CHAPTER 25
Isabella didn't move for three long seconds. Her brain was stuck on a loop, replaying the sight of the bleeding King scaling a nightmare just to whisper it into submission.
"What the... what the actual hell?" she finally breathed, her voice cracking. The silence of the forest was more terrifying than the roaring had been.
She scrambled across the dirt, her knees scraping against rocks and frozen pine needles until she reached him.
Lucian was sprawled at the base of the sleeping hound, his body partially tangled in the creature's matted gray fur.
"Your Majesty?" she choked out, kneeling beside him. She grabbed his shoulders and shook him, but his head just lolled back, his skin so pale it was almost translucent.
"Hey! Wake up! You can't just do a cool move like that and then die. That's—that's cheating!" He didn't move. Not a flicker of an eyelid, not a twitch of a finger.
