before the flesh had even fi

jes

irst, armor half-clasped, steel dr

hauling a length of iron chain heavy enough

e at the threshold, her voice swallowed by th

't ste

every instinct honed over a lifetime of reading deadly rooms was

in front of me in a display o

tore free from his shoulders in a spray of magic. Yet none of it

aking a single, deli

ord raised to strike. "You have no i

y hit me like a physical force.

der guard uncoiled the massive chain. "Thayer's right behind me

rn's human shape folded in on itself,

space where a king

s shot through with threads of living gold,

head the size of my chest swung round. His eyes, twin pools of

vibration that shook the f

Torin

rd the advancing steel, the other toward eleven feet of unbrid

the suffocating heat.

assive head sw

ic insisted this creature could erase me in

eld my

an impossibly delicate movement for

ine, close enough that the heat

ed, a harsh catch of br

e command draining from his

ut from his chest, and gently nudged the bac

cade of lived terror. "In ten years, I've never seen him recogn

te, and pressed my palm flat agains

m frantic to steady, as if a frantic rhyth

monster in a room full of men who h

eyes softened, d

ving into shadows, until the terror that could have leveled the castle shrank into a man kneeling on th

nct, his hot breath shuddering against my neck as if

my pulse hammering against his ribs

e pull

e king, stripped of the dragon. He didn't look at me wi

le of undoing you completely. And for one unguarded second, stripped o

monster i

m