Page 56 of Revealing Fate

And Kitty…just stood there.

Sweat and dirt streaked the sides of her face and stained her tattered clothes. Hair hung down her back in a messy snarl. Blood flowed from where the grimalkin swiped across her shoulder and collar bone with razor claws. The pain hadn’t fully hit her yet. Kal could smell the adrenaline racing through her blood, numbing the injury. It wasn’t arterial—Kitty wouldn’t die from the wound.

No, she’d die with the snap of her neck, the collapse of a trachea, crushed in the jaws of the grimalkin.

She’s not going to shift.

The huge cat crept closer still, savoring the final paces of its hunt. Kitty angled herself, scraped knuckles locked in a death grip on Daybreak’s handle.

Kal sensed the moment despair fully seized her. Her green-gold eyes left the grim for precious seconds to search the crowd. She turned, but not far enough to find him. Sorrow undercut the determination chiseled into her features.

I’m here, Kitty girl. Look here.

But she couldn’t find him. She didn’t see him standing on the landing behind her, mangling the iron rail with his grip. Kal called out to her, but she couldn’t hear. Not with the crowd that had gathered, its raucous roar echoing. A hundred other voices swallowed his.

The tremor finally reached his jaw. Kal clenched his teeth so hard they clacked together.

Kitty’s brow crumpled, resolve slipping on terror’s treacherous slope. The grimalkin sensed her defeat.

The hourglass couldn’t have more than a minute of sand in the upper chamber.

The arm holding Kitty’s axe drooped. The grimalkin’s haunches coiled. A strangled sob broke from her lips.

Out of time. She was out of time.

Kal watched as a heavy teardrop spilled from the corner of her lash line and carved a fresh path through the grime caking her cheek.

His whole body shook.

The grim leapt.

Santhe yelled.

Kal’s skin split, and a beast loosed its deafening battle cry.

Chapter 22

THE TRUTH

FELÍNE’S MEMORIES SIFTED ACROSS HER visual field like sand trickling through that insufferable hourglass. She had thought ten minutes to be achievable. Survivable.

What a fool she was. Ten minutes was an eternity. That she’d managed to make it this long gave her a flicker of pride. Pride eclipsed by the sheer terror and suffocating despair that drowned her with each ragged draw of her exhausted lungs.

Those glowing yellow orbs fixed on her. Felíne had nowhere to go. Her limbs ached, Daybreak’s meager weight an impossible burden. Fire licked across her left shoulder and chest where the grimalkin had clawed her. It stalked closer. The crowd roared, a hundred voices clamoring in her ear, hungry for her failure, ravenous for her demise.

Felíne searched the gathered mass in desperation for one familiar face. She wanted a final glimpse of that bottomless black gaze, chiseled jaw, and unyielding stature before she met her end—even if all his features held were contempt and loathing.

But Kal was nowhere to be found. Countless faces blurred together as she roved the crowd. None of them recognizable. None of them kind.

A pitiful sob escaped her. The grimalkin’s lip curled back over deadly fangs. Its haunches coiled.

Close your eyes, dear child. Breathe. It is but a moment, and it, too, shall pass.

Mender Alcuin’s serene voice floated through her memory. Anxiety clamped her chest like a vice, but she breathed, focusing on that single kernel of comfort in this wretched pit of despair.

The beast’s paws left the ground, claws flashing, maw gaping.

A tear descended Felíne’s cheek, and she squeezed her eyes shut.