Page 24 of A Court of Sugar and Spice
His eyes are more human—well, more Fae—than ever, thanks to the blood I applied to his chest and the blood he’s drinking now. They’re a deep emerald green, striated with little jets and bursts of gold around the pupils. He has lashes now, too—not painted ones, but real, thick, sooty eyelashes.
He doesn’t look away as he drinks deeply from my arm. Dimly I hear Clara say something about a stream and going for a drink. I should tell her to wait, but it sounds as if she can see the stream from here. We’ll be able to keep an eye on her.
I count to a hundred while the Nutcracker swallows mouthful after mouthful of my blood. He’s changing before my very eyes—becoming more lithe and pliant, less wood and more flesh. His stiff clothing relaxes into soft fabric, and his black hair bounces up from his head, still pinned beneath his hat, but no longer carved and painted. He seems to be growing taller, too.
“Enough,” I whisper at last.
Instantly he lets me go, his full lips wet and crimson with my blood. The line marking his detachable nutcracker’s jaw is all but gone now.
He straightens—and yes, he is definitely taller.
“Let’s hope I won’t have to do that again.” He licks his lips, pulling a slight frown.
“Did I taste that bad?”
He doesn’t look at me. “Let me bind this wound for you.”
“Just use a strip of my sleeve. It’s ruined anyway.”
Swiftly he wraps the cloth around my forearm and ties it in place. “Where’s your sister?”
“She went to get a drink. We need to—”
The Prince’s eyes go wide and his palm slams across my mouth. He pulls me against his chest and backs up into the undergrowth, dragging me with him.
“Hush,” he hisses in my ear when I voice a muffled protest. “For the love of your life, shut up, and be still.”
I squeal against his palm, and he brings his other hand around to clasp my throat, cutting off my air as well as my voice.
“Shut up, or we both die,” he whispers.
I go still, nodding as best I can. He eases his grip on my neck, though he leaves his fingers against my skin. Removing his other hand from my mouth, he points to the ledge where we were standing.
The ground is more familiar here, with actual grass instead of gems and roots, even though the grass has a distinctly bluish tint. But it’s…moving. The grass is swaying more violently than the light breeze warrants.
The earth itself begins to heave upward, bulging, breaking, cracking open like a blister.
The sun is sinking, no longer bathing the ledge, but there’s still plenty of light by which to see the creature that emerges.
A blunt, wrinkled head, all sneering snout, with two pinprick eyes and a huge pair of long, narrow, tusklike teeth.
The Nutcracker’s breath tickles my ear. “Mole-rat.”
I could have guessed as much. Except this mole-rat is gigantic, with a head larger than mine and a neck just as thick as its head. The skin covering its long, round body is a sickly pale pink, thin and wrinkled.
A naughty impulse seizes me, and I turn my head, feeling the slide of the Nutcracker’s fingers against my throat. I tilt my face up and breathe words toward his ear. “It looks like a dick.”
His whole form stiffens. I can practically feel the shock vibrating from him. I start to snicker, and he clamps his hand over my mouth again. I smile silently against his palm.
More and more of the mole-rat’s long, flaccid body keeps sliding out of the hole—so much that the creature begins to coil itself like a snake.
A bird flies by, swooping low over the grassy ledge, oblivious to the coiled creature.
One moment the bird is winging along, twittering merrily. The next second, the mole-rat’s dull, rounded snout erupts into a wide maw, ringed with rows of fangs. Its gullet is huge, capable of swallowing a man whole. Half a dozen thin, fleshy tentacles extrude from around the mole-rat’s snout, latch around the bird, and suck it into the toothy maw.
A horrible crunch, a gulping swallow, and then silence.
The entire attack took barely longer than a second. The mole-rat settles down in the grass.
