4. Killian
“How is it possible?” Alistair asks. “She should be long dead. Her name is inscribed on the family mausoleum.”
“She could be lying,” I counter. The crone’s shuffling gait is what I heard following us earlier. She must have gotten ahead of us when we first turned back after finding the dead knight.
Why didn’t the chimeras attack her, an easier target?
Perhaps curses taste of filth, even to creatures made from twisted magic.
“I will tell you how it was possible. Briar Rose has never met a man she couldn’t charm. Even that crusty old wizard who never cared for anyone in his life took one look at her and couldn’t bring himself to destroy such womanly perfection,” she says contemptuously. “He not only reneged on our deal; he tied my fate to the trollop’s as punishment. Magic had to be balanced, he said.”
She rolls her eyes.
“Dare I ask what happened to this wizard?” I interject.
“I had him executed for his duplicity,” the queen says blandly. “Not long after your great-great-grandfather—my son—married the woman he was first promised to, in fact.” She chortles. “When my idiot son broke his betrothal to the duke’s daughter, the duke threatened to avenge his family’s honor. I didn’t care if my son kept the farm girl as a side piece. Not my business where he stuck his?—”
Alistair coughs.
“—but no,” the crone grumbles. “Wholesome little Briar Rose couldn’t possibly whore herself, not even for the good of the country. She was holding out for true love. She wouldn’t settle for anything less than marriage.” A snort. “Idiots. Both of them.”
“So that’s the curse? Only the kiss of true love can awaken her?”
Alistair sounds worried. I bite back a grin. He has been adamant for years that he doesn’t want anything to do with love. One more thing we have in common.
I cannot imagine any woman being worth so much trouble. A female is a female, whether she’s ugly or old or young. I’ve traveled the length and breadth of Belterre and never come across one worth fighting over. Men who fight for women’s honor are fools.
Still, I admit I’m curious about the sleeping maiden. The Lost Princess of Isanthia. The cursed Sleeping Beauty.
“You must be a hundred and fifty years old,” Alistair says in disbelief.
“Sounds about right. I stopped counting. Too depressing.”
The ancient queen halts abruptly, listening intently.
I strain to catch the sound that stopped her in her tracks, but Alistair won’t fucking stop talking.
“You’re not the least bit remorseful about what you did, are you?” he asks.
“It all came right in the end. My son did his duty and married for his country, not his heart. He built this folly in hopes that one day his circumstances would change and he could awaken his beloved. But his queen outlived him, and so, Briar Rose sleeps. And I age, but cannot die,” she answers bitterly.
We’ve arrived at a grand hallway. At the opposite end is a nave, from which an eerie glow is barely visible. I scan the row of stone columns, between which something large and scaly slinks. Hairs on the back of my neck rise.
“The basilisk,” the queen hisses. “Run!”
She darts away, quicker than you’d expect from a woman who should’ve died a century ago. “This way. Quickly!”
She leads us into an upper walkway that runs around the perimeter of the room.
A low clicking sound like the growl of a dragon before it belches fire comes from close by. I scoop her frail body into my arms and bolt up the last few stairs.
Wet breath the likes of which I’d never wanted to smell again in my life skims across my neck.
“Don’t look at it!” the crone says.
“I know that.” Hoisting her higher, I leap up the stairs two at a time. At least she’s light to carry, being so ancient, but my arms ache from mowing a path through the thorned vines.
On the top step, I trip. We go sprawling onto the upper level. Scales slither along my back as the thing pursuing us passes by, chasing Alistair.
“Don’t look at it!” I shout, pushing to my feet and abandoning the crone.
Alistair puts on a burst of speed and darts into an alcove. The basilisk whips around, but its body is too large to pull off a fast turn. By the time it’s in position, so am I.
“We need a mirror!” he shouts from the other side of the monster.
“Make yourself useful. Find one.”
I hold the dragon scale shield between me and the beast, braced with one arm. In the other hand is my longsword, sharp enough to slice a man’s head clean from his neck. Basilisks don’t have impenetrable scales like dragons. I found a way to kill that monster. I’ll find a way to kill this one, too. Even if I have to do it blindfolded.
