Page 82 of Witch Queen

Bryony winced and clutched her ribs.

“Definitely broke at least one of the damn things,” she muttered under her breath.

Penley meowed loudly and scaled her dress in a flash. He perched on her shoulder and head-bumped her cheek, his chest rumbling with happy purrs.

Abraham cast a worried glance at her before focusing warily on the figure drawing near.

Desperation turned Oscar’s expression haggard as he approached. He stumbled and fell to his knees a few feet from them.

“Drabek!” he gasped, looking up with a beseeching expression. He pushed himself up clumsily with a hand and would have fallen again had Bryony not reached out and steadied his elbow. “Is Drabek still alive?!”

“Yes.”

Oscar stilled. Tears welled up and trickled down his bloodied cheeks. A shudder shook him.

He squeezed his eyes shut and sagged in Bryony’s hold. “Thank God!”

Bryony exchanged a shocked glance with Abraham.

Her chest tightened as she studied Oscar. She could hardly believe the man before them was the sorcerer they had all feared. He looked different. She frowned.

Even his magic no longer feels the same.

She glanced at the vanishing corpses of the monsters he had felled. The black wisps fading into nothingness did not stink of the Sorcerer King’s corruption.

Abraham’s suspicious gaze never left Oscar. “Why are you here?”

The reply he gave them made Bryony blink.

“To atone for my sins,” Oscar whispered, ashen faced. Cold determination filled his eyes when he opened them. “Where’s Mae?”

CHAPTERTHIRTY

The air rippledwith heat as Vozgan flew above a valley riddled with rivers and pits of spitting lava. Mae clung grimly to the dragon’s back, her senses on high alert. Tension rolled off Nikolai, Vlad, and Cortes in thick waves where they sat silently behind her. Even Hellreaver and Brimstone had gone quiet, as if they too sensed the strangeness around them.

Azazel and Alicia studied the terrain closely, their sharp gazes sweeping the landscape for signs of Barquiel.

They’d felt the demon’s energy signature soon after they’d emerged from the underwater tunnel that had brought them to a part of Hell Deep few knew the existence of.

“There!” Nikolai barked a moment later.

Mae’s head snapped around.

He was indicating an area to the far left of the cavern, some quarter of a mile from a mountain pass that would take them out of the valley.

Vozgan cast a worried look at the sorcerer over his shoulder. “There’s nothing there but rock.”

Nikolai frowned. “And I’m telling you Ran Soyun’s magic is strongest in that direction. There must be some kind of barrier that’s hiding what’s really there.”

Mae and Azazel exchanged a startled look. They incanted the spell as one.

“NEGATE!”

Vozgan made a startled sound. The wall of the cavern wavered like a mirage under the crimson magic that crashed into it. Mae’s pulse quickened when it disappeared. Alicia swore at the sight of the hidden vale and dark peak beyond.

The dragon banked and made rapidly for the distant mountain.

“I can sense Barquiel’s army!” the Reaper queen ground out a moment later.

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