Chapter 6
The King of the Dread braced his hands on the remains of the table, a crack down the center long forgotten. Had he done that in one of his rages? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember much these days.
The sound of the Dread hunting filled the halls of the chateau. Hours upon hours of the same noise. Howls, brays, the calls of animals, even though they were not.
Something in his head reminded him they weren’t beasts. They weren’t meant to lose their minds and thirst for the thrill of the chase, for blood on their tongues and for meat in their bellies.
Once, they hadn’t been like this.
But he couldn’t remember why he thought such things. Some memory in his mind was always just out of reach.
He stared down at his clawed hands. They hadn’t been like that always, had they? Thoughts like this were dangerous. They could drag him down into a tunnel he would lose himself in. It would be months before he surfaced, finding his people wandering about the kingdom with no direction.
No. He wouldn’t allow his mind to wander once again.
Pushing away from the table, he stared around the ruined remains of his room. There was little here for him. A bed once graced the corner. Four posts had been carved with images of the hunt, hounds chasing rabbits up each lovingly created piece. Now, the bed and its crimson sheets were little more than scraps. The rug had long been tainted by earth and dust. His clawed feet had marked even the stones.
He didn’t know why that disappointed him so much. He didn’t care about the state of the chateau. This place wasn’t his home. It was a means to an end, that was all.
And yet, sometimes it felt as though it were more. As though he remembered it in a different light. Once golden and shining with beauty, instead of ruin and rust.
The braying of his people broke through his concentration once again. Just when his mind might have offered a tidbit of a memory, something that might give him answers for why he was the way he was. Why his people were—
Something crashed, breaking against the floor like a hundred glasses all striking the ground at once.
“Enough!” he roared. His guttural voice echoed through the halls.
The King of the Dread crashed out the door of his private quarters, thundering into the hall with animalistic screams of rage. No more sound. He couldn’t suffer through any more sound.
The first of the Dread he found was a smaller creature, with thin legs and hungry eyes darting from side to side. He snatched it from the ground, holding it aloft with his hand around its throat. Shaking the creature hard, he tossed it aside.
Its head struck the wall, and the creature stopped moving. He didn’t stop to see if it was still breathing. He didn’t care. They were making noise and damned if he could handle it anymore. A little blood wouldn’t hurt the cursed beasts. They were nearly impossible to kill.
Over and over, he stalked through the castle, shaking the creatures so hard he was certain their teeth must have rattled in their skulls. He hadn’t been so brutal to his own people in a long time. He couldn’t remember the last time he had wanted to tear them all limb from limb.
When he finished, he stood in the center of the Great Hall with all the marble statues staring at him. A cold wind blew through the broken windows and chilled the sweat slicking his chest. The chandeliers dripping ice above him clicked, their music not enough to calm the anger in his chest.
What was different? He had completed changing all the humans in this kingdom, other than a single one who had escaped his horde. Just one more little human, and he would be cured. His curse lifted.
But he couldn’t remember what the curse even was. He felt as though he’d always been this monster. He’d always had claws and wings, always had these horns that could tear through bodies if he wished.
Was it turning the man? Surely not. He had turned a thousand men into the Dread before and felt no remorse or guilt. They would live a happier life with him, anyway. Their needs cared for. Their inner demons allowed to break free and run loose as they wished.
A flash of memory lanced through his mind with blistering pain. A pale face peering through the doorway at him as he gave the signal to turn the man into one of his own.
He didn’t remember this. If a small human had found her way into the chateau, he would have known it, would have sent his creatures to hunt her even as they hunted one of the humans who had escaped the dungeons below.
But this human he hadn’t recognized. He had walked through the dungeons himself, counted every human and remembered their faces before he turned them into the Dread. As he always did.
This one wasn’t from the dungeons. Her heart-shaped face was one he couldn’t forget. The red bow of her lips, the high cheekbones, and dark arched brows, perhaps too thick for her face. He would have remembered the tumbling chestnut curls, and the dirt smudged on her cheek.
He would have remembered.
So this was what his mind had been trying to tell him. Why his body wanted to break things and rage coursed through his veins.
The one human they were missing had come to find her brethren and perhaps release them. But she was here, and she was the one his Dread were trying to find.
A sudden burst of energy had him spinning, wings spread wide and a wicked grin on his face. He reached for the first Dread he came upon. Clawed hands speared through the fabric of its tattered shirt, and he lifted it up to his face.
A memory bloomed, another precious and rare gift. Of a place high in the towers of the chateau where he had once found solace. A forest indoors, glowing with the light of the sun.
“She’s in the sanctuary,” he snarled. “And she’s the last one.”
“Master?”
“She’s in the sanctuary!” He dropped the Dread and joined the hunt himself. “Go. Now!”
Chapter 7
Amicia only managed a few hours of sleep before the haunting calls of the Dread woke her. The trilling hoots and guttural howls could only mean they were still searching for her. She huddled into a ball at the corner of the room, staring at the door that led out of the beautiful, glass forest.
Wind howled outside and rattled the delicate glass panes. The storm surrounded the chateau in full force now. She couldn’t imagine how much snow it had dumped upon the world, but it didn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon.
The Dread could burst through at any moment, having caught her unique scent. Eventually, they would find her.
In the hazy fog of exhaustion, she wondered if there was any reason to be running. They would capture her no matter what she did. They would hunt her down, find her in a heartbeat, and then she would be just like them.
The creatures didn’t appear all that… well, sad. In fact, all the creatures appeared to remember nothing of what they were. If they did, they wouldn’t hunt humans down. The thought only served to create more questions in her mind, namely, what did the Dread eat?
She pushed herself up onto her feet, holding onto the wall for a bit of balance, and then took a single step to the wooden door.
Her father’s voice whispered in her ear. She wasn’t this kind of person. She couldn’t give up this easily. Life was worth living, even if it was only for a few more days.
There were secrets here. Things she could discover to distract herself. And perhaps, she would be the only human alive to know the secrets. That was enough to keep herself awake and going.