding, with a lion’s head and goat hooves, but with a serpent’s tail, blowing fire from its mouth like a flame thrower. And I saw the carnage it left behind. A bombed-out town and so many dead people.

“Is that the Chimera?” I yelled in fear, hoping that the prince could hear me.

He nodded, the fright present in his brushed aluminum eyes.

Reflected in the aluminum, I watched a line of fire rip from the beast’s mouth straight at us. My hag raven couldn’t move fast enough. The fire hit her dead on and she burst into a ball of flames that flashed out in seconds, leaving the remnants of the bird ash to fleck away. I dropped, tumbling through the air again.

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