Page 91 of Commanding Scythe and Sky
Shadows hissed and whispered a million warnings in a dozen languages until their certainty of danger became a roar inside my mind. Pressure gathered in my chest. The air itself seemed to hold its breath as we took another careful step.
Move, the shadows snapped. Portia must have received the same command, because we bolted forward together.
Our boots struck the solid surface in a suddenly deafening rhythm. We crossed the basin on trembling legs—
—and fell.
It was as though the ground had reached up and seized us.
Portia and I tripped in unison, shadows flaring around my splayed hands an instant before they slammed into the ground. My palms screamed.
My right wrist twisted unnaturally, and a cry tore from my throat as my elbow buckled.
“Fuck!” Portia snarled, yanking her hands back a heartbeat before my face struck the dirt. And stone?
Pain rippled through my skull as I shoved myself upright.
Then froze.
Not stone.
Using my uninjured hand, I brushed sand from the familiar, stained-white surface.
Horror widened my eyes as they traveled across a vast bedrock of human skulls.
A sob lodged in my throat.
My right wrist throbbed as I frantically pushed aside more sand, revealing mouths eternally stretched open in screams my bones could somehow hear.
Steady, Heiress, Death whispered.
“You—they—”
The graveyard vanished beneath a memory.
Crimson pooling beneath my hands.
Death standing over my shoulder exactly as he did now.
Are now breathing in the realm below, he promised. Breathe, child of darkness. Breathe and rise.
But I couldn’t. I was frozen, trapped inside the memory of that blood as much as this barren tomb.
Get up, Death insisted, something like fear threading through his satin drawl.
Somewhere in the distance, Portia was calling my name, but I no longer controlled the body kneeling among those bones.
I hovered somewhere outside it.
Too stunned to speak, I fought through serrated breaths and shakily swept away more sand, revealing still more skulls.
How many souls lie in this barren graveyard, robbed of the breath in their lungs?
Far more than I wish to admit.
What kind of feeding ground is this hell?
Feeding ground? Death sounded almost insulted. Do you believe me a sadist, little one?
