Page 2 of Court of Claws

The little boy did not answer. His eyes were half-closed.

His mother gave a frantic shake, her grip harder than it would normally have been. The child’s eyes opened slowly.

“I forgot,” he said hollowly. “I forgot about the tea. I had a sip of Ashlyn’s tea. Just a sip.”

“A sip.” The woman’s face was ashen. “Perhaps it will not matter.”

Perhaps this strange plague was not from food or drink at all, she thought to herself. If it was, how was it that none of the adults had been affected?

Only children. All of their children.

Some had dropped, withering away in their parents’ arms, their lives vanishing as swiftly as dew from the petals of a flower in the morning sun.

Others had turned sickly. Life seemed to go out of them. And then...

The woman shuddered and looked down at her son again.

His breathing had become a rattle. His lips were dry and parted.

“My love.” The words were a plea. “No.” She shook her head, the tears already falling. “No, no.”

The boy’s eyes closed slowly. His body was limp in her arms. She pressed her face to the child’s head, breathing in the scent of his hair, his skin, holding him close to her breast as she had since he was an infant.

She had always protected him. How could she have failed him today?

The boy’s breathing was slowing.

His mother let out a keening wail. “Not my child. Not my boy.”

But already the child was motionless in her arms and she knew.

A sob broke from her lips. First one, then another.

Time passed. When she finally lifted her head, her face was red and tear-streaked and the torch had burned low.

She stared dully across the room, noticing for the first time what she had not been attentive enough to observe in her haste and panic.

A large stone archway lay on the far side of the chamber, grand and imposing, its smooth gray stone weathered but enduring. It stretched high up to the ceiling, covered in layers of cobwebs and dust.

Sheets that had once been white trailed over it. The coverings may once have hidden it completely but now they had fallen away and hung in tatters blowing in an unseen breeze like ghostly shrouds.

The woman stared at the arch. A silent sentinel watching her from the darkness, its former grandeur muted by years of neglect.

A choked whimper escaped her lips. She moved, as if to rise and step towards the archway, then seemed to remember the boy’s body in her arms. She looked down at the pale face, the frozen features, and a fresh wave of sobs wracked her frame.

Bending her head low, she cradled the boy, rocking him for the last time, then gently laid him on the floor and took a tentative step towards the arch.

A gurgling sound filled the room behind her, as if from a throat filled with water.

The woman paused, her face a mask of horror.

The child was stirring where he lay on the floor. His lips were parting.

It defied belief. It defied hope.

The woman’s eyes widened, fresh tears streaming down her cheeks. “No, no. Not this. Spare him, Vela, spare him, I beg of you.”

But the gods were silent as the boy’s eyes slowly re-opened.

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