Chapter 33 · Behind the Beast

"Hand over the mad dog, Seraphina, and I'll let you share my throne."

Garrick said it like he was offering me a second cup of tea.

Behind me, something huge breathed in and out. Wet. Ragged. The sound of a throat full of silver smoke.

I didn't turn around. I kept my dagger up and my feet planted on the ancestral stones, right in the blood.

"You want to repeat that?" I said. "I think the doors knocked something loose in my ears."

Garrick smiled. Dust from the broken bronze still hung around him, and a long red line ran down his blade and dripped off the tip. Whose blood it was, I didn't want to guess.

"Don't be dramatic." He stepped over a split chunk of door. "Look at him. Really look. He doesn't know his own name, and he sure as hell doesn't know yours."

I looked.

Vane was crouched on the altar with his knuckles dug into the stone. His shirt was gone. Black veins crawled up his neck and over his jaw, and the silver burns on his ribs were still smoking. His eyes were the wrong color.