Page 56 of The Half King
“True,” Nero agreed. He nodded at Blue. “Better keep him close. Even ugly pups make tasty snacks.”
Cerise shot him a dirty look.
She gathered Blue onto her lap while they finished eating. She found that the jackrabbit didn’t agree with her. Each bite felt like lead in her stomach, so she fed the rest to Blue, who happily gobbled it up and licked her hands clean.
After the fire died out and the night air puckered their skin with chills, the group curled up on the ground, which was still warm from the heat of day, and tried to sleep.
Tried.
A saddlebag was no substitute for a pillow, and the hard, dry soil didn’t feel good to a body that had spent twelve hours in the saddle. Then there were the noises from outside the curtain—scratches and clicks, guttural growls, shrieks of pain cut short. Cerise kept glancing at the sky, expecting to find a deer-sized vulture circling the camp. She gathered Blue closer, and for good measure, she pulled the sling over his entire body and face so that only his tiny nose peeked out.
Only then was she able to relax.
Her dreams took her back to the Solon temple, where the Reverend Mother was standing alone in the courtyard, her gilded robes ruffling in the breeze as she warmed her hands in front of a blazing fire. When Cerise peered deep into the flames, she could see flickers of the goddess looking back at her, smiling with the merciful side of her face. Cerise clutched her heart in amazement, but before she could bow to the goddess, a robed priest appeared in the courtyard. The priest’s face was vague, easily forgotten. No matter how hard Cerise stared at the man, she couldn’t hold his image in her mind.
The priest held both palms toward the fire, but it was clear that he didn’t intend to warm himself. He meant to extinguish it. The Reverend Mother asked him to stop. She told him that her sisters needed the fire’s warmth, but he refused to listen to her. He summoned a rush of water and doused the flames, leaving the Reverend Mother shivering and hugging herself to stave off the cold.
The Reverend Mother glanced at Cerise as if noticing her for the first time. “Do you See what he has done, Cerise?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” she answered.
“He will be sorry.” The Reverend Mother spoke in a voice as hard as steel. “The flame he seeks to dampen will consume him, Cerise.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” she repeated.
“Cerise.”
Her shoulders shook.
“Cerise!”
Gasping, she awoke to find Daerick jostling her shoulder while Nero chased Blue, who had wriggled out from beneath her arm and was running in circles with his head raised to the moon, howlingawoooooin his high-pitched puppy voice. Nero was hissing furious curses, but Cerise didn’t understand what was wrong.
Then something howled back at Blue.
An icy finger traced her spine. The animal howled again, closer now. It was a haunting noise—not the smooth, graceful baying of a hound or a wolf but an off-key distortion that reminded her of a warped bell.
Blue ran under the horses, where Nero couldn’t reach him. “Shut him up,” Nero growled. “Or I will.”
“Blue,” she called frantically, slapping the spot next to her on the ground. When he only peered back at her, she felt her heart seize, and she commanded, “You come here right now, Blue Solon!”
He whined and padded over to her, hanging his head like a scolded child.
She snatched him up and muzzled his snout, but the eerie howling continued. Each cry caused Blue to squirm and whine in her arms. Soon other howls joined the first, louder and growing closer. At times, Blue burrowed his face into the crook of her arm, but then he would go back to wriggling and trying to escape. What was hethinking?
Nero glared at Blue. “If you don’t keep that mongrel quiet, I’ll—”
A loud snuffling interrupted him, like the snorting of a bull, coming directly from the other side of the curtain. There was another exhale, and the fabric billowed.
“Um.” Daerick swallowed. “You said the sheet looks like stone from the outside. Does itfeellike stone, too?”
The answer came when a creature pawed at the fabric and four long, yellow, saber-like claws poked through it. Fear rose in Cerise’s chest. Whatever was on the other side of that curtain knew the fabric wasn’t made of stone. The horses whinnied, stamping at the ground. They couldn’t see the threat, but they sensed it.
She clutched Blue to her chest while her breathing shuddered. She glanced at Nero. “You can kill that thing, right?”
His frozen expression didn’t fill her with confidence. Nothing required more energy than dispatching death—and that was for an ordinary creature, not a beast with claws longer than her whole hand.
Nero drew his blade and indicated for her to do the same. “I can shield us…” He didn’t saytemporarily, but she heard it in his tone. “Be ready to fight. All creatures bleed, even monsters.”
