Wrath of Lions Read Free Page B

pain and kept running, his sword held high, his sights fixed on one man and one man only: Clovis Crestwell. The man’s gaze shifted to him, and those blazing red eyes widened with what looked to be excitement.
    Clovis leapt off his horse, his naked body bulging with muscle, his evil grin growing larger and larger. His mouth seemed to open wider than was humanly possible. It looked hungry enough to swallow the whole world. But Oris didn’t care.
A wider opening to plunge my sword through
was all he thought as he lunged forward, the tipof his blade aiming for Clovis’s gaping maw. It was then that he saw the man’s teeth extending, growing outward, becoming sharp daggers.
    He thrust with all his might, the shortsword plunging into the gaping maw with both hands. Clovis’s inhuman red eyes widened as the blade exited the back of his skull. His expression shifted, and his dagger-filled mouth snapped shut on Oris’s arms, tearing through flesh, tendon, and bone. Oris teetered backward, his arms severed just below the elbow, the stumps spurting blood. Clovis ripped the sword from his mouth as if it were naught but a splinter, then rushed forward, ramming its cutting edge into Oris’s gut and twisting until his insides spilled all over the ground. Oris lost feeling in his lower half and collapsed, the rest of him awash with white-hot pain. He knew the end was near, but he forced himself to roll over nonetheless, staring back toward the forest, hoping beyond hope that Alexander and Caleigh had escaped. These thoughts persisted even as claws ripped into his back, even as teeth tore into his neck, even as his own blood washed over his eyes, even as the screams of those dying all around him faded away, leaving him with nothing but the agony he felt in his every nerve as he was slowly devoured.

C HAPTER
    1
    T he bodies hung from the top of the castle walls, their eyeless faces staring accusingly at any who passed below. There were six in all, swaying side by side in the frigid early spring breeze. Four had been gutted, and what remained of their innards was blackened with rot, a putrid substance that streamed down their bare legs and dripped from their toes. The area of the walk under them had long since been stained with the sap of their deaths.
    The day’s light was fading fast, and Laurel Lawrence stood at the edge of the cobbled road in front of the Castle of the Lion, staring up at the corpses as she had been wont to do since the day they were hung. Though she had experienced much loss over her twenty-two years, she felt most hopeless when lingering in this spot. The bodies had lost their bloat long ago, and their most tender areas had become food for crows and parasites, but the long and bitterly cold winter had somewhat preserved them. Their flesh was gray and taut, stretched thinly over the bones beneath. Laurel could recognize the ghosts of the men and women they had once been: Ulric Mori, Veldaren’s Master-at-Arms; Vulfram, Ulric’s brother and formerLord Commander of the Army of Karak, found unworthy by the Final Judges; Ibis Mori, father of Ulric and Vulfram, the sculptor whose hands had crafted the statues of Karak that decorated the city; and finally, Ibis’s creator and wife, Soleh Mori, former Minister of Justice in Veldaren and matriarch of House Mori, the second family of Karak. At the end of the macabre line, someone had hung two additional bodies: Nessa DuTaureau, a child of the bastard western god, Ashhur, who had switched her loyalty to Karak, and her lover Crian, the son of Highest Crestwell. Their bodies had appeared a month previously, and Laurel was flabbergasted by their addition, for the doomed lovers had been publicly forgiven and accepted by Karak himself the night before their murder.
    Despite their odd continued presence, it was the cracked and peeling face of Minister Mori, eerily lit by the torches below, that drew Laurel’s gaze. She had known the Minister in life, Soleh often taking the