Page 80 of Oracle of Ruin

“You know what I’m doing.”

“And I don’t have time for it,” my second responds, ever the compassionate type.

I wonder if Torin and Kya have found the survivors yet. Wherever they are, they must be faring better than we are.

Amír forges ahead, her gait careless and swaggering. “Come on now, we haven’t got all day,” she hisses, stepping out into the corridor.

With lightning proficiency and speed, Blaine’s arm wraps around her midsection, pulling her back against the wall. Her gun slams into his thigh and his hand flies to her mouth to smother her gasp. I still every muscle in my body and strain to listen. A few moments later, the sound reaches me—a hesitant set of footsteps. Someone who is lost or…

Lucius steps out from around the corner, dressed in his royal regalia. He looks nearly the same as he did all those months ago, his perfect hair still smoothed away from his face that is turned from us. He pauses, and Blaine’s grip on Amír tightens. I lay my hand against the hilt of my sword.

Lucius turns his face to us. It is only through years of practice that I am able to withhold my gasp and stay steady on my feet despite the monster before me.

Lucius’s hands are completely black and tipped with claws, the darkness slithering up his forearms before the bulging black veins disappear beneath his skin. His complexion is pale, nearing blue. His face, though still handsome, has been marred by bruises and dripping gold-flecked blood. His eyelids have been cut—no,burnedoff, leaving nothing but poorly healed nubs at the top of his eyes.

His white and silver eyes. His dark irises have been burned past recognition until only silver clouds cover the milky white canvas.

Amír stiffens in recognition and our eyes meet. We’ve seen this handiwork before. We both know who did this to him.

“Vera,” Blaine breathes softly as the emperor disappears from view. “What did you do?”

Chapter33

Rowan

Idon’t believe in the gods, but something divine intervenes in allowing Lucius to pass us by without sensing our unwelcome presence in the palace. He rounds the corner as Blaine swears, leaving us completely unnoticed, but the chill in the air still permeates.

“He didn’t look like that before, right?” Amír interrogates.

Blaine shakes his head and a muscle feathers in his jaw. “No.”

Noseems to be a simple way of putting it.No, Amír, the former prince did not have burned eyelids and monster arms. Thank you kindly for that astute observation.

The gunslinger presses a glare to the side of my head that makes me wonder again if she can read my thoughts. “I’m guessing our little tyrant is responsible for the burned eyes?”

A nod.

“And those claws?”

“Those would be from the experiments Seb warned us about. The king,” Blaine finishes with a grim look.

Lucius didn’t walk through the corridors. He glided with an otherworldly grace. His shoulders were squared and chin raised as if he still bore a crown, and yet his elbows seemed angled just slightly the wrong way, those dark veins reaching up for his throat and heart, and he sniffed the air with primal instincts. He is more monster than man now.

“Part Kijova, part man?” Amír asks.

“No,” I respond. “This is something entirely different.”

The air is pregnant with tension to the point of near suffocation. A distant scream rattles through the walls that sends our feet moving.

Blaine is the first to forge forth, tapping our arms with the back of his hand. “We need to move.”

I share a glance with my gunslinger. We both noticed at the same time how Blaine’s eye twitched and the vein in his neck constricted when the fallen prince walked by. They weren’t reactions of a man afraid, but of rage. Had Lucius stood still a second longer, Blaine’s sword might have been buried hilt deep in his neck and his blood would have sent every Kijova in the kingdom after us.

Months ago, while Blaine was still recovering, Amír weaseled the information from Kya on why he was crashing with us, drunk as he was. I offered her a few details to keep her off my back, but her lover filled in the rest of the gaps. The Nightwalkers might not have asked Blaine about the duel, but they all were aware of both it and its ending—the ending that left Blaine’s honor disintegrated and him turning to drink. That day was a shift not only in the former captain, but the prince and Vera’s minimal affections for him.

Amír takes up the middle as I pick up the rear. We fall into position easily, her trusting my heightened abilities and me trusting her nature-given ones. We push onward behind Blaine, slowly making our way to the queen’s study.

After passing through the same corridor four times, Amír kicks aside a piece of rubble in frustration. She pushes her hair from her face and glares daggers toward me and the former captain. “You spent months here.” She whirls from me to Blaine. “And you lived here for years! How do neither of you know where we are going or how to find one damn room?”

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