Page 109 of The Princesses of Ruin
“He’s going to need more venom,” she says, drawing me from thought. “And the only one who can make it is you.”
“Don’t go into the forest alone.”
“So bossy,” she says with salacious affection.
She cups my cheek, running her thumbnail across my stubble. The prickling drag makes me groan.
“Just know this is restraint,” I say. “I’d tie you up in our bedroom if I could.”
“Ooh, I hope that’s a promise.”
She kisses me one last time and pulls back. She dons the coat sitting over one of the stools and buttons it over the egg.
“I’ll be back before you can finish making more,” she says in a challenge.
I smirk. “We’ll see.”
“Be good,” Scarlett says.
Iksah retreats a measure and settles on the pile of blankets.
She looks at me with a fond smile that emanates loneliness and yearning. “I love you.”
Don’t you dare say goodbye.
“I love you, my monster,” I say.
She slips through the lab door and disappears. I look at Iksah. I’m not sure he could even understand me if I spoke to him, so I don’t. I let the work consume my thoughts until I’m lost to the rhythm of stirring beakers and bubbling cauldrons.
Some time later, I’m drawn from my work by a commotion upstairs. Iksah lurches forward, but I hold out my hand, ordering him to stay. I run out the door and take the stairs two at a time up to the foyer.
A black shadow creature twelve feet tall, with sharp antlers and sharper claws, stands in the center of the room amid screaming, scrambling Spiders. My spindles itch at the sight and my hair stands on end. Liliana is shouting commands at my soldiers. They rush to the front door, taking the hulking creature with them.
“Zane!” Adrik calls between the commotion and my eyes lock on the man. He has a…dog? A puppy cradled in his arms, a frosty-blue arcane shield shimmering around it. He rushes to me with Emillia on his heels.
“What’s happened?” I ask.
“Alastair is injured,” he says.
“What is thatthing?” I snarl, pointing toward the retreating monster.
“The duskwalker. Liliana made a deal with him…” Emillia says. “She wouldn’t speak of it.”
“It’s brought us home. She crafted a sled and he ran day and night with flapping wings. It never stopped,” Adrik says, his wind-chapped cheeks evidence of this.
“The antler?” I ask.
Emillia pulls the six-inch chunk of off-white bone from a pouch on her thigh, and I notice that she, too, has a puppy cradled against her other hip.
I eye the dogs. “And the fur?”
Adrik holds out a glass vial with a stopper in it. The hair inside is much more mature than anything the pups could’ve produced.
“I’ve been developing the base ingredients per Zephrom’s instructions,” Adrik says as he fumbles with his bag.
I take it from him. “Let’s get to the lab.”
He starts to follow, his dog still boneless in his grasp.
