Page 1 of Tusks, Tails & Teacakes
Prologue
Lira had never expectedto be running from a horde of wraiths. Running from guardsmen? Certainly. That was part of the job. But wraiths?
The spike sang as it whizzed past Lira’s head. She dove, tucking into a roll before springing up again. An embittered moan followed her as she ran along the ramparts, her feet deftly balancing where the stone wall narrowed and leaping over the parts that had crumbled away. The storm seethed around her, wind lashing at her pale cheeks and snatching her long, auburn hair from its tight bun. Below her, the sea hurled itself relentlessly against the rocks, grasping for anything it could pull into its angry churning waves.
This is wrong.
She cast a look over her shoulder to track the others. It had gone all wrong from the beginning.
“Lira!”
She turned at the faint sound of her name on the wind. Was that Vaskel’s voice?
Even as she snatched her gaze from the treacherous path, she knew it was a mistake. It couldn’t be him. The Tiefling should have been ahead of her, not behind.
Her foot missed a step, and she bobbled, her arms flailing for a moment as she attempted to right herself, her pulse jackknifing. The drop was long, and the landing sharp, and she stopped running for a beat once she’d jerked herself from the precipice.
Hells, she’d almost fallen.
She gathered a fistful of cloak at her neck, the touch of her fingertips on her throat grounding her. But she hadn’t fallen. She was still alive.
“For now,” she muttered, remembering why she was running along the fortress walls in the dead of night.
Despite Malek’s assurances that the ancient fortress perched on the cliffs above Siren’s Refuge was abandoned, her crew was scattered and on the run. He hadn’t been entirely wrong. The fortress hadn’t been occupied for hundreds of years—by anything alive. What their spell caster had failed to discover when he’d searched for any traces of magic was that the crumbling castle was under the control of otherworldly beings. Wraiths, to be exact.
Icy tendrils of fear slid down Lira’s spine as she thought of the rotted skin dripping from exposed bones, spikes protruding from alabaster wrists that were more mist than flesh. How had Malek missed that?
She reached the end of the rampart and ducked into a corner tower, flicking a blade from her waist and holding it at the ready as she descended the foot-worn steps. The air was stale, with the faint perfume of decay, a reminder that nothing had lived in the place for centuries. No wonder the reputed treasure hadn’t been found.
“It has an army of hells-cursed wraiths guarding it,” Lira whispered to herself, the sound echoing in the tight, stone stairwell.
When she reached the bottom of the spiraling steps, she slipped from the arched opening and right into the keen tip of an arrow.
Her breath caught for the moment before she recognized the face beneath the woolen hood at the other end of the arrow. “Cali!”
The Tabaxi archer lowered her bow and released a tangled breath of relief and annoyance. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
“That was you?” Lira gave her head a small shake. “The wind was twisting the sound on the ramparts. I couldn’t tell who was calling me or from which direction. I thought it was Vaskel.”
Cali shook her head, pushing back her hood to reveal soft, gray down covering her face and peaked, flat ears. Darker gray stripes converged in a point above her black nose. “The last I saw him, he was leading Rog and Pirrin out the back of the throne room.”
The throne room. Bile teased Lira’s throat, the tang puckering her cheeks. They’d made it all the way to the massive throne room with mirrored walls and a high, domed ceiling before encountering the wraiths. They’d almost reached the gilded chest where legend claimed that the traitorous king had hidden his treasure. Lira’s fingers had tingled in anticipation of picking the lock that had glinted in the faint light, the metal surprisingly intact. Not that it would have been any match for a rogue like her.
But that had been where the ghost warriors had been waiting. The golden chest had been a trap, and now that she thought about it, not a clever one.
The chill that ran across her skin now was nothing compared to the fear that had consumed her when the wraiths had materialized, their skinless faces hollow and their royal garments hanging in wispy tatters. She glanced past Cali, bracing herself to see the misty ranks of the undead rising from the ground with an unholy wail.
But there was nothing, save the howl of the wind and the thrash of the sea.
Cali beckoned for Lira to follow her across the open courtyard, and they fell in step as they jogged toward the arched entrance of the ruined castle.
“How did Malek not know this place is overrun by wraiths?” Lira asked, as she and Cali hurried under the decomposing portcullis that sagged battered and broken halfway down the stone archway.
“How did Vaskel not sense them?”
Cali had a point. The Tiefling usually picked up on any undercurrentof emotion or danger. How had he not sensed that they’d been walking into a trap?
“Over here!”
