Page 112 of The Mirror of Beasts

The seneschal whirled, anger driving him to the railing to see who’d dared to say it. But none of the hunters below were jeering up at him. They were focused on two new arrivals being dragged into the foyer through the back hallway.

“What’s this?” Endymion drawled. “Edward Wyrm, back from the dead?”

Wyrm was splattered in blood and dirt, his once-fine tuxedo hanging from him in tatters. The seneschal’s nose picked up the stench of his sweat and piss. The look in the man’s eyes was one of terror, even as he declared, in the way only these rich old men could, “I—I demand an audience with our lord! Immediately!”

“Our lord?” Endymion repeated, his teeth flashing with a cruel smile.

The hunters’ excitement turned to outright hunger as Wyrm stepped aside, revealing the person behind him.

The seneschal’s nails elongated into claws.

Olwen.

If it hadn’t been for her usual soft smell of herbs and fresh water, he might not have recognized her. His pulse climbed, pounding hard enough for his teeth to chatter. Wyrm had knocked her around, if the bruise swelling on the right side of her face was any indication. Her hair was matted, half ripped out of its braid. Her clothing was in worse shape than his own.

“No,” came the little girl’s voice beside him. “No, no—”

The seneschal’s mind raced, his claws tearing away at the wood.

“Who is this?” Endymion asked, circling them.

“Do something,” Flea begged.

Wyrm had gagged Olwen and bound her hands behind her—but he’d taken further precautions too, hooking a ward with a sigil to repel magic around both their necks. Any spell she could have summoned against the Hollower would have glanced off both.

Endymion, with the precision and power of a raptor, lunged and grabbed Wyrm by the neck. “Who?”

Their master’s voice emerged from the darkness of the study, and a moment later, he was in the doorway, watching all of it unfold with a small smile. “Why, that is Lady Olwen of Avalon.”

The seneschal was already moving down the stairs when Olwen wrenched herself out of the hunters’ hands, fighting against her gag to summon a spell. When one of the fools tried to grab her again, she lashed out with a foot and rammed into another with her skull.

“That’s enough,” Lord Death said coldly. “Bledig, bring her to me.”

“My lord,” Wyrm bleated out, already on his knees to grovel. “I apologize for the lateness of my arrival. I wish to serve you—as a mortal man, of course, who can move within this world and—”

“Endymion,” Lord Death said, disappearing back into the study. “The Children haven’t had their supper yet, have they?”

“Th-The Ch-Children?” Wyrm began. “Whose children?”

Endymion let out a throaty laugh as he gripped the other man by the back of the neck and hauled him out through the front door. Supper for the monsters.

Olwen was shivering—with the cold or terror, the seneschal wasn’t sure. He grabbed her arm, narrowly missing her foot as it swung around. Her eyes widened at the sight of him, and despite her spit-soaked gag, he heard her shocked “Cabell?” all the same.

She fought every single one of the thirteen steps to the office. She writhed and butted against him as he forced her into the wooden chair across from the desk. Lord Death waved his hand and magic singed the air, sharp and sulfuric, as restraints twisted from the chair’s armrests and pinned her in place.

“Hold her, Bledig,” Lord Death said.

Olwen sent him a pleading look and the seneschal’s chest tightened, the air squeezing out of him in a hard gust. There was no need. The chair had rooted itself into the floor and wouldn’t move, even against the full might of whatever small magic a priestess could summon.

He is your master, he thought, watching Lord Death retrieve a small knife from the scabbard hanging over the desk’s chair. You must prove yourself again.

“Cabell, please,” Olwen got out around the gag. “Don’t do this!”

“Don’t!” Flea cried from the corner.

Olwen made a small noise of distress as Lord Death came toward her, the blade glinting in the candlelight.

“Go ahead,” Olwen said, her expression hardening with defiance. “We already have what we need to stop you. Killing me won’t change your fate.”

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