Page 115 of Ravenous

If she accepted it, he’d burn down destiny for her.

If she refused…then fate really had chosen his end.

Lowell exhaled a shuddering breath. “One letter,” he murmured to the empty room. “And then I let you go.”

Even as he said the words, they curled like a lie beneath his tongue.

Chapter 44Nadje

Seven days till the Hunter’s Moon

Ash choked her lungs, filling the tent.

Her mother’s muffled cries were right beside her ear, her body shielding Nadje’s own even as it burned. Rapier beams of sunlight knifed through the canvas above them.

Another wing talon ripped across the roof.Slash, slash!

Nadje screamed in terror.

Her mother’s crumbling hand clamped across her mouth. “No, baby, shh,” she rasped, her very voice turning ashen.

Hunger and hatred had driven the creatures from Strigoi Gorge to hunt this encampment of vampires even beneath the rising sun. Their fur and wings sheltered them as they attacked the tent.Slash, slash!

Nadje whimpered.

“Shh.” Mama rubbed her other hand over Nadje’s face, using her own charred skin to protect her daughter’s. Ash smeared across Nadje’s cheeks like paint. “Run out back. Get to…hiding place.”

“We can both make it!”

“Silly girl,” she murmured, a ghost of her old tone. “Love you. Now go!”

Slash, slash!Light flooded in.

Mama clenched her fangs against a scream, but the burn wrenched a wail from her embered lips. “Goooo!” Her body collapsed into ash over Nadje, burying her.

Once Mama. Now char.

Slaaaaash!A talon hooked the tent and ripped it skyward. The covering spiraled off like desert weeds in a gale.

Light. Blinding. Her heart raged in her ears. Mama gone. Dispersed on the winds.

Coated in ash, Nadje sprinted away from the hunting strigoi—small, fast, slipping between tents and shadows, unseen. Her lungs burned as she strangled back sobs and ran for her hiding place, a cubby dug deep into the sand. She wrenched the hatch open and hurled herself inside.

Blackness crushed in. Her breaths hitched hard, body shaking as shock took hold.

A canteen of blood and a small bag of ground talon awaited her. As Mama had taught her, she mechanically rubbed herself with the talon dust to disguise her scent. But each fleck of ash that drifted from her palms felt like a last whisper of her mother.

Sobs racked her as she clawed at the ground, as if she could gather the scattered pieces back—

She shot awake, chest heaving.

Wheezes whistled from her lips. She forced herself to calm, to regulate her breaths. Just a nightmare.Thenightmare.

Breathe in. Out. In. Calm.

She could survive a thousand years, and this nightmare would still live fresh.

Bloodreach’s bell tower tolled, and she jolted again. She’d be late for her other job!