Forbidden Honor (Dragon Royals #1)(62)

But had they intended to kill me? Did they know there was something dangerous down here in the tunnels?

I pressed myself into the shadows, letting my light flicker out, and I plunged immediately into darkness.

The walls and ceiling of the tunnel pressed in on me desperately, and my breathing hitched. I tried to breathe through my nose. The more I tried to channel calm and quiet, the louder my breathing.

I was going to kill Jaik when I got out of here.

Given the look of guilt on Talisyn’s face, I’d let him die quickly. Jaik and the others though, they were in for a long, painful death. Thinking about revenge kept my thoughts from spiraling completely.

There was a kind of snuffling sound almost like a pig hunting along the ground for truffles. Every muscle in my body was drawn taut. Gods, I’d do anything to be able to shift into the dragon again, even though I’d be too large to move in this tunnel, squeezed in here like a bloated sausage. But I’d be a sausage that could breathe fire.

The sound of huffing turned into muttering, as if whatever was in the tunnel with me was human. But the dark panic squeezing my chest didn’t abate.

The snuffling grew louder and for the first time I could hear the grumbling more clearly. “Fresh meat. There’s some kind of fresh meat down here.”

Panic curdled in my stomach. Whatever it was smelled me as fresh meat. I didn’t like to think of myself as meat in any way, shape, or form.

I backed slowly along the tunnel. I had to move silently. I didn’t want to alert the thing to where I was, and I didn’t want to know how fast it could run. I’d rather save some things for a fun surprise later.

The thing paused. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,”

Was it a human? Was it one of the Scourge? Was it a half shifter, half human hybrid, gnarled in between stages?

Maybe I should give up on trying to be silent, should go for speed, because my breathing was a rasp now that seemed like a call to the creature.

It turned a corner just as I did, and I caught the briefest glimpse of its face, lit faintly by the luminescent mold. It was enormous, far taller than I was, walking on a man’s legs, with ram’s horns curved around its face. Its eyes were wide and white, and pus ran in trickles across the fur of its flat, human face. It was blind. But its face still turned toward me as I ducked around the corner.

Adrenaline tensed every muscle as I hurried along the line toward the door. Even though it didn’t matter; there was no way to get those doors open from the inside, so reaching them didn’t mean reaching any kind of safety.

Except… I would pass that corpse again on my way back.

If the thing was blind, it must be tracking me by scent. Would the corpse be enough to confuse it?

I retraced my steps faster and faster. The shuffling seemed to get ever louder.

I reached the corpse, alerted by the sickly sweet scent that made bile rose in the back of my throat. What would give me the best chance to hide?

I decided to press myself behind the corpse along the stone wall, putting my back against something solid.

I crouched low by the bones, hoping that maybe the monster would track all the way to the door and I could get a better look at it. I had to know what I was dealing with. I wasn’t going to be its fresh meat.

I’m not a particularly lucky person, given my dark childhood. But luck smiled at me this time as I held my breath. The thing shuffled past me in the dark, its enormous shoulders hunched. It had to be some kind of hybrid shifter because I caught a glimpse of a human ankle bone under the tattered hem of its pants, but it was several heads taller than me.

It never stopped muttering as it tracked along my route. The rambling figure’s face looked almost human, but it was obscured by the horns. Those horns gouged its cheeks, which were weeping blood.

I’d thought failed shifters were a myth they told us to scare children. According to the stories, they proved unworthy of their soul creatures and were driven mad. More than mad, they were driven to kill. Their souls were lost to human cruelty and predator’s instincts.

As the shuffling and muttering sounds receded along the corridor, I tried to catch my breath.

If it were tracking my trail, it would soon reach the doors and then likely double back. The monster didn’t give off a quitter vibe.

How was I going to keep it from finding me?

I looked at the corpse stinking at my feet and groaned, but I clutched the knife from my boot.

When my father had given me my first knife, he’d told me I would always be able to save myself, that I didn’t need to have nightmares anymore.

We’d been sitting in the garden while my mother snipped roses to fill the crystal vases in my room. She’d smiled faintly, as if she knew his logic couldn’t cure my nightmares. But she’d let him go on, giving me a sympathetic look as she stripped the thorns from a rose for my hair.

I could never remember my nightmares, let alone my life before my parents brought me home. But something terrible had happened. Something that haunted me, that was close when I was here in these tunnels.

But my old nightmares didn’t matter. I was smack dab in the middle of a shiny new one.

I had to get out of here alive and then I would process the fact that the men I’d begun to consider my friends had left me in so much danger.

I used the knife to rip open the corpse and turn it into the world’s worst jacket. If only the noble girls who mocked my sense of fashion sense could see me now. I’d really hit a new low.