Page 220 of The Mercy of Dawn

Blood-soaked floor greeted her.

The toes of her boots barely skimmed the floor, and she…she hadn’t fallen.

No—the cellar.

She found the cellar, and… Oh gods.

No.

Cyril shifted against the stone wall at her back, her aching wrists tethered high above her head. She willed her other eye open just a crack, and a quiet, shuddering breath left her.

All four blades strapped to her thighs were missing, the carefully crafted sheaths left empty and half-torn off her legs. That snug comfort of her reinforced leather jacket was gone too, the front of her white blouse stained with smears and droplets of blood.

Cyril wasn’t alone either.

The warm, flickering light of the wall torches had her sensitive eyes watering, the finer details of her vision a blurry mess. But a small frame cloaked in black kneeled in the center of the room, speaking in a rhythmic cadence Cyril just couldn’t grasp.

Not that the dull ringing in her ears helped.

Beside the huddled figure were a set of boots and legs and—

Cyril had to squeeze her eyes shut as a tremor set into her vision and her stomach lurched up her throat. She needed to breathe, needed to think. She needed to assess and figure out what the fuck she was going to do.

“It wakes,” said a guttural, rattling voice.

Her eyes slid open, and every screaming, aching muscle in Cyril’s body tensed.

Whatever stalked towards her with preternatural fluidity, it wasn’t mortal, or fae, or anything she had ever seen before. Sunken-in eyes built of nothing but abyssal black sized her up from head to toe as thin, pallid lips peeled back into a jagged grin.

Cyril sank back against the rough stone wall, trying to gain every breath of space she could as the creature extended a hand tipped with gleaming, black claws towards her. She fought against her shackles, pulling so hard her wrists burned, but the chains gave no quarter.

She had nowhere to go.

“Nononono,” she breathed, hoarse and ragged, as those claws scraped over the surface of her throat. They wrapped and squeezed slowly, restricting her air.

Cyril kicked her legs up wildly, trying to wedge a knee up in between herself and a body that felt like it was hewn from stone.

The creature didn’t even flinch.

“Oh, it fights,” it rumbled with a wicked shriek of a cackle. Its face skimmed along hers, blowing warm puffs of putrid air from slitted nostrils until its empty eyes leveled with hers. “I like it when it fights.”

The fingers wound tighter around her throat, and Cyril thrashed.

There was no fucking way she was dying here.

She kicked her legs up again, fighting against the oxygen-deprived pounding of her head, against the darkness pressing on at the edge of her vision.

But it wasn’t any good.

Another claw-tipped hand caught her thigh and punctured, shredding fabric and flesh and muscle in one fluid movement.

Cyril couldn’t even scream at the pain that lit her body on fire. At the pain that ignited in her chest and burned as badly as it did in her leg. The creature said something in a hitched, goading tone, but her pounding heart was the only clear sound, and the darkness moved in quickly.

Her vision flickered, the pain and panic sputtering and dancing.

She couldn’t breathe, and this…this was it.

What a pathetic end.