Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
FOX
The stench of death and rot choked the air, and Fox gagged.
His eyes went wide as the creature came into focus.
It was hulking—massive—over a foot and a half taller than even Fox, who’d never felt particularly dwarfed in his life, and that wasn’t counting the large antlers that protruded from its bone-white face.
Its body was something resembling a man’s, its legs stretching down into those of a deer, with hooves where feet belonged.
But it was its face that was most unsettling.
Fox could have mistaken it for a creature wearing a skull, yet only pure blackness swirled behind the eye sockets, leaking out in wisps of smoke.
Even as he watched, a few maggots crawled from its maw, dropping to the ground.
“King’s balls,” Nesto said, and Fox almost had a moment of surprise at the curse falling from his lips. But he didn’t have time to dwell on it. The creature lunged, an unearthly growl expelling from its gaping mouth.
Fox drew his sword, bringing it across the beast’s chest with a deep cut. Black smoke curled from the wound before it knit itself closed. The creature grabbed him and threw him to the side like a sack of flour, his leather vest the only thing stopping its claws from tearing at his flesh.
Fox slammed to the ground, struggling to fill his lungs as he processed what he had just seen.
Of course, his blade did nothing—it was king-damned steel.
He didn’t have iron on him. The army had moved on to steel as the better metal—their progress leaving them at risk now against the faeries. Fox wanted to laugh at the irony.
Another scream from Belni rang out behind him before cutting off with a gurgle and a thud. Fox turned to see Gilian and Rom jumping forward, their blades slicing at the creature, drawing nothing but its ire.
Fox needed to think. Sofia’s book hadn’t given many details on the creature beyond something akin to “stay away and don’t test your luck,” but he remembered one note in the margins in pen, annotated by Harlow or another previous owner.
Hearts. It took hearts as a sacrifice to move through its territory unharmed.
But where did one get a heart last minute?
Nesto’s scream drew his attention, and he saw the soldier running at the creature’s rear. Gilian and Rom attacked him from the front. Wisps of black smoke trailed from its body through a dozen fresh cuts. Nothing slowed it down.
A few feet from the fight, Belni’s body lay, torn open and unmoving.
“Draw him away from Belni,” Fox shouted, hoping his words didn’t draw the creature’s attention. But it seemed too distracted by the other three, toying with them like a wild cat.
It took another minute, but Gilian managed to stab the ciervado through the side, sending it stumbling a few steps to the left before it recovered.
It yanked out the blade embedded in its torso, turning it on the now weaponless Gilian.
Fox returned his focus to his own bloody task.
He pulled out a small dagger as he kneeled over Belni’s body.
He took a deep breath and plunged it into his chest, wedging it beneath his already-broken ribcage.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Nesto screamed as he shoved Fox from the side, sending him into the dirt. “Are you insane?” He pulled out Fox’s dagger, looking hopefully at Belni, as if he might take a breath at any moment.
“He’s dead!” Fox yelled, wrestling the dagger from Nesto and attempting to move back to the task at hand. “We need his heart.”
“You’re desecrating his body. The kings need his body whole to go to the underworld.”
“That’s what you’re concerned with right now?” Fox asked, waving a bloody hand at the massive faery fighting Gilian and Rom. “If we want to live, we need his heart. So unless you have a better—”
He didn’t finish the sentence as he heard Gilian’s and Rom’s screams silenced with a wet thwack. He turned to see the faery dropping their unmoving bodies onto the ground.
Beside him, Nesto gave a dry heave and stumbled away, falling to the ground.
Fox tried to keep cutting at Belni’s chest, but the blade was drenched in blood, slipping from his fingers as the ciervado bore down on them.
He wouldn’t have time to get to the heart.
His sword was lying on the ground behind Nesto and useless to him.
And the faery was there, eyes boring into him, claws dripping with blood.
A roar rattled the surrounding trees, and Fox stared at the ciervado, trying to understand how it had made the sound.
A soft flapping of wings and a blue swirl followed through the trees.
Nesto let out a soft “Fuck,” behind him.
Fox had to agree. The last thing they needed was a dragon.
“I leave you for less than a blink, and you almost die, Pale Scales.” The voice was a cool mist in his mind as two bright dragon eyes emerged from the trees, looking down at him, sparkling with mischief.
Only then did he see Sofia riding just behind Chalia’s head, looking exhausted, yet so beautiful—her deep brown curls a halo around her head, lit by the sun above.
“She’s right, Ocon,” Sofia said. “You’re a mess.”