Page 20 of Devour
But before my feet even feel the water, my body is jerked back. Hands are around my mouth, pulling me against a thick body.
“We meet again,” a voice purrs against my ear.
The calm I’d held in my moment of purpose seeps out of me in an instant, replaced by horror. The smell of decay rushes my senses, and my knees buckle.
They came so fast. Too fast. I didn’t even make any noise yet. Had they already known we were here?
I am falling. Black peppers my vision, and I am nowhere. My body numb.
Someone is laughing.
He says something, but I don’t hear the words. I only feel the prison of the monster’s arms suffocating me and the sensation of floating.
I am not strong enough, in so many ways. Of course, he is physically overpowering, but my heart isn’t strong enough either.
“Did you really think you could escape us?” Dread whispers in my ear. “That I would ever let you win this game, Little Mouse?”
The warrior lifts me over his shoulder and begins marching through the forest. I thrash and scream, but the warrior holdingme simply laughs and grips me tighter. So tight I can barely breathe.
There are many sensations—the pressure of his shoulder against my hip, his tight grip squeezing the life from my upper arm, the dread racing through me.
The warriors laugh and brag about their success.
“Where did the other one go?” one of them asks.
“Doesn’t matter. I got what I wanted,” the warrior holding me says with a chuckle.
I almost soil his back with my disgust. I’m trembling uncontrollably.
“You were so determined to have both.”
“That was before I realized it was a child. She’ll starve without this one anyway.”
I whimper. Astella is stronger than they realize. Not strong enough to fight them, but surely strong enough to survive alone.
I pray she’s strong enough to survive alone.
Time passes. I don’t know how much.
Before long, my mind spins and then settles instead on the sand piling in my sock, digging into the heel of my foot. It tingles at first. Then burns. I pay too much attention to the acid grit as it attempts to bore into my skin.
That tiny amount of poison won’t do any long-term damage. It won’t hurt more than a bee sting, yet in the midst of all of this disaster, it’s all I can think about.
There is pain and darkness, and everything else is numb.
Until we stop. My legs don’t bear my weight when I’m dropped, so I slide to the ground, knees colliding with gravel. It should hurt, but I feel nothing.
There is laughter in the distance, followed by stomping boots. Then, I am ripped from the ground a second time and rough rope is tied around my wrists.
The ground trembles beneath me, then stops. Trembles, then stops. Again and again.
It takes me a moment to register the sound as thundering footsteps.
I suck in a breath.
This is some new nightmare. One from legends I’d only ever heard during our tales in town, or from the refugees that fled from the cult’s crusades.
I almost didn’t believe the tales of the lizard beasts they rode.
