Land of Monsters by Stacey Marie Brown

Author:Stacey Marie Brown [Brown, Stacey Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-10-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Ash



Deep in my hood, a cloak covering the bloodstained figure in my arms, I kept to the shadows. The cloudy afternoon dusted the narrow cobble streets with what little light was left in the day.

Getting Raven out was my only thought, her safety my first concern before anyone regained consciousness. My backpack was abandoned upstairs, so we had no money, no food, and no place to go. So many were after us, so many more willing to turn us in.

Especially now that the world was looking for the missing princess.

When Raven passed out in my arms, I noticed the newspaper on the table, her face in all her finery staring back, the headline dropping my stomach. Nowhere would be safe now. Headhunters, opportunists, and her own family were out searching for her.

They would take her away from me.

A fierce noise had worked up my throat. Picking her up and holding her to my chest, I carried her out. Mine.

My muscles shook after two hours of carting her across town, but I didn’t relent. Readjusting her in my arms, I pressed on. My body craved energy, needing nature, but snow clouds bristled overhead, dropping the temperature, shaking her bones. She needed warmth and shelter.

She needed a safe space to heal.

Glancing over my shoulder, I made sure we weren’t being followed as the trek took us back to the old town. Not that anyone was coherent enough to follow us from the club. If they did survive, they would be healing for weeks after what she did to them.

Raven was magnificent in the most terrifying way. Her devastation was felt in the atmosphere, watering the earth with blood, which even nature bowed to. I stood in the middle of her chaos with no fear of her wrath. Death fell around me like dominoes, a whirlwind of blood and screams, and I was the one she bowed to. As if I was the rock she had to smash against to find herself in the madness.

Wind whipped at my face and nose, the storm rolling in fast, the taste of snow in the air. I rushed to the only place I could think of. When we turned the corner, music rose in the air, and people milled in and out of the door, debauchery already eliciting customers in to escape life.

There was nowhere else to go, not when Raven needed to heal. With my own energy dragging, I required a place I could think. Come up with a plan.

I ducked inside. The dark lounge was sprinkled with only a few patrons at the gambling tables, hoping their luck would strike early.

The director of the house spotted our covered heads and vagabond clothes and came storming toward me, a cheery yellow robe fluttering behind him, contradicting the dark mood I carted through the door.

“What do we look like? A halfway house? Get out! We don’t allow—” He came to stop in front of me, his mouth parting when I lifted my head under the hood.

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