Page 114 of The Shrouded Queen
A split second before Andra lashed out at him. Her hand swiped through air as she stumbled forward into a beam of moonlight.
Horror shot through me.
The other half of her face, which I’d thought shrouded in shadow, was nonexistent. As if someone had sliced a blade straight down the center of her body. Half a nose, one eye, one ear, a single arm and leg. Her insides were exposed along the line of symmetry, organs pulsing and bones flashing.
Below her knee, her leg ended in a fleshy tail. She balanced on it but still put her hand out against a tree to right herself after her lunge.
Almost instantly, the tree disintegrated under her touch.
My eyes flew wide. “Nasnas,” I breathed.
Jasim blinked rapidly, struggling to make sense of the image. “Andra?”
I dug my nails into his arm. “That’s not your sister. It’s a nasnas!”
The creature hissed at us and pounced again, propelled by her tail.
Jasim moved on instinct. His scimitar slashed. Half a head hit the ground. The feminine features slipped away until a deformed monster was left in its place, with gummy, razor-sharp teeth and bulging, veiny eyes.
Jasim stared at it, breathing hard. “Holy gods.”
Athar’s playground.
My pulse rushed in my ears. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m—”
Branches rustled. Jasim yanked me behind him just as an inhuman cry echoed. Eyes reflected moonlight out of the trees. Anothernasnas burst forward. It wore King Zaid’s face, white hair almost silver under the moon, skin sagging with age, but its tail shot it forward an unnatural distance.
I balked. Jasim twisted away before its deadly touch could turn him into a pile of dust, too, then stabbed his blade through the creature’s chest. It gave a shrill scream. Jasim wrenched his scimitar out, blood black as tar coating the metal.
But there were more coming.
“Run,” he said.“Run!”
We spun around and took off blindly through the forest.
Pounding tails thundered behind us as they gave chase.
Baba, please!I shouted in my head. I had no idea where I was going and barely managed to dodge the trees that seemed to pop out of nowhere.Please, Baba! Please, help us!
We turned a corner—
And burst out of the trees into an unnatural clearing. Stone rose before us. Not a mountain. A wall. It stretched impossibly long to either side, blocking off an escape.
A dead end.
“Shit!” I spun around, ready to run in a different direction. Jasim stepped in front of me, scimitar brandished, ready to take on the whole pack if he had to.
Nasnas glared from within the trees, their eyes like embers against the shadows. My heart thundered in my ears. We had to do something. It couldn’t end like this. It couldn’t—
“They’re not coming any closer,” Jasim panted.
He was right. They snapped their teeth at us, growled menacingly, but they didn’t approach. I pressed my back against the rock wall, cringing, bracing myself.
A few more tense moments went by. Then the nasnas gave a last resentful hiss and loped off into the fog. The night swallowed them up.
Silence blanketed us. Adrenaline replaced my blood as I waited.But they didn’t come back. “Why did they leave?” I asked, dread knotting my stomach.
