Page 205 of A Kingdom of Wild and Power
Mal paused there.
Her heart hammered hard against her ribs before she finally pushed the door open.
Inside stood the same chair her mother had always used, positioned to gaze out over the sea.
The room looked almost identical.
Almost.
Because beside the chair stood a cradle.
Mal frowned as she stepped closer, her fingertips brushing lightly over the dark wood of the cradle.
‘No babe,’ Wren pointed out.
‘No…’
Mal’s thoughts flickered, unbidden, to her own child, wondering how they were faring. For a moment the world seemed to tilt dangerously beneath her feet. She forced the thought down, burying it deep within herself and slamming thedoor on it.
If she allowed herself to think of her child or her mother, she would fall apart.
‘The real question,’ she said quietly, ‘is whose child was here?’
Mal and Wren exchanged a glance, neither of them possessing the answer.
Then Wren stiffened.
‘It’s gone quiet,’ she said, her voice hushed, as though speaking too loudly might disturb something watching.
Mal had noticed it at the same moment.
The endless crash of waves against the shore had ceased. The sea had fallen into an unnatural stillness.
She turned towards the open archway that overlooked the water, the very same one her mother had once used to…
Mal cut the thought short and shook her head sharply.
She would not think of that.
Slowly, she approached the archway and looked out across the sea.
The waters had gone eerily calm, their restless movement smoothed into a glass-like stillness.
And then something rose from the depths.
Livyatan.
His form resembled a wyvern, his great head shaped like the beasts of her homeland, his jaws lined with endless rows of jagged teeth. Yet the rest of him was something far older and stranger—a vast serpentine body, a long, sinuous neck that disappeared into the black depths of the sea below.
Mal sighed softly.
Her time here was up.
She gestured for Wren to follow and turned away from the archway. Together they descended the path in silence until theirboots sank into the wet sand.
When they reached the shore, both women lifted their eyes to the towering king of this ring, watching him with quiet awe.
‘You have returned, child of Hades.’ The king’s voice rolled across the sky like distant thunder. His great jaws did not move, yet the words reverberated through the air as though the very sea itself had spoken. ‘Do you come to return the soul you took?’
