King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo

Author:Leigh Bardugo [Bardugo, Leigh]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9781250231079
Google: rCRZDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B07CRLGCQH
Goodreads: 36307634
Publisher: Imprint
Published: 2019-01-29T00:00:00+00:00

NIKOLAI HAD SEEN MANY ASTONISHING things—the fog ponies of the Zemeni frontier, said to be so fast that when they ran they became invisible; a sea serpent thrashing its way through the northern ice; the world unspooling before him as he rode the winds with the wings of a monster at his back—but his eyes could not make sense of what he saw swooping toward him in the sky.

Yuri was on his knees, praying. Zoya had her arms raised, and Nikolai could already feel the sand whipping around the skiff as she summoned the wind to their defense.

As soon as he’d heard that shriek in the air, Nikolai had drawn his revolvers and prepared to face the volcra. He had expected shadow monsters or some new embodiment of the Darkling’s power. Hell, maybe some part of him had expected the Darkling himself, the Starless Saint resurrected, come to plague them all with charisma and ill intent.

Instead he saw … bees, a vast swath of them, moving through a sky the color of porridge, shifting and clustering into what might have been the shape of a woman. Behind the swarm, a grotesque loped over the sand, a massive body that kept forming and re-forming—two heads, then three; a thousand arms; a humped back with a spine that twisted in sinuous ridges; ten, twenty, thirty long, spindly legs moving in tandem. The forms were human one moment, animal the next—thick with fur and gnashing teeth. And there, circling high above, a third monstrosity, wings wide and scales gleaming …

“Zoya, say something spiteful.”

“Why?” she asked faintly.

“Because I’m fairly certain I’m hallucinating, and in my dreams you’re much nicer.”

“You’re an idiot, Nikolai.”

“Not your best work.”

“I’m sorry I can’t deliver better wordplay right now. I seem to be paralyzed with fear.”

Her voice was trembling—and if ruthless, unshakable Zoya was that frightened, then everything he was seeing was real: the bees, the grotesque, and yes, impossible but there nonetheless, the dragon, vast in size, its arching wings leathery, its scales glinting black, green, blue, gold in the flat gray light.

“Zoya, whatever you did to bring us here, this would be the time to undo it.”

“If I could, I would,” she growled, then hurled a wall of wind upward.

The bees struck it, like water parting around a rock in a stream, their loud buzz filling Nikolai’s ears.

“Do something!” said Zoya.

“Like what?”

“You have guns!”

“I’m not going to shoot at bees.”

“Then shoot at that thing.”

Nikolai opened fire at the grotesque. His bullets struck its shifting body—a head, an arm, another arm, a distended chest. Now that the thing was closer, he glimpsed claws, jaws thick with canines, the dense brown pelt of what looked like a bear. All of his bullets were absorbed in the grotesque’s body, then emerged a second later as if the writhing flesh had simply spat them out.

High above, the dragon roared and spread its enormous wings. A fountain of flame erupted from the beast’s mouth and blasted toward them.

Zoya’s hands shot upward, and a dome of air formed over their heads.

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