Page 147 of Queen of Legends and Lies
“Just a little longer, Rose! I’ll keep you safe.” Our shields line up, the screaming, slavering obstacles between us pushed aside.
Desperate and working off gut instinct, I reach out. Intuition guides me as my hand slides through both shields, grabs little Rose, and pulls her into an embrace.
Empty, her barrier implodes, scattering burning fragments everywhere.
Rose fights me, biting and scratching. But even bolstered by the corruption, she’s too small and weak to cause me real harm. I hug her tight to my leather-clad body before wrapping her in a cocoon of earth and ice.
Alannah’s repeated directions on what it means to be a queen echo in my mind.
According to her, it’s better for all of them to die than for me to fail. As disgusting and selfish as it sounds, I can’t let the human puppets slow me down. If I do, I put everyone in Tirene and all the other kingdoms at risk.
But if I can reach Narc’s body and destroy it, anyone who survives will be set free.
Swallowing the bile bubbling up my throat, I lash out with the force of all four elements combined.
Destruction fills the cavern with swirls of fire, lava, burning steam, and blasts of hot air.
Outside my shield, death dances. Magic eradicates everything, even the dirt around me.
Before me, an oval shape roughly the height of a man catches the light of my flames.
I freeze, my heart stuttering.
More drachen and corrupted surge forward with renewed fury. I push onward, Rose still clutched to my chest.
The lights wink out, plunging the tunnel into total blackness. I falter as fear scorches my throat.
Then, slowly, my fire begins to shine again.
I step closer, spreading my flames to banish the shadows. Immediately, I wish I hadn’t.
Narc.
In all his unholy glory.
His giant body is covered in reforming flesh and tendons, oozing and knitting together in a macabre patchwork. Through the inky black masses of drachen, I watch in horror as muscle and sinew crawl over bare bones.
Like a body decomposing in reverse.
The drachen’s talon! Terror seizes my breath as I peer down at my injured arm. The wound is streaked with blood that’s just starting to coagulate. It must’ve been dripping while I was saving Rose. The blood must have stained the altar and touched Narc’s bones.
It’s resurrecting him.
Horror stabs me.
Idid this.
My mind fights to deny the reality of what I’m seeing.
One eye, now fully formed, with a strange purple-blue iris, blinks and narrows in on me. His rotted tongue protrudes from a half-formed mouth, flopping obscenely as he slouches down and laps up blood from one of the fallen corrupted.
More blood and small chunks of flesh line the altar. More corrupted are scooping up the missed pieces of humans and drachen to toss into his maw.
Feeding him…even as he consumes them.
Narc reanimates before my very eyes.
And it’s the most grotesque thing I’ve ever witnessed.
