*Rhys*
“Your Majesty, don’t,” a soldier said, gripping my arm.
I shook him off and headed for a light flickering in the distance.
Screaming echoed through the night as flames reached for the sky. I pushed past a crowd of horrified shifters standing frozen and doing nothing. Someone had to do something.
The lady was on fire.
Tied to a stake, with flames rising around her and eating at her clothes, the woman shrieked for help… for mercy…
For the Moon Goddess.
But no help, either mortal or divine, was forthcoming, and I didn’t know why.
As I wedged my way between the last two rows of onlookers, I saw the problem. There was a monster.
There was no other way to describe the thing. Scaled with a long tail and bony ridges along its back, the thing was black as the night around it. Yet the scales glinted like starlight in a kind of macabre beauty.
Glowing yellow eyes, with pupils like marquis-cut black diamonds, stared coldly at the burning woman. There was no mercy in those eyes.
