Page 63 of A Reign of Roses
Arwen
We hurtled from the monsterlike arrows through a thick veil of mist. Practically blind, utterly senseless, but quick. Deadly quick.
Wyn dove behind something before I could see what, and yanked me after him. We landed beneath a jagged, rough-hewn boulder just as a raging shriek rent through the cavern.
No, not a cavern. A den.
One of the monster lairs.
“Is this not an exit?” I managed around my racing breaths.
Wyn shook his head. “I have no idea.”
But that light…that light was coming from somewhere.
The feathered creature spread its hunched, heavy wings and roared, fanning our faces with the pungent scent of rotten meat. Through the darkness, I could just make out the tips of each giant, plumy appendage meeting either stone wall with ease—brushing,stoopingagainst the ceiling. This creature, whatever it was, had even more power, even more strength than could be used in this dank, dripping den.
Those claws—stemming from long skeletal arms, hidden underneath the demonic wings—stained red from tearing into years’ worth of prey, prowled toward us, talons scraping across the dirt. Despite the owllike wings and legs, those rippling feathers, and angled, pointed ears, the creature’s face was…eerilyhuman.Or, humanlike. A flat, gray, misshapen nose. Bony, low cheekbones that nearly jutted into a lipless maw. And when it shrieked—rows of teeth. Not fangs, butteeth—dozens and dozens of them.
And yet it was those narrow blinking eyes that told me what the behemoth goblin bird was. Eyes I’d seen go around before a rubber ball or drift shut at the foot of Kane’s bed. I knew what we beheld even before Wyn uttered, “It’s a strix.”
Not quite like Acorn. Far larger, far more angry…
And this strix appeared to have been driven completely mad.
We scrambled back when it lunged, narrowly avoiding those treacherous claws. The close call offered me a glimpse of the strix’s eyes. Not brown and warm like Acorn’s, but milky white, with pale, gray scars over thin eyelids. Scarring that carried across the bridge of the strix’s nose and protruding brow, where no plumage grew at all.
This strix was blind.
It wrenched open its bestial mouth and roared, spit and flecks of whatever rancid meal it had last eaten flying toward us. Wyn leveled his hands at the strix, soft, velvety lighte brimming in his palms.
“No,” I hissed, seizing his arms in my own.
Confusion rippled from his hazel eyes, which I could only make out due to the light spilling in from the other side of the rocky lair. Not moonlight, but yellowcitylights. The exit Wyn had spoken of. I could almost hear the cries of citizens, likely witnessing their grand palace swallowed up in flame.
“They’re not violent creatures,” I told Wyn. “Not unless they have to be. This one’s been blinded. It’s afraid.” If I didn’t despise Lazarus for all he’d done to me, to Kane, to his people—the blinding of this innocent creature would have cinched it for me.
With another shriek, the strix snapped those teeth not an inch from my face. Wyn and I dove backward, and watched the beast’s milky, scarred eyes whir. The strix rammed into the wall where we’d just been and howled so loud the rock behind me shuddered.
Wyn and I scuttled over each other to stand. My guard frowned up at the disoriented beast. “We cannot let it kill us out of empathy.”
“I’m not suggesting that,” I breathed. “But we can get to the other side without harming it.”
I’d been wrong. It wasn’t a lair, but a cell. That corridor—far too small and too winding for the creature to get through, especially without its sight. But not so small that the smell of a city—chimney smoke and sulfur and meat roasting—couldn’t waft through. Torture for this strix, unchained here but unable to reach the freedom it smelled and heard each day and night. Such utter cruelty.
I didn’t wait for Wyn to agree. I sprinted across the puddles of what I knew from the scent were years of waste. Hurtling, dodging the flaps and claws—
But Wyn was not fast enough behind me.
The strix tackled him, leveling the guard to the ground with a garbled grunt and driving those claws into the arm Wyn raised to block the blow.
Horror blurred my vision into spots.
Wyn blasted the creature back with his swirling violet lighte. I raced for him, bracing my hands on his wet, sticky arm and feeling the skin there stitch back together. The glow from my lighte lit the entire cave.
Finally, some of my power had returned. Maybe just enough to—
The strix flew toward us with that horrible, many-toothed smile. It was the smell. The metallic smell of Fae power. The creature dove for us.
