Page 7 of A Waltz with Lord Death
“I will remain right here, but I wish you would listen to what I have to say.”
“Get out!”
For a long moment, he stared at her, and she stared back. She had to be willing to take on the hefty role. This was not willing. She needed…time…to help her process this.
“As you wish,” he said quietly, breaking eye contact. Without another word, he called his hounds to his side and left the property, raindrop after raindrop hitting his face like tears of mourning. Time was not something he had enough of. His power needed release, and he had no choice but to oblige.
Chapter 4
Three deaths…
Meira stared down at the ashy white faces of the young men lying on the floor in the baron’s great hall, their skin crinkled from being washed down the river during the flash flood the night prior. Nausea churned her stomach, and she turned, pressing a hand against her mouth in an attempt to keep herself from retching.
She knew exactly who had done this. There was no other explanation.
Her head spun, her legs about to give out beneath her before someone helped her to a chair. The nausea persisted, and she forced herself to take several long, slow breaths, her palms pressed against the rough wooden table in the baron’s keep. Yesterday, Lord Death had visited her.
Lord Death himself.
If it hadn’t been for the constant chill racing up her arms each time she recalled his raw, dark power, she would have assumed it had only been a nightmare.
But why her?
And what did he want with her town? If he destroyed this place and everyone in it, she would have nowhere to go. Either that, or she would die along with everyone else.
“Well?” the baron, John, asked. He crossed his arms over his rotund stomach. His lavish and tailored clothing boasted of the keep’s wealth. Servants bustled about the great hall as they began lighting candles as yet another dusk fell upon Baywick. Several long, rectangular tables stretched across the large room, and on the floor…
A servant covered the three bodies with a white sheet, and she was glad for it. Guards escorted their wailing and grieving family members into another room of the keep, but the silence was more deafening than ever before.
“Baywick is being targeted,” Meira answered with both truths and guesses.
“By who?”
“Lord Death.”
John’s face turned an ashen shade nearly as white as the pale bodies. He slumped into a chair, staring at the rich brown wood of the table for far too long. Finally, he said, “Tell me more.”
Death’s face came unbidden to her mind. At first, she’d thought he was a wealthy noble, a handsome stranger passing through town. But she’d quickly learned that was not the case. Her hand still tingled from where he’d caressed her skin. She’d enjoyed his attention far more than she wished she had. Especially now that she knew who he was.
“I…” She cleared her throat and lifted her gaze. She still had her livelihood to consider. According to his daughter, John planned to dismiss her services. Keeping herself useful to him was a priority. “I feel his power sucking the earth dry, spreading death and disease through the land.”
“Why us? What have we done to anger him?”
“What, indeed?” a deep voice said behind the baron.
Meira gasped, her eyes wide as Death appeared suddenly with his arms folded over his chest. Wisps of shadow licked at his feet in the form of hounds. He had dark brown hair and gray eyes, a light dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose and scruff across his face. Her heart froze as if ice crackled its way through her body, fear urging its pace faster.
The baron glanced behind him but only furrowed his brows as he stared right through Death. He returned his gaze to her, a serious note to his expression. “Are you having a premonition? What do you see?”
How can you not see the foreboding figure just feet away from you?
She wanted to scream. She wanted to run. But her body remained frozen.
An amused grin spread across Death’s face. “I infected the southeast corner of the barley crops with disease. Come morning, the barley will be too far gone to save.”
Clearly, the baron did not hear his words, as his expression remained unchanged.
“The barley!” she blurted. “You must save the barley!”
