Page 124 of Land of Monsters

Rook and I were dead men walking.

My only design was to somehow get Raven to safety before the poison overtook me, to know she was secure and away from harm. Then I could die peacefully.

I tripped up the stairs leading to the top, numbness shooting down into my legs. The reverberations of battle drummed through the stone and into my bones like a death march.

When we reached the top, my lungs sucked in. Fire torches ignited the land below in a bath of yellowish red, as if we descended into the nine layers of hell, each one a different horror.

Bodies littered the ground, and I was afraid to look too closely to see if I knew any of them. I could see Warwick and Brexley fighting by the pond and Scorpion and Hanna below us, but the rest were lost in the throng of silhouettes dancing the last steps of their demise.

“Perfect timing.” Her voice knifed through my chest, convulsing me with rage, wrenching my head to her.

Sonya stood on the higher walkway, her blood-red dress blowing in the wind, her blonde hair twirling around her face. She turned and smiled, the necklace around her throat glinting under the firelight.

“You can come watch as your friends die.” She motioned to the commotion below. “It’s been quite entertaining to watch them try, though.”

“Looks like most of those are yours.” I couldn’t stop the quip from snipping out, noting Warwick taking another dozen out while Brexley’s ghostly army lined them up like lambs to a slaughter.

“Because I allowed them to.” She rubbed at her stomach, the fabric hiding any observation of a bump forming there. Fae had different pregnancy times. Some were equivalent to humans, some showed very quickly, some took years. It all depended on what they were carrying.

There was no real precedence of a fae carrying one of those monsters’ babies. If there was, I didn’t know of it.

“But now I’ve grown bored. My emotions are so fickle these days,” she mused, her smile haughty. She nodded to her guard, who let out a whistle.

The sound churned my blood to ice, thePrimuldarting out of the gate below, each one heading for a separate group of my family.

Fear and anger rebounded in my chest, the goblin metal robbing me of my magic, keeping the trees from responding. I couldn’t do anything but stand here, watching the monsters leap towards my family, taking them from me.

“No,” I whimpered, hating my feebleness, hating that I wasn’t stronger.

“Go join them.” Sonya ordered Joska, Samu, and Balazs. “The baby is making me sleepy, and I want to go to bed soon.”

Joska’s grin hitched the side of his face, his attention going to where Brexley was.

“Gladly.” An excited monkey sound hooted from him. His hatred of Brex was thick in the air. His grudge from their past had him taking off down the stairs, pounding his chest. Samu and Balazs trailed after.

“Caden!” I heard Birdie scream out in warning as the rhino barreled for them, hitting Caden with his horn, flinging him to the ground, rolling him.

Caden!My mouth tried to call for my friend, but nothing came out, my body shaking and starting to work against me.

Raven thrashed against her cuffs, her tongue trying to move the gag from her mouth.

“Oh no, sweetheart.” Iain grabbed her ponytail, yanking her back into him, his mouth moving against her ear, malicious hatred pointed at her. “After what you just did, you will watch every one of them get their lungs torn from their chests.” His eyes shifted to me, his hand sliding down Raven’s stomach. “And he will watch me fuck you beforehedies.” He flipped the button on her pants.

I charged at him, my teeth bared. A razor-edged spear came to my throat, a guard slipping from the shadows to stop me from attacking, but when I peered over, I felt the ground break under me again.

Dubthach.

The Druid was dressed in the same dashiki-style shirt and cotton pants, but nothing else felt the same. His body was tense, and he stared down at me with a detached expression, his jaw tense, his eyes flickering with disgust.

What. The. Fuck.

It was obvious… he wasn’t being kept prisoner here. He belonged here.

“Holy shit. It was you.” I gaped, seeing everything in a different light. “It was you who led the army to the site. You turned on your friends.” I always figured it was me, that Nyx had tracked me down, exposing the camp’s whereabouts.

“They were never myfriends.” His lip lifted. “Even in a place that pretended to accept everyone, I was treated like an outcast. I belonged less than the humans did.”

“So you turned on them because you weren’t in the popular group?” I sputtered. “Becoming a slave to her instead?”

---