Page 41 of The Princes of Stone and Steel

Then she stuck her hand in the sludge, which would have burned me, and walked a handful over to the wall. She smeared the gunk, which didn’t burn her or the wall, over a large area. Like a movie screen, pictures appeared.

A spy, a mechanical spider, a Forfex spider with legs hinged at the knees instead of joints that looked like a child’s erector set spider, watched us emerge through the whirlpool, the one we’d gone through near Old Tom’s house. It watched us get sucked back down. But before the twirling water dissipated, it shot a spider’s silk through.

It stayed as another of its kind scurried off, only to come back with a group of Forfex, a large cannon in tow. They launched something into the sky.

“Seeding the clouds,” I murmured.

“What?” the prince asked.

“They’re artificially seeding the clouds.”

“Yes. The Papyrus figured out how to open the skoulikotrypa. We perfected it, as you see.”

“Is the portal supposed to be opened so often?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are there repercussions, on my side or here, for opening the portal so many times? Artificially. Wouldn’t that lead to, I don’t know, a disturbance in the force or something?”

He chose not to respond, only rolling those brushed aluminum eyes at me.

Worse than seeding the clouds to open the skoulikotrypa was watching Stipator lead a man in a thick leather tunic and strange, thick leather helmet who walked in front of a mighty iron cage. No, not a cage, a cell on wheels. The sides weren’t bars but flat walls of iron.

The biggest iron padlock I’d ever seen kept the door to the cell secured. And when they unlocked it, the men, save the leather-clad one, scurried away. They’d unleashed the Chimera. Leather man had to be the handler, as he and he only herded the monster into the whirlpool to follow us.

That was how it had found us.

Before the Chimera had dropped into the bog, its handler had used my clothing, the ones I’d worn to the club in Detroit, the ones I’d left back in Roshambo. He’d fed the thing my scent like it was a giant, fire-breathing bloodhound.

As I remembered the screams of fear from those poor people dying in the streets, being burned alive, in a way no different than those poor souls left behind when Vesuvius erupted over Pompeii. A place that I’d someday wanted to visit. I swallowed hard realizing those sounds would stay with me for the rest of my life, and knowing without a shadow of doubt that no matter how our fight played out, I was never visiting Pompeii.

I shuddered.

Steele reached over to squeeze my hand. He knew me, even if I still didn’t remember him in my head. He knew me. Knew my heart.

The images on the wall faded until nothing but wall remained.

The Forfex prince took the opportunity to ask about what we’d risked returning to Roshambo for. “What of my sister? The hag ravens—”

“Yes, they showed you what will come to pass.”

“Will come to pass?” I asked, hopeful. “You mean there’s still time to save her?”

“You can still save the princess,” the witch said, cocking her head slightly, face stern. “But when the moment arrives, will you be able to choose?”

“Choose between what?”

“The princess, the prince or Roshambo.”

“I won’t leave your side, Mils, so you won’t have to worry about saving me. If I’m not with you, I’m already dead.”

“Don’t say that,” I hissed. My gut twisted at the thought of my prince dead. We had to end up together. Nothing of my life was of my own choosing, save being here with Steele. I could’ve walked away—told him I didn’t want to be with him, that it wasn’t safe, but I made the choice to bring him along.

I wished I remembered how we were before. The people we’d been. But the truth of the matter was clear. Even though I didn’t remember falling in love with him then. Every one of his smiles, soft touches, kisses—the way he laughed, the way he stayed by my side, protecting me with his own body when it came to it—all this meant I was falling for him now. We deserved our HEA and I wouldn’t accept anything less.

“There are worse fates than death,prince,” the witch told him pointedly. I didn’t much like hearing that either.

“What do you know?” I begged her for an answer.

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