Page 80 of The Mirror of Beasts

I forced myself to look.

Buried beneath a layer of snow, painted brown with the tunnel’s grime, was a bracelet of braided fabric, torn apart at the knot.

I picked it up with trembling fingers, holding it out for Caitriona to see. The tunnel seemed to press in around us, suffocating.

Only two alive in Rivenoak had known about this way out. One was upstairs, unconscious. The other …

Caitriona’s eyes met mine, burning with rage, and I knew she was thinking the same thing.

Wyrm.

BATH, ENGLAND

His heart was still racing when he broke through the last thicket of trees and found himself in a clearing near the river.

He forced himself to stop, steadying his breath as he listened to the ambling river carve its path through the earth.

His skin itched with the urge to shift. To give in to his riotous pulse and feed his mind to the beast prowling inside him. In the hound’s mind, there was nothing but instinct—to hunt, to obey, to kill.

Instead, he tugged the mantle off his shoulders and hastily folded it. The magic woven into the fabric whispered against his fingers, tempting him with warmth and power. Inviting him to disappear.

The problem was, he couldn’t escape his thoughts.

Nash is alive. He came back.

He braced a hand against a tree, struggling to control his breath. To master himself. He could not go before his lord like this—weak and trembling like a child.

How had Tamsin managed to find the exact lie that would bring him back to that pathetic, sniveling boy he’d been?

We can go to him together. He’ll explain everything.

The seneschal grunted as he felt the bones of his spine elongate, the first of hundreds of fractures that would remake him, if he let them. The pain steadied him, breathed fire into his soul.

Seeing her had caught him off guard, and he was repulsed by how cowardly he’d been, slipping Arthur’s mantle on to evade her. But he knew her—knew Tamsin would follow, because she was too damn stubborn to be reasonable and accept his choice. He hadn’t been in the mood for an argument he knew would only end one way.

If she had just listened to him, if she hadn’t been so convinced of her own truth …

He didn’t understand it. She’d spent their whole godsforsaken lives longing for magic, to have what he did, and she still turned her nose up at this? At the chance to be someone in a world that had rejected her at every turn?

But she hadn’t just rejected his offer. She’d rejected him, twice now.

It’s the third chance you give that makes you the fool, Nash used to say.

He hadn’t lied or embroidered the truth to frighten her. It was as simple as the choice he’d had: if she didn’t join them, there was only one fate left to her.

“I see the evening has been an unbridled success.”

The silken voice slipped out from the shadows between the nearby trees. His lord appeared a moment later, and though King Arthur’s body was slighter than the seneschal had always imagined, his lord’s presence still managed to blot out the snow around him.

Snow melted through the thin fabric of the seneschal’s trousers as he knelt and held out the folded mantle in offering. He bowed his head, both in respect and to buy himself a moment to control his expression.

The snow creaked beneath his master’s boots, but the seneschal didn’t look up. The tendons in his neck strained with the effort of holding himself still when every part of him was screaming to shift, to run through the woods until the sun rose and burned away the darkness of his thoughts.

The mantle was carefully removed from his outstretched hands.

“Cabell,” Lord Death said softly.

He looked up at the name and inwardly swore as he realized his mistake. His body tensed, spine curling as he anticipated the blow.

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