Mask of Poison (Fall of Under Book 1) by Kathryn Kingsley (great novels to read txt) 📕

She sighed heavily. “Hunters travel in pairs. A slahundur and a graedari. Sword and shield. We were to keep each other alive at all costs. I…failed in my duty. I’m alone because I let my slahundur, Ash, die.”

“I see…” Lyon sighed heavily. “I am sorry for all you have suffered. That you find the strength to continue alone speaks volumes about the value of your character.”

Ember went silent, not sure what to say to that. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to trust him, but it went against everything she had ever been taught in her life.

The pause in the conversation didn’t last long. And when it shattered, it was neither of them who had done it. It was a familiar noise. Something Ember had heard too many times in her life—a scream for help.

Picking up the reins, she kicked Cricket in the sides. “Let’s go.”

The insect-horse didn’t need any more encouragement than that. With a push of powerful legs, he was off at a full run, heading toward the noise. She heard the pounding of hooves beside her, and she knew Lyon was close behind.

It wasn’t long before they found the source of the sound. Someone was pinned to the ground, a pair of drengil looming over them. She tugged on Cricket’s reins to try to get him to stop.

The key word being try.

“Hey! Hey, Cricket, stop!”

With an angry snort, the horse lowered his head and charged into one of the drengil like a bull, using his large horns to send the corpse to the ground. Cricket reared, stomping down on the ribcage of the drengil with a sickening crunch of bone.

Ember quickly jumped from his back between blows, not wanting to fall off. And besides, there was still a second corpse to deal with. It was ignoring them—it had a tasty, screaming, fresh kill to focus on. She grabbed the corpse and yanked it up and away. It hissed at her, baring yellowed and broken teeth.

And they were stained with fresh, bright red blood.

Damn.

Lyon appeared standing next to her, like a blaze of white light in the darkness. He grabbed the drengil by the skull in one of his golden claws and squeezed. The corpse’s skull splintered like an overripe fruit.

The King of Blood dropped the limp thing to the ground and flicked his hand to clean some of the dripping gore from the golden tips of his armor.

“I wish I had you around for the past few years.” Ember shook her head. “You’re better at this than I am.”

“Taking pride over one’s skill at killing is a dubious trophy.” He glanced at Cricket, who was still stomping away at the drengil. The corpse was mangled, but still attempting to crawl toward the bleeding man on the ground. “Pleasure at killing even more so…”

“Hey, horsie.” She laughed. “Go for the head.”

Cricket paused, then brought his hoof down on the skull of the corpse, shattering it easily under the weight. The drengil finally ceased clawing at the dirt with bony fingers.

It was only then that the man on the ground stopped his panicked whimpers. He was leaning up against a tree by the side of the road. She recognized him instantly as one of her own. The tattered, pieced-together clothing was only one indication. The lack of colored ink or a mask on his face was the other.

That meant the bites on his leg—the missing bits of flesh—were serious. She swore under her breath as she walked up to him and knelt, fishing through her bag for her supplies.

“Oh, thank the Grandfather,” the man said through an exhale. He was grabbing his leg above the knee, needing to hold on to the source of his pain. “A graedari.”

She smiled faintly at him as she began cleaning some of the blood away from the exposed skin of his leg. “I’ll do all that I can.” The wounds were bad…very bad. It wasn’t just the loss of blood she was worried about. She was searching for the signs of an even bigger threat to the man’s life.

And there it was.

The yellow-black lines that traced away from the wounds up the man’s leg in a spiderweb pattern of veins.

Damn. Damn, damn, damn.

The poison was already working quickly. She looked up at Lyon. “I need a knife.”

He flicked his wrist, summoning a blade to his hand. He passed it to her. It was a beautiful thing with a pure white handle. It was balanced perfectly. The blade shone in the moonlight, far from the rusted and dinged knife she had carried with her for so long. “It is yours to keep.”

“You can just…summon weapons?”

“Of course.”

She sighed and shook her head. “Would have been nice to know that, blood-drinker.”

Lyon chuckled. “It is easy to forget when it is so common to the rest of us.”

“Sure. Whatever. Summoning knives is so normal.” She placed the knife against the palm of her hand and slit the skin. “Thank you, though. I don’t like being unarmed.”

“What are you doing?” Lyon murmured. “Is their bite not toxic to—”

“It’s fine.” She put her bloody palm against the bite in the man’s leg.

“I fail to see how—”

“I’ll explain later.” She kept her focus on the veins in the man’s leg. She watched as the yellow-black lines began to fade…but only some of them. And not fast enough. Damn it! Studiously, she kept the dismay off her face. Better that the man stayed calm.

But the man was watching the same thing she was, and he was under no such opinion. She watched the panic begin to build in his eyes. “I—it’s not that bad. Right? Just—just keep trying.”

There was no helping the inevitable. She watched the veins of poison spread faster than her own blood could wipe them away. There was no more that she could do. “Would you prefer I wait for you to die, or do you want it to happen now?” She pulled her hand from the man’s leg and began to wrap it with a