I bury my fingers in the crumbling dirt. The world around me is a dry, desolate place with the broken earth burning into my bare legs where my pleated skirt does not reach. The sun beats down upon my breastplate. Even my own tears have dried out.
The only liquid in sight is Jayson’s blood.
“All right, I’m here. What did you want to talk to me about?” Without even looking at Oliver, Ben sat down in the booth and turned to the waitress at the neighboring table. “Coffee. Black. Thanks.”
Oliver stirred his creamer into a heart shape. “I’m in love.”
Ben’s head shot up. What?! “With who?”
What a nightmare—the squealing brakes, the shouts, the crash.
It was enough to jolt Jenny out of bed and out the door in record time. She wasn’t sure what drew her to the old mansion, only that she had to go.
Leo had always hated that place.
The squat, knobby she-troll brandished a teapot in one hand and motioned for Idra to sit with the other. “Something bracing, yes?” she rasped.
Idra nodded as she settled onto the spongy toadstool opposite her hostess. With a tip of her gnarled hand, the she-troll filled a china cup with strong, black tea, then offered it up.
When she finally focused on me and our desolate surroundings, her blue eyes widened and fear swept her features. Even so, her face held the beauty of perfection: pale and delicate, looking silver in the moonlight, just like I knew it would.
“I am offering you a better fate than the one you chose for yourself.”
The bartender offered a glass of whiskey, but Kronzar turned it down. He didn’t have the coin to pay for a drink, even if he could look at the stuff without memories of flames searing his mind. Flames, and the screams of one he was supposed to protect.
“So… if you don’t drink, what’re you doing in a bar?”
Gerard hadn’t intended the end of the world it to be so chaotic.
He hurdled an overturned cart and dashed down the cobblestone street. All around him, screaming civilians scattered, desperate for a place to hide. Fleeing was futile. The governor had placed the city on lockdown after the first shadowspawn appeared.
I clenched the fistful of grass while trying to ignore how my hands now appeared. My feet ached as I trudged up the desolate path, but a worse anguish lodged in my heart, threatening to overflow.
A few places in the kingdom might offer me refuge, yet here I was, heading to the one place I’d never be welcome.
Where the beast came from, I had no idea.
I was only passing through this kingdom. A gentle breeze threaded through my loose braid, and I’d been enjoying the quiet and the view, in spite of the large, bare patches dotting the green fields alongside the dirt road.
Lucifer glanced around, then surreptitiously shoved the box under his arm and hurried to the front of the store. He ought to just steal it, but he didn’t use his powers for trifling things if he could help it. Still, if Mephistopheles or one of the others saw him…
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Michelle sighed as she strolled down the hall for her meeting with her boss, Enoch. Transferring had become too easy. Humanity had lost its will to fight, making her job a cakewalk.
Arriving at Enoch’s office, she was surprised to see the supervisor from the Persistence department…
I peer through the scope of my crossbow. From my vantage point in the rafters, I’m as good as invisible to the royal family below. As if being a male peasant doesn’t make me invisible enough already. But all that is about to change.
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