Page 37 of Court of Talons

I gesture nervously. “There’s no room here. You saw how big Gent was. It’ll trample the platforms here, and someone—” I drop my voice low, trying to cover the hysteria in it. “Someone will see. Or hear, certainly.” I dimly remember how Gent’s bellows shook the mountains. Someone willdefinitelyhear.

“The plane of the Divhs is always ready for warriors. You’ll fight there.”

“The plane of the… What are you talking about?” I stare at Nazar, wholly lost.

The priest reaches out and clasps my shoulder, the shock of his contact startling me. As a noble daughter whose only worth to my house was as a virgin bride, I’d never been touched by any man before this week. Here, it’s happening every time I turn around. Something else to get used to, and there’s already been so much I’ve needed to learn. Too much.

“It’s time,” Nazar says. “I’ll remain here in prayer, but you’ll hear me. Summon your Divh.”

Sweat runs between my shoulder blades, but there’s no denying the priest’s command. I reach up with my right hand and tentatively wrap my fingers around the living band that encircles my left bicep. Even through the thickness of my shirt, its heat nearly sears my fingers as I grasp it, a sudden pulse of fire leaping along my fingers and down my arm.

“Fix your mind on an open field hung with blue mist.” Nazar’s words pound painfully in my head, but I do as he asks. A breath later, I can picture it: an enormous yard opening up before me, towering stone walls surrounding me in a long oval. I turn, then turn again.

“Open your eyes, warrior,” Nazar murmurs, but his isn’t the only sound that reaches me. Another draws my attention, a short, huffing breath high above me… Far too high.

I open my eyes. There are walls surrounding me, not coliseum stands. There is the yard I had imagined, not the tournament ground filled with fighting platforms. The blue mist that hangs in the air is thick enough to cut through, blanketing everything with a distorting haze. And there’s that huffing sound again…the sound of a heavy breeze whistling through thick, wet columns.

I look up—and up still farther.

A monster stares back at me.

Chapter 15

“Gent.” I say the name without thinking and manage not to scream as a shadow drops down next to me in the near darkness. Thick, fleshy walls close around me, and I’m scooped up in a cradle of warm hide, then lifted with sickening speed. This…this is the Divh’spaw. Shock silences me, and a moment later, I am face to eyeball—what I assume is an eyeball—a dark gelatinous mass that seems close enough to fall into.

I don’t think that would end well for me.

“Say your name, Talia. Your name. Not Merritt’s.” Nazar’s voice whispers in my ear, but my mind cannot comprehend him being here and not here—and he’s definitely not here, standing in this, this…

I swallow and sway against the thick, warm skin, instantly shrinking away from it, but there’s nowhere to go. Panic builds again.

“Yourname,” Nazar snaps in my mind.

“Tal—Talia,” I whisper at the enormous eye, anger and shame suffusing me. I’m not Merritt, the rightful warrior for this Divh. I should have protected him better, should have?—

The eyeball shifts in the moonlight, the lid hovering above me, and all other thoughts flee as I realize my Divh haseyelashes. Eyelashes! That seems so preposterous that a laugh rolls up from my belly, and I grab the sides of the Divh’s palm as my shoulders shake.

“Again, Talia,” Nazar urges from—wherever he is—breaking in on my hysteria.

“Talia!” I shout on the heels of a hiccupping laugh, the sound seeming far too loud next to an eyeball.

Gent, apparently, thinks the same thing. Its head jerks back, and its paw closes convulsively around my body, my laughter instantly choking into a terrified yelp. At the last second before it completely crushes me, the Divh freezes. For a long, sickening moment, so slowly that it has to be deliberate, it peels its fingers back until it can see my face again.

We stare at each other, and I realize something else.

Gent is not an it.

It’s a he.

I don’t know how I know this, but this long-eyelashed beast breathing in short, huffing gasps so as not to blow me off his own palm is male—a sire and a son, a creature with a family and community. I can’t fathom it, but I know with a blasting certainty that this Divh—allDivhs—are connected in a way I’d never possibly imagined. Connected to their warriors, certainly, but also…connected to each other, even if they’ve never before met.

There’s something important about that, more important than I can fully grasp, but I don’t have time to think on it further, because now Gent is staring at me—his own eyes wide as if he’s struggling to comprehend me as well.

Perched in his hand, I’m now far enough away that I can see the whole of his face too. It’s the face of a horned demon, ringed with spikes that glisten in the blueish light, his two eyes on eitherside of his immense central horn beetle black and sharp with intelligence. Those eyes are set slightly to the front, like a horse’s eyes, not a fish, but enough to the side that his peripheral vision has got to be better than mine. That and the fact that he can probably see for miles in any direction, with eyes so large.

Gent snorts again, a powerful blast of breath that fortunately is directed beneath me. It blows against my tunic and breeches anyway, and I stabilize myself against his palm as I frown up at him.

“Can he hear my thoughts?” I ask into thin air, though Nazar isn’t here. I know he isn’t here. And I know this question would only annoy him.