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.
The field beside my childhood home attracts starlings. When I was young, I’d sit on the wooden fence and watch them. My father was always working in the garage behind our house, but whenever he saw me there, he’d stop and join me.
“Those are murmurations,” he’d tell me as dark clouds of starlings rose against the gray winter sky.
I don’t trust the picture box. The people in it stare as I walk by. They want me trapped inside with them. The animals watch me too—dogs and cats, even the family fish in the tiny glass bowl. I am observed as I observe them.
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The shock of cold water splashing all over my body startled me awake. My eyes frantically scanned the room as I tried to remember what had happened.
I am definitely not in my room.
The black walls were splattered with blood stains. A dingy toilet squatted in the corner, and iron bars blocked the doorway. I shivered as another round of cold water hit me from the other side of the bars.
Don’t think about the portal—anything except the portal.
Elwick swallowed. He gripped the ship’s wheel, desperate to keep his hands from trembling. But it wasn’t the endless ocean, its waves lapping against his ship’s hull, stretching out on all fronts that provoked his fear.
The booming of the tribunal’s drums rivals even that of the cannons firing outside the city walls. That the High Council would go to the trouble of putting on a public trial even while besieged testifies to their displeasure. I don’t think Azer, the judge, has cracked a smile since the war started, but today his face is grim as death.
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My throat is so dry. My tongue so swollen. All I can think of is the great thirst within me. The need to find the one thing which will satisfy my soul—or, what was once my soul before it was stolen from me.
Blood. I need blood. And I need it now.
I sidled closer to the battle trophy, my palm itching to finally hold the rune-etched hilt.
The dead warrior’s blade had been there as long as I could remember—stabbed into the center of the cave’s floor. Every day I’d gaze at it, and the warrior’s name would dance in my thoughts to a tune only I seemed to hear.
Though I was eager to rush into a burning building once, now I sit on the sidelines, watching friends risk their lives to quench the flames, knowing they will hate me if they discover the real reason I’m in this wheelchair.
Bill stumbles out of the building with a pale-faced boy in his arms.
There are three rules for being an assassin. Don’t hesitate. Don’t question. Don’t feel.
Emotions get you in trouble, and the pain of the past is a distraction.
I glide through the crowd, sipping my champagne and smiling at everyone who meets my eye. I know how to act like just another beautiful woman. I used to be one, after all.
The deputy intercepted Travis in the parking lot. “What are you doing?”
Travis glared at the man whose perjury had cost him ten years. “Depositing my paycheck.”
Doug crossed his arms. “This bank has five other branches in this county.”
Shouldering Doug aside, Travis strode into the satellite bank.
When Dad took him out of school and drove two hours south to his favorite state park, Carl thought it was an early birthday present. When Dad strapped five-gallon jugs of water into the extra passenger seats of the rented dune buggy, Carl wasn’t sure what to think.
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