The beast snaps, its jaws closing over either side of the shield. A high-pitched shriek as its teeth scrape against the dense scale’s edge. Blood drips down its maw. I brace one foot against the wall and throw all my weight into holding it off.
A chuckle, low and mirthless, bubbles out of me. This is what I live for. Hunting. Nothing makes my blood sing more than fighting a beast three times my own size—except fighting one even bigger.
“Run, you fool,” I grunt at Alistair. His gold-flecked green eyes cut to mine, then to the monster. He scrambles up and charges past it. The thing abruptly spits out my shield and turns toward easier prey.
“At the end of the hall to your right!” shouts the queen in a quivery voice. Alistair skids around a corner. The beast lumbers after him.
I take a flying leap and land with the scale embedded deep into its flank. The creature roars. Using the scale as both a step and protection from its jaws, I clamber up onto its back. The row of spines down its back will unman me if I lose my balance.
A man born from nothing, raised to do nothing but fight. Fucking is a release, nothing more. Children and a family are nothing but fairy tales. Wouldn’t know what to do with them if my wish came true.
It’s the kind of dream a man like me has no business entertaining for a single second, let alone mid-battle. But I’m not willing to destroy all possibility by letting an overgrown lizard turn me into a eunuch.
The animal’s back quakes with each low-slung step forward. With its legs set at angles to its body, its motions are jerky. Using my sword as a walking stick, I make it to the creature’s shoulders at the same moment it corners Alistair against the mirror.
“Where’s your dagger?”
He pats his torso, eyes squeezed shut as he searches for the hilt.
“I have it.”
“When I tell you to strike, do it.”
He nods.
I raise my sword and aim for the joint between its skull and spine. The same place I wedged my blade into the dragon and pried off the large scale that now serves as my shield. A weak spot on this variety of monster.
“Strike!” I shout, contorting to avoid the spines.
“Which direction?” Alistair’s panic is audible in his voice.
“Left! Left!”
He brings his dagger up at the same instant the basilisk swings its head around to bite him. A lucky strike. He buries the knife deep into its eye. The creature rears back with a deafening roar.
“Run!”
Alistair flings open his eyes and charges straight at the balcony. He shouts and leaps from the railing onto a chandelier, knocking lit candlesticks to the floor below.
Safe enough. For now.
The blinded, enraged basilisk’s skull cracks the mirror.
Apparently, you can’t believe everything you read in books. The mirror should have petrified it, even with one eye gone.
Rolling up, I lift my broadsword and shove it deep into the basilisk’s neck. Blood spurts upward, hitting me in the face. Warm. Sticky. It tastes of iron and victory.
Satisfaction delves deep into my bones. Adrenaline courses through me, useless now that our foe has been vanquished.
I kick the dead beast onto one side, bad eye down. The story that it can turn a man into stone may be a myth, but I never trust a monster. Not even a dead one.
“If you’re done dispatching the beast, I’m a bit stuck and could use some assistance.” Alistair’s complaint interrupts my examination of the dead basilisk. I find a second staircase and trot down to discover the crown prince dangling from a ring of iron suspended from the rafters.
I can’t not laugh.
“Either help me, or shut up,” he growls. “Ideally both.”
The rope holding up the chandelier parts with one swing of my sword. Easiest thing I’ve hit all day. He crashes down in a wreckage of candle wax and curses that would make a soldier blush.
I offer my hand. Wincing, he takes it and rolls up to stand.
“Your bride’s over there. Best go and awaken her before anything else comes along to eat us.”
He strides to the nave, silhouetted in its eerie phosphorescent glow, stripping off his chainmail shirt along the way. It clatters to the floor.
There’s no sign of the old woman.
At the base of the short stairs into the nave, Alistair hesitates.
“Toss me the pack.”
It takes me a minute to find it. When I do, I toss it down from the balcony. He catches it easily and bends. A low chuckle, barely audible even to my ears, rumbles through me when I realize what he’s doing.