Page 145 of The Mirror of Beasts

Lord Death studied him a moment, then drifted back into the office. “Come with me, Bledig.”

He had no choice but to obey. The office still smelled of dried blood and withered life, its darkness punctuated only by candles and firelight, as his master preferred. With each heartbeat, Cabell became more and more certain that he was not going to leave the room alive. No one who questioned his lord ever did.

The king settled himself on the leather chair in front of the fire. “Come. I fear that I’ve been neglecting you.”

Yes, his weak heart sang.

The seneschal knelt in front of him, still expecting to see a blade on the small table beside the chair. But there was only an unfinished glass of whiskey. Lord Death sipped at it as he studied his servant.

“I should not have questioned you before,” the younger man said. “I just … I want to be useful to you. How can I serve you? Give me any task, and I’ll see it through.”

Am I still your seneschal?

Lord Death’s hand stroked his dark hair, and the hound in him demanded he lean into the touch—when was the last time anyone had touched him? The heaviness in his chest eased.

“It’s all right,” Lord Death told him. “I shall always forgive you. You are my seneschal. I need you above all others.”

The younger man let out a shuddering breath. There was nowhere else left to him. Only death of a different kind.

“We have reached the end of our search,” Lord Death said softly, “and soon we will return home together. Will you stay by my side and see our victory through?”

Home. A strange, horrible word. A remnant from his human past. He would shed it soon. All of it.

“Yes,” the seneschal whispered, staring into the crackling fire. “I will.”

The suite of rooms they’d stuck me in was hardly a jail cell, but I felt the bars there all the same.

They’d locked the door behind me after they shoved me inside. And, with little else to do, I showered. The bathroom was almost obscene—bigger than my entire apartment, every inch of it pristine white marble with gilded accents. The water was hot, the pressure perfect. I might have treasured the experience, transcending to a new state of glorious existence, if my world hadn’t been collapsing around me.

True to their word, the sorceresses left a change of clothes—jeans, a T-shirt, and a sweater, as well as new undergarments. They, and the basket of food beside them, didn’t warm my heart to the Sistren in the slightest. After a quick inspection of the clothing, I put it on, tetchy at the softness of the fabric, the perfect fit of it.

The food was another story. If I hadn’t been close to starving, I would have avoided it altogether. There were too many stories about fools eating faerie food and becoming trapped in Otherlands, or being cursed into sleep with a single bite, but I had crossed the point of desperation. My thoughts were becoming sluggish, and dressing had taken what little energy I had left.

So I ate an apple, and some bread, then the tasty little bits of unidentified cheese, and began to plan as I paced the room.

The midnight-blue walls were cluttered with framed pieces of tapestry, declarations, and portraits of sorceresses I only recognized by name. The assortment of deep armchairs and emerald-satin-covered sofas was an invitation to stop and rest, but I wasn’t about to be wooed into letting my guard down by a nice suite and some fancy cheese.

The shifting light beneath the door told me someone was standing guard. Even if I got past them, the hallways were covered in curse sigils; I might not even make it to the room where they were keeping Neve, wherever that was. Emrys’s room, maybe. But if I had a guard, so did he.

A gust of warm air rattled out from the vent above my head. Slowly, I tilted my neck back.

I’d seen a few security cameras in the hall; they’d stuck out like broken fingers among the old-fashioned finery the Sistren preferred. It hadn’t even occurred to me to check my own room for them. Sure enough, in the upper right corner of the room, a camera was swiveling, tracking my movements.

My face flushed with anger as I wadded up my filthy old T-shirt and flipped the glassy black eye off. It took three tries to hook the shirt around the camera to block its view.

Satisfied and ever so smug, I turned to the opposite wall, where a large HVAC return vent had been placed.

They’d taken my workbag, of course, but they’d been kind enough to leave me a plastic toothbrush. Snapping the handle over my knee, I used the jagged end to unscrew the vent’s cover. The metal sheeting groaned as I squeezed inside and replaced the cover behind me.

I had just enough room to wriggle my way up to where the vent turned at a ninety-degree angle and continued horizontally over the rooms on this side of the hall. I had to lie flat on my belly, but there was enough room to drag myself forward using my arms alone.

I winced as the thin metal of the vent let out an excruciating bang. Up ahead, light filtered down from above; I stayed focused on that, not the way the pathway seemed to be narrowing around me with every inch of forward progress.

“Um … hello?”

I reared up, knocking my head against the top of the vent. A face stared down at me through its brass cover, both brows raised.

And because my plan had existed for all of five minutes, without any sort of contingencies, I froze.

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