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“But we got through without anyone getting hurt, didn’t we?” I was willing to bet that if the other pre-elites had their own eels to face without a Wild Whispering power in their midst, they would have tried to kill the fish immediately. Then the eels would have brandished their electric stuns in retaliation. “Besides, it’s not their fault they were forced here against their will… wait, what was that?”

I whirled around as several roars shook the tunnel walls from up ahead.

“The last test has got to be Shape Shifting,” Quinn answered matter-of-factly, but her own cheeks had paled in the flickering dance of her light.

My heartbeat shot into chaos once more. The monsters from Hallow’s Perch seemed to loom over me again, all teeth and claws and scales. Would Mr. Gleekle really have planted another tortured, deranged exiled one at the end of our path, or would it be some kind of animal mutant, enlarged and morphed into something deadly?

“Let’s go,” Quinn said firmly. “Before the others beat us.”

It took every flake of willpower for me to force my legs faster, toward the threat. Roars continued to rebound from up ahead, although I could have sworn I heard them coming through the walls on either side of us as well.

Then a distant scream sounded from our left.

“The other pre-elites,” I exhaled.

I hadn’t been sure if their tunnels had continued to run parallel to ours, but it was clear we were all aligned once more. And by the sounds of those roars and screams, at least one pair had reached their last test before us…and it was going disastrously.

“Don’t you dare think about helping them,” Quinn panted at me. “We’re almost there. Retrieve that which lies at the end of your—AGH!”

Quinn and I both shielded our faces as the left wall blasted into our tunnel. Rocks and dust spewed outward, gravel spitting against my forearms, followed by a body that cracked against the opposite wall right before us.

It was the pre-elite with the coil of hair. That coil had come undone in tendrils of hair matted with blood. More blood seeped from her eyes in streaks like tears, and the entire right side of her skull was smashed into pieces. Dark brain matter spilled from the wound onto the ground.

Her chest didn’t move.

I didn’t have time to fully process that she was dead. Through the hole in the tunnel wall, the dust had cleared enough to give us a glimpse of a dungeon-like cavern, where another pre-elite was trying to fight a ten-foot-tall mutant with spears of ice.

The mutant roared. Reptilian and spiked, its claws dug into the stone ground. Its tail whipped toward the pre-elite and smashed into him, and—

“Move!” Quinn shouted at me, grabbing my elbow.

We ran toward our own Shape Shifted mutant who gave a strange shriek from up ahead. I hadn’t seen any brands on the other one, but these things were obviously just as deadly as the monsters from Hallow’s Perch, and one pre-elite was already dead, and we might be dead in the next five seconds if I couldn’t get it together.

Rounding one last corner, we came to an opening in the tunnel.

A dungeon spread out in front of us. There was, indeed, a lizard-like mutant in the middle of it, but the mutant’s throat had been freshly slit. It lay in a motionless heap, black blood gushing onto the stone, eyes blank and unmoving.

And sitting on its corpse, picking at his cuticles with a sliver of bone in one hand and a sword glittering at his side, was…

Coen.

He looked up. Locked eyes with me through the slits in his mask. Grazed my mind with a dangerous, feather-like touch that sent shudders down my spine.

Hello, little hurricane. Slight change of plans. He flashed his canines with a grin. I am the monster you will be fighting today.

CHAPTER

33

COEN

“What the fuck?”

That exclamation came from the redhead, Balkersaff, but my eyes remained pinned to Rayna’s face as emotion after emotion flickered across it. Confusion, surprise, then anger. Something had to be seriously wrong with me, because God, I loved it when she looked at me with anger like that. Her nostrils flared, her green eyes flashed, her lips pursed. I could practically feel the storm brewing within her.

What are you doing here? she hissed into my mind.

I tossed my bone pick and sighed. Forgive me if I didn’t want my woman to have to battle a giant lizard mutant.