Page 124 of Rage

There, tangled in the iron jaws, is no ordinary animal. It’s a man, ragged and bleeding, his breathing shallow but determined. His face is pale from the blood loss, yet his eyes—piercing and defiant—lock with mine. Something flashes there, something unnerving.

“Help me,” he rasps, his voice breaking the heavy silence.

I step forward, the rain soaking through my robe as I crouch over him. My talons hover just above his face, and for a moment, I see myself reflected in his wide terrified eyes.

The beast. The monster. The forgotten.

“Why did you come here?” My voice is a low growl, more animal than human.

He flinches but doesn’t look away. “My family…they’re starving.”

My anger stirs at his answer. It’s been so long since I’ve had something to destroy. But beneath the fury, something else flickers—a faint ember of curiosity. What is he doing here?

Quill caws from her perch, her riddle echoing in my thoughts. Release me, and the truth is clear, but at a cost, you’ll learn to fear.

I bare my fangs in a snarl, but something stays my hand. I lean closer.

“What would you give,” I whisper, “to save them?”

The silence stretches into eternity, mixing with the thunder and the pelting rain.

“Anything,” he utters, so soft I almost swear I didn’t hear him say it at all.

I pace around him, thinking of what it would mean to send him back to Wyndhallow.

I’ve been persecuted in witch hunts before.

One of the many things that led me to the darkness I live in now.

That was hundreds of years ago.

The whispers and rumors of the phantom I’ve become have long ago been covered by dirt and dust and grime, fading into nursery rhymes of the past.

I turn to go, to leave him to die in my garden.

“Wait!” he shouts, and I stop at the archway hedge. “I’ll do anything. Please.”

Anger floods me.

I rush at him, one quick and deafening maneuver of strength and wit and fury, nearly stomping on his head as he lies on the ground where the fountain caved in and the trap came out.The trap, with my most precious and haunting and enchanting bloom, to ensnare antelopes and bears and elk—anything with meat.

Never a human.

Nay, never a human man.

He flinches as I raise my taloned foot to stomp him out of his misery.

How dare he come here and threaten my existence!

How fucking dare he cripple my wards and trample my garden, attempting to steal from me!

“You were going to steal from me! What, were you just going to take the enchanted flower back to your village and sell it to the highest bidder? What happens to me then? When they find out where you got it from? And then you tell them of what you saw, only for them to come trampling through my grounds to tie me up and kill me, too? To sell me to some freak-show circus? How does that help me?”

Wincing in pain, he tries to move his legs, which are trapped in the jaws. “I won’t! I won’t tell them anything of what I saw. Please. Just let me go. I’ll leave here and never return.”

I lower my leg and scratch my chin, the talon thick and cool and coaxing against my angry skin.

Again I go to leave when Ryx pops out from behind one of the hedges.

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