Page 128 of Thief of Hearts

I took the bags off my shoulders and went over to the claw. It was larger than my hand. How big was this bird? I pulled, and then pulled again, and on my third try, the creature popped out.

It was not a bird.

“What in the name of Invara . . .” It had died recently; there was hardly any decomposition on the body. It had a lion’s head in the front, with a lion’s padded feet and claws. Where its tail should’ve been, there was a snake, and that part of the body was covered in scales and the birdlike feet.

Then in the middle of the body, there was a goat’s head.

There was a long, deep gash beneath the lion’s head, old enough that the blood had dried. Someone had killed this beast.

“A chimera,” Zain said. “The goddess of discord’s sacred beast.”

I supposed that made sense—the monster in front of me was such a chaotic mess. Dagger stuck his head out over the tunic to investigate the situation and then went right back down.

“I remember reading stories about these. I never thought they were real.” Zain actually sounded excited, while I wanted to get away from the body before it started to smell. Or somehow resurrected itself. “The stories say that the goddess of discord took Invara’s sacred animal, the lion, Eramis’s animal, the snake, and her own, the goat. She forced them to merge into one beast as a reminder to everyone what Invara and Eramis did to her.”

“That wasn’t their fault. Eramis didn’t agree to the betrothal.”

“I don’t think the goddess of discord cares.”

“Does she have a name? That’s a mouthful to say.”

“She does,” he said, “but no one knows what it is. To know a god’s true name is to have power over them and she would never permit that to happen.”

I supposed that was why using aspects involved speaking the goddess’s name.

“What does a chimera do?” I asked.

“The lion’s teeth and claws are razor sharp and can cut through anything, including bone. The snake has a venom that is a thousand times worse than any venom that exists in the world. The goat head is in the middle of the body because the goddess of discord still stands between Invara and Eramis. And the goat breathes fire.”

I walked around the chimera to the opposite side, and that was when I noticed the goat’s head had been burned. “Did it catch its own head on fire?”

Zain joined me and saw what I did. “Someone took its horns as a trophy. To prove they killed a chimera, which is impressive. Then it looks like either they burned the goat or maybe it has some kind of internal fail-safe where it shoots fire out of its head if something happens to it? I don’t know.”

“Wait. Did you just say ‘a chimera’? Are you telling me there’s more than one?”

“I didn’t even think they were real. Just creatures from someone’s imagination. But why would there be only one? It stands to reason that they mate and reproduce just like every other animal. The stories say that they prefer the Wastelands, although I would have thought they’d be much farther east.”

“If we’re taking a vote, I vote that we keep walking.” I did not want to stay with the dead monster, especially if it was not alone. What if something came looking for it?

“Wait for one minute,” he said. He pulled out a long dagger and started hacking off the birdlike feet.

“What are you doing?”

“I remember reading something about how the claws from the back legs of a chimera can be ground up to be aphrodisiacs.”

“You do not need the help,” I said.

“It’s not for me. I’ll sell it to some sad man who doesn’t have a woman as beautiful as you.” He finished with the claws, cutting the feet into threes with a claw at the end of each one, and then put them into a bag.

“Or maybe you should give it to some woman who doesn’t have a man as handsome as you.” I’d meant it to be a retort—the assumption that only men might need sexual stimulation annoyed me, but this only served to make his smile wider.

“I knew you liked me, illora.”

What was it he had said? Oh, yes. “It’s just an objective fact. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“I might believe you except I remember in excruciating detail what happened when I undressed you and you threw yourself at me.”

My skin flushed, but thankfully I’d had enough sun exposure that it didn’t really show. I wished that I could object and say that wasn’t what occurred, but that would have been a lie, so I didn’t say it.