Page 169 of The Mirror of Beasts

It seemed impossible; there was something so baleful about them. Knobby, stripped bare of their leaves, and covered in a skin of sickly green moss. I wondered if something truly evil had happened here to bow and twist them this way.

The ruined forests and groves of Avalon rose like a furious spirit to the front of my mind, stopping my heart in my chest. My fingers clawed into the icy dirt.

No, I thought. Avalon is gone.

The moon was bright overhead, undaunted by the thick canopy of branches as its radiance spilled onto the rocky forest floor. This was my world.

A strange light fluttered nearby. I tried to lean forward, only to find that I couldn’t. My back was pressed to one of the trees, thick ropes of faintly glowing roots binding me to it. Memory rushed back, riding a flood of fire in my veins.

Now the bargain is complete.

Lord Death stood a short distance away, where the small clearing seemed to meet the very edge of the woods. Light streamed up from the stone cupped between his hands. My gaze drifted toward the sky.

Seething magic had torn open the dark fabric of the night, revealing a glimpse of what lay beyond. A world of gray stone—the kingdom of the dead.

Souls poured out of the widening gash, some drawn into the spell holding the doorway open, others racing back to the mortal world like falling stars.

Fear came alive in me, shuddering through my body. I struggled against the roots, but a deep growl of warning brought me up short. An enormous hound, its black, shaggy coat glinting with ice and snow, rose from behind another cluster of roots. Its red eyes burned as it lowered its head, watching me closely.

Cabell.

I held his gaze as I pushed up off the ground, ignoring the way the hound’s lips pulled back to reveal his jagged teeth.

When it had come to this, when so much had already been lost, what did I have left to be afraid of?

“How pleased I am to see you awake, my love,” came Lord Death’s silky voice. “It won’t be but a few moments more until you are safely home again.”

“I’m not your love, you pig-breathed bastard,” I said. “I’m the nightmare you were stupid enough to kidnap.”

A smirk curved Lord Death’s pale cheek. His horned crown was adorned with spirit lights, giving him a malevolent radiance. He didn’t so much look at me as into me, as if my flesh, my entire self, were nothing more than a receptacle.

“Once you are free, we will never be parted again,” Lord Death told me. “No one will be powerful enough to take what is rightfully mine.”

“You’re sick,” I told him.

“Ridding Creiddylad of your crude form will be the greatest of pleasures,” Lord Death sneered.

With his focus on me, the stream of souls escaping his stone pendant slowed, then stopped. But the souls of Annwn’s damned still raced out through the fissure in the sky, undeterred.

My only hope for survival was distracting him long enough to figure out a better plan.

“She hated you, didn’t she?” I began, pulling against the roots again. “She knew you were a monster undeserving of love and kindness. I can feel her disgust boiling inside me like acid.”

“You lie,” Lord Death said, letting the pendant fall from his hands as he faced me. And, truthfully, I did. But it was all too easy to imagine Creiddylad’s feelings as my own.

He let out a dark laugh. It stung like the kiss of a scorpion’s tail. “You’re as fork-tongued as Erden. Tell me, was his death as pathetic as his life?”

There was a faint noise from beside me—a whine, almost. But only the hound was there, and I knew better than to assume it was anything other than the wind. That icy breeze did nothing to cool my flash of anger.

“Her skin crawled every time she saw you,” I said. “You repulsed her. And what really burns you isn’t that they sent you to live out the rest of your existence in Annwn, it’s that she chose another. She didn’t want you.”

“Enough!” Lord Death thrust a hand toward me. A hissing magic swirled up his arm from the stone pendant, blasting out from his fingertips. The roots around my chest burned brighter the moment before I felt them slither around me, tightening until I was struggling to take in enough air to stay conscious. Black blotted my vision like ink.

“There,” Lord Death crooned, taking up his stone again. “Is that not better?”

“It is,” Madrigal purred from somewhere nearby. “She’s barely tolerable when she’s silent, let alone when she runs her mouth.”

The sorceress emerged from the nearby trees, her gown glistening with moonlight. Her hair was unbound, rising like flames around her face. My eyes shifted right, taking in the hound’s still form. The magic pulsing in the sky reflected in the sheen of his dark coat.

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