Series: Lords of Rathe Series by Meagan Brandy
Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 95227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 476(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
I step closer.
The pull slams into me, chest-deep.
Not pain. Weight. Like whatever’s inside has hooked into my ribs and started reeling me in, hand over hand.
I reach for the doorframe, fingertips grazing splintered wood, and then everything goes black.
…
I wake up in blood.
It’s everywhere. Pooled beneath me, soaking into my clothes, slick and warm against my skin. The smell hits me next, copper and iron, thick enough to choke on.
I jolt upright, heart slamming against my ribs, and scan my surroundings.
Some kind of house. It’s tiny, packed with stuff, and feels way too close—shelves everywhere stuffed with books and jars and weird things I can’t even identify. The labels are either worn away or in an unfamiliar language. There’s just one window that leaks grayish light, which still fails to illuminate the room in any helpful way. Through the dirty glass, I can see trees with their naked, twisted branches scratching at a dull sky like bony fingers.
The blood isn’t mine.
Blood coats the room. A man—forties, maybe, though it’s hard to say for the giftless—lies sprawled near the center. His throat is torn so deep the jagged edges of muscle and cartilage gape open, bone glinting like a knife left in the dark. His fingers claw the air, frozen mid-reach, eyes wide and glassy with whatever final terror he saw. The walls wear his death in streaks, the shelves drowned in it, books and jars slick with crimson. A slow dripping of it hits the ground.
Then there’s her.
The woman in the corner sits slumped, her chest split open like a butcher’s prize, ribs splayed wide as petals. Her face tilts toward me, mouth slack, horror still etched into every line. Blood soaks her dress, turns her hair to clotted ropes, and seeps into the floorboards in a stain that’s already crusting at the edges.
My boots skid in the mess as I jerk back, breath sawing in and out—too loud, too raw—in the suffocating quiet.
What the fuck. What the fuck. What the—
My hands are clean. No blood under my nails, no cuts, nothing bruised. My knife’s still strapped to my thigh, sheathed and dry, with the leather strap undone but not messed with. I frantically check myself over, looking for wounds, for proof, for anything, but there’s nothing. Nothing on me. Nothing that explains why I’m standing in this slaughterhouse surrounded by death and gore and that overwhelming copper smell.
But here I am.
In this house.
Surrounded by corpses.
With zero memory of how I got here other than touching a damn door handle. Not even THIS door handle.
This looks fucking bad. I need to leave.
I stumble backward, fingers groping blindly for the door handle, but it vanishes when the door tears open from the other side.
I tumble into blinding sunlight, squinting as I throw up a hand to block the glare, and there, blocking my escape, stand the four royal assholes.
Legend’s eyes snap to mine. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
I spread my arms out, the blood-splattered walls surrounding me like some twisted picture frame. “You think I know? I touched a door and next thing, I’m waking up in the middle of this shit show.”
“Bullshit.” Creed moves forward, jaw clenched, gaze sweeping over the carnage at my back. “You actually expect us to buy—”
“I don’t give a shit what you believe. I just got here, same as you. So don’t even try to pin this shit on me. I’d have no problem admitting it if it were.”
Silver, the one nonroyal who seems to get a pass into their little royal squad, moves past Legend. He observes the scene with clinical detachment. He crouches near the doorway, fingers hovering over a smear of blood without touching it. “The blood’s borderline cold. If she did just arrive as she claims, this would have happened before she got here.”
“Like I said.” I cross my arms.
“Or maybe she’s standing right in front of us and knows a good cooling spell.” Knight’s voice cuts through the tension. He leans against the doorframe, his eyes as cold as his words. “Convenient timing, don’t you think?”
The rage flares hot and immediate. “Convenient? You think I wanted to wake up covered in—” I bite off the words, swallow them down. Getting angry won’t help. These assholes have already made up their minds.
Legend pushes past his brothers, stalking toward me with that predatory grace that makes my pulse kick up for all the wrong reasons. “How did you get here?”
“I told you. The door—”
“What door?” He’s close now, too close, and the heat rolling off him makes the air between us shimmer. “There are wards all over this campus. You can’t just appear somewhere without triggering them.”
“Then maybe your wards are shit.” I meet his glare with one of my own, refusing to back down even though every instinct screams at me to run. “I was walking. Found some old hut I was planning to practice this candle thing. Touched the door. Then this.”