Page 128 of The Mirror of Beasts

The room’s door was on the ground, forcing us to step on and over the stones piled onto it. It was as if it had been ripped off with such great force, it had taken the stones framing the doorway with it, leaving a jagged opening in the wall behind.

Emrys gave me one last pained look, then stepped through, his scarred hand brushing over the rough stone.

I stayed close to him. The stench of death flourished around me, the metallic tang of blood and hideous rot nearly sending me to my knees. With my free hand, I reached back to grip Dyrnwyn’s cold hilt and we crept slowly into the room.

The chamber was vast, broken up by a few crumbling walls. As in the other rooms we’d seen, much of the furniture was dull shapes beneath the protective cloth.

A circular settee sat at the very center of the room, curving beneath the coarse fabric in a way that was surprisingly modern. The scale of the enormous four-poster bed in the farthest visible section of the suite suggested that whoever had once resided here enjoyed high status. The musty silk wall panels drew my eyes to tarnished suits of armor by the hearth. But only for a moment.

Emrys reared back, his breath hitching in his throat. Slowly, with agonizing care, he lifted his foot off a long yellow bone, having narrowly avoided snapping it in two.

More bones littered the ground, some so badly broken, their edges were spiked. The longer I looked, the easier it was to convince myself they’d once been animals—at least until I saw the first skull, carelessly tossed aside beneath a small table.

Human, my mind screamed.

I stepped forward, picking my way through the remains. With a look of extreme reluctance, Emrys followed, taking the opposite side of the room. I looked down the doorways connecting one room to the next, but most had been emptied of their possessions.

It was a moment before I noticed that the air was warmer in this room—almost steaming with that same rotten sewage stench.

While Emrys knelt to look beneath the bed and check under the mattress for the sword, I followed my nose to the source of that smell, gripping the cloth covering what looked to be a large settee. Taking the cloth in hand, I gave it a gentle tug.

It slipped off with a soft swish, meeting no resistance as it skimmed over the slick, gleaming scales of a mountainous spine and pooled on the floor at my feet.

Thunder gathered in my ears as my pulse beat against my skull. My head no longer seemed to be connected to the rest of my body. Out of the corner of my eye, Emrys moved silently, desperately mouthing something to me.

The beast huffed in its sleep, nestling its enormous head against the blood-splattered rug beneath it. It was smaller than I’d imagined as a child, only twice the length of the nearby bed. Its craggy scales reminded me of a crimson sunrise reflected on a distant mountain range. Every spine on every scale looked primed to slice flesh.

Draig Goch. Red dragon.

Its massive tail swished the way a cat’s did as it slept. It scraped across the floor, making every piece of glass and tarnished décor shiver like terrified animals. The noise we’d heard before was the dragon shifting its massive weight, settling down in a more comfortable position. The floor rocked beneath my feet as the monster shifted again, bringing its head down to rest against its leg.

My stomach liquefied.

If this was the Beast of Land’s End, it was now painfully clear why the kingdom had been abandoned. No blade could pierce the skin of a dragon. No spell, either. It was why Hollowers fought to source the material for their work gloves.

It was why we were going to have to find a way to leave this citadel right now.

The others, I thought, terrified all over again. If they’d come here and been taken by surprise …

Emrys held his hand out toward me, his panicked eyes flicking between me and the slumbering dragon. I took a slow step toward him, avoiding the bones scattered around us. Hot, smoky breath wheezed out between its teeth and through its nostrils, curling in a strangely beautiful pattern as it rose.

Another step.

Another.

I reached my hand toward Emrys, straining for his fingers, for something to steady me when my body was bursting with adrenaline.

The dragon let out another gasping huff, releasing a plume of ash.

One leathery eyelid lifted. A wet, clear membrane peeled back over the burnished gold iris. Both of our faces were reflected in the glistening surface as the dragon lifted its head. As it scented us.

Emrys’s hand closed around mine, and, with one last desperate look, we ran.

The floor shook as the dragon barreled after us. Shards of stone exploded into the air as its great body slammed clumsily from wall to wall, its talons clawing for purchase on the slick stone floor.

The smell of smoke returned as the dragon let out a hacking cough, spraying flames from its mouth in every direction like buckshot. I slapped a hand against Emrys’s smoldering sleeve before ripping the bulky thing off him entirely. The dragon wasn’t going to mistake him for a fuzzy treat.

I pushed my body harder, faster, as a stairwell appeared through a parting cloud of dust.

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