Chaos Queen--Fear the Stars (Chaos Queen 4) by Christopher Husberg

Author:Christopher Husberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan

* * *

Astrid rolled to the side, the high priestess’s blades narrowly missing her. One embedded itself in the rising, dark shape before her.

The Outsider thrashed, its tail flicking out. Nayome had hidden herself the moment fighting had broken out in the chambers. It was probably for the best. The Crucible had no fighting prowess that Astrid knew of, and would likely only get in the way. The Beldam she had lost track of, however. She hadn’t left, of that much Astrid was sure, but she, too, must have hidden herself when the fighting broke out.

Astrid heard the faintest sound of scuffling, and a struggle outside the window. If her memory didn’t fail her, there would be a large, gradually sloping roof directly outside of the window. With any luck, Cinzia had stopped herself from falling any farther, and the high priestess had toppled to a grizzly death. From the sound of things, that wasn’t the case, and the two were engaged in a struggle on the roof outside the window.

At least, Astrid hoped, that meant Cinzia was still alive.

The hope gave her strength, and Astrid advanced on the Outsider, swords at the ready. She’d been confident earlier, but the last time she and Knot had faced an Outsider during the day, they’d at least had Eward’s archers to back them up. Here, it was just the two of them, and in a complicated space, to say the least.

“How d’you want to handle this, nomad?” Astrid asked. When Knot didn’t respond, she snapped her head back to look at him.

He lay on the ground, perfectly still, the spear the high priestess had psimantically thrown embedded in his chest.

Astrid choked on the next breath she drew, her lungs contracting, throat tightening. She was aware of the fact that the Outsider now stood at its full height, its head almost touching the high ceiling of the chamber, a low growl rumbling with enough force that Astrid felt it in her chest. She was aware of the struggling outside the window, the faint voices. She was aware of Nayome, curled in a ball, beneath another large desk off to the side.

But most of all she was aware of Knot’s stillness, and the length of wood sticking straight out from him.

Within this awareness an entire world seemed to exist, a world Astrid never knew was there until this moment, outside of time and space, because even as the Outsider’s growl trembled around her and into her lungs, in this other world, this special world she had just become aware of, Astrid was without Knot, and that absence ached and echoed with an immediate pain that she could not ignore.

He can’t be dead, she told herself, but she had no evidence one way or the other. He lay still on the ground, a spear in his chest. She knew what the chances of surviving such a blow were.

The tower shook as the Outsider took a step toward her.

Astrid didn’t have time to wait for the creature to take the initiative.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.