Gods & Monsters (Serpent & Dove #3) by Shelby Mahurin

Bitterness pulses through us at the promise. Promises, promises, empty promises. They taste black, acrimonious, and we shall choke her with them. We shall fill her throat with eyes, eyes, eyes until she cannot breathe beneath their weight. Her consciousness does not flinch under our pressure. We push harder. We restrict and contract and compress until at last she recoils, hardening into a small, hopeless blemish. A blight in our nest. You think you are clever, we hiss, but we are cleverer. Oh yes. We shall kill them all—your precious family—and you shall forget each one.

NO—

But her panic means nothing. It tastes empty, like her promise. She is already dead.

Her friends will join her soon.





A Murder of Crows


Reid

Nicholina stopped walking abruptly. Her face twitched and spasmed as she muttered what sounded like nasty over and over again. Her mouth twisted around the word. “What’s nasty?” I asked suspiciously, tugging her forward. She yielded a single step. Her eyes fixed on a distant tree at the edge of the forest. A fir. “What are you looking at?”

“Ignore her.” Coco glanced at us over her shoulder, huddling deeper in her cloak. Along the coast, the wind blustered stronger than in La Fôret des Yeux. Colder. “The sooner we reach a village, the sooner we’ll find black pearls for Le Cœur Brisé.”

“Pearls.” Beau scoffed and kicked a rock into the sea. “What a ridiculous payment.”

“Le Cœur guards L’Eau Mélancolique.” Coco shrugged. “The waters are dangerous. They’re powerful. Without payment, no one broaches their shores.”

Beside Thierry, Célie wrinkled her nose as I forced Nicholina another step. Two. “And you think we’ll find these . . . black pearls in the next village?”

“Perhaps not the next one.” Coco marched back to prod Nicholina along. She’d seemed to grow roots. She still stared at the fir tree, tilting her head in contemplation. I looked closer, the hair on my neck rising. A solitary crow perched there. “But there are a handful of fishing villages between here and L’Eau Mélancolique.”

Worse still—the white dog had reappeared, stalking us with those eerie, silent eyes. With a panicked curse, Beau kicked another rock at him, and he disappeared in a plume of white smoke.

“Aren’t black pearls . . . rare?” Célie asked delicately.

Yes. Thierry noticed the crow as well. His brow furrowed. Though he hadn’t spoken his plans aloud, I suspected he’d travel with us as long as we continued north. Toward L’Eau Mélancolique. Toward Chateau le Blanc. Morgane had tortured him and his brother—that much had been clear in his memories—yet Thierry was here. Toulouse wasn’t. But anything can be bought for the right price, he said softly.

“Move, Nicholina,” Coco snapped, joining me at the rope. Nicholina jolted at the words, and we realized our mistake too late. With a vindictive smile, she curled her pointer finger toward her palm.

A single feather fell from the crow’s wing.

“Oh, shit—” Hastily, Coco tried to recoat the ropes, but the sharp scent of magic already punctured the air. The feather touched the forest floor. Alarmed now, I pulled sharply on Nicholina’s wrists, but she smashed her head into my nose, flinging herself backward on top of me. We both crashed to the ground as the feather began to—to change.

“A mouse in a trap,” she hissed. “Who are the mice now?”

The delicate black filaments multiplied, slowly at first, gaining momentum. Melting together into a misshapen lump of clay. From that clay, another bird formed, identical to the one perched in the tree. The latter cawed again, and from the former, a second feather fell. Another bird rose. Three now. All identical. Nicholina cackled.

But the birds hadn’t finished yet. Within the span of five heartbeats, five more had formed. They multiplied faster. Ten now. Twenty. Fifty.

“Stop it.” I crushed her hands in mine—those hands that should’ve been rendered numb, useless—but she twisted away as the birds rose above us in a horrifying black mass. Scores now. Perhaps hundreds. “Reverse the pattern. Do it now.”

“Too late.” Laughing in delight, she bounced on her toes. “Look, huntsman. It’s a murder of crows. They shall peck, peck, peck all your flesh, flesh, flesh.” The plague above us built like a tidal wave preparing to break. “Did you hear me, huntsman? Crows. Murderous ones. Tell me, which shall they eat first: Your eyes or your tongue?”

Then the wave broke.

The birds swooped as one, arrowing toward us with alarming speed. Though I threw up my hands against the onslaught, frantically searching for a pattern, they attacked with single-minded focus. Talons slashed my face, my fingers. Beaks tore into my knuckle. Others drew blood from my ear. Coco tackled Nicholina to the ground, and the two scrabbled in the snow as the crows descended on the others, pecking skin, pulling hair.

Angry caws muffled Célie’s panicked shrieks, Beau’s vicious curses, Nicholina’s outraged cries. I craned my neck to see her writhe as Coco recoated her ropes with blood. The crows didn’t stop, however. My own blood streaked down my forearms, my neck, but I kept my head bowed, searching. Gold rose in a tangled web.

There.

I yanked the pattern with all my might, and a powerful gust of wind blasted the birds backward. I braced as it blasted me too. A necessary sacrifice. I needed space to breathe. To think.