Page 13 of Wolf of Ashes
Fuck, that hurts!
It’s as if the realm itself is trying to grip and tear at me to stop me from leaving.
I grit my teeth against the pain, push forward with all my might, and in the next moment, I’ve left the keeper’s realm behind.
In the second before the brightness of my new surroundings overcomes me, I glimpse a landscape that’s charred and burned. Two lines of trees stretch out in arcs on either side of me. Their trunks are burned out, their branches either shattered and lying in pieces on the ground or dangling from their scorched bodies. Only a few brown leaves remain on them.
A stone wall sits immediately behind my current position. It rises as high as my shoulders, but it’s crumbling so badly that I suspect I could knock it over with a gentle push of my fingertips.
Where I’m standing, there’s a gap in the stone wall, the jagged edges appearing dangerously sharp, and it feels somewhat like I stepped, not from the keeper’s realm, but through the opening in the wall into this place.
Ahead of me, the shadow panthers have padded onto a flat, square courtyard that extends about thirty paces into the distance. It’s paved in marble that might once have been white but is now burned black. It isn’t a gleaming black like the floor of the keeper’s realm. This marble is striated with inch-wide fissures that appear to be filled with lava.
Lava that’s still cooling down.
Heat waves fill the air around me and swirl through the center of the courtyard, where an empty pedestal sits.
On the opposite side of the courtyard is an impenetrable brick wall, this one rising all the way up into the hazy air, its top hidden in clouds of black smoke.
That’s all I see before the brightness of the heat waves makes my eyes sting and the burning heat hits me like a punch to the face.
CHAPTERTHREE
Hot! So fucking hot!
I’m instantly bathed in sweat. A flood of it slides down my face and between my breasts.
“Clothes,” I gasp. “Too hot!”
Squeezing my eyes shut against the light, I rip at the jacket, boots, and the pants, flinging them off as quickly as I can. As soon as they hit the ground, they vanish into nothing. Ahead of me, the female panther and the two males still wearing jackets are also tearing theirs off, helping each other to remove them.
Now that I’ve got the warm clothing off, the hot air rushes in and it’s only marginally better now that I’m only wearing a threadbare bra and underpants.
As quickly as I can, I wrap the strip of material from my mother’s skirt around my eyes again. The other material from her shirt remains around my left hand and, although it makes my palm sweaty, I’m not letting it go.
I’m aware of the keeper stepping up behind me and a soft, swishing sound that is presumably the sides of his realm sealing together.
His voice sounds at my ear. “I can make you a new blindfold if you wish.”
“No,” I say, more sharply than I intended, but the hunger pains in my stomach are making me angry. “This belonged to my mother. I will never part from it.”
Besides, the material is so perfectly threadbare that I can see my surroundings through the weave without experiencing the acute glare. Although ‘glare’ is probably not quite accurate. I have a feeling this place could be dimly lit compared to the outside world, given that the only lighting is the glow from the cooling threads of lava.
“As you like,” the keeper says.
I catch a flicker of electricity before the clothing around his own body changes. This time, he becomes bare-chested. A pair of jeans covers his legs and sturdy-looking boots appear on his feet. I’m gratified that his skin glistens with sweat, which tells me he’s feeling the heat too.
He offered to make me a new blindfold, which I don’t want, but even the callouses on my feet won’t protect me from the temperature in the courtyard ahead of us.
“Boots,” I say, staring at him expectantly, even though I know he can’t see my eyes.
He looks back at me, his head tilted slightly, as if he’s waiting for more.
His inaction, the increasing heat, the gnawing emptiness in my stomach, and my dry mouth make me even more irritated. “You told me all I have to do is ask. I need boots.”
“Please,” he says, pointedly. “Boots,please.”
I glower at him. “Asking isn’t begging.”
