Read Online Bricrui (The Forgotten: Book 2) by Laura R Cole - Free Book Online

in
hurriedly, “and please know that no one would think less of you for
leaving this particular adventure up to the Knights to
investigate.” This last bit was obviously directed only towards
her.
    Natalya bit her lip. “No, I want to go,
whatever it is. If Alina is there, I need to find her.”
    Queen Layna did not answer her right away. “I
think we’d better go have a look. Be prepared; it is not a pretty
sight.”
    “What exactly are you showing us, Your
Majesty?” Sir Ruawn asked warily.
    “What we believe is the result of one of
Telvani’s experiments,” the Queen answered, looking slightly pale.
She led the way to the dungeons, followed by a large group of
people encircling their small group, and held a hand up to the
guard stationed there, indicating he should let them through.
    “I thought this dungeon was unfit for
prisoners,” Natalya mumbled to herself, and was surprised when the
Queen answered. She had meant the comment to be too low for any to
hear.
    “Usually it is,” she said pointedly, “but in
this case it was deemed necessary. You will see what I mean
presently.”
    Natalya exchanged a look with Sir Ruawn, who
was looking confused. She quickly filled him in on what her
question had been and his eyebrows went up another notch.
    As they rounded a corner, they were met by
snarling and growling. Something shuffled across the floor, making
horrible scraping sounds and spraying out hay that had been put in
the cell presumably for warmth and comfort.
    Natalya was afraid to step farther in to be
able to see into the cell, but Sir Ruawn moved forward without
pause, and she forced herself to follow suit. Willing her
stiffening muscles to relax, she took a halting step forward.
    The scene before her was unimaginable. The
creature must once have been a man, but aside from the ragged
clothes draped over its disfigured body and the general shape,
Natalya would never have thought it so. Its face was beyond
recognizable, she couldn’t even begin to try and determine what the
person had once looked like.
    And its eyes. She sucked in her breath at the
sight of them, and the blood-red orbs stared back at her with no
intelligence behind them. Nor had there been any movement in them
since they’d stepped into view, which only added to the eeriness.
In fact, she had yet to see any part of it move; it stood there
frozen like some sort of grotesque wax statue staring back at her.
If she hadn’t just heard the racket it had been making before their
arrival herself, she might have thought that was all it was.
    Then it blinked. Natalya had a split-second
reprieve from the stare, only to have her hearing assaulted instead
as the thing opened its bloody mouth. It let forth such a shrill
and awful shriek that she clamped her hands over her ears, muffing
the sound.
    Layna ushered them out of its presence and
didn’t stop until they were back up the stairs and out of the reach
of the horrible noise.
    “You see why I wanted you to be prepared,”
she intimated quietly.
    “Yes,” Natalya acknowledged, catching her
breath from the encounter. To her surprise, Sir Ruawn was looking
rather taken-aback as well. She supposed no one could have been
prepared for… that .
    Sir Ruawn soon excused himself to gather the
reinforcements that had been their primary reason for the stop,
while Natalya attempted to compose herself. The Queen was called
away with other duties, so she was left with nothing but her memory
of the beast and her imagination. And her imagination was something
that she had no control over.
    Swirling images of Alina transforming into
such a creature roiled through her thoughts, haunting her. What if
she was too late? What if all that time she’d spent searching for a
way to get the Queen back to talk to her had taken too long?
    After what seemed like an eternity of
torturing herself over what-ifs, Natalya resolutely decided that
she needed to get a grip on herself. The past was over, and there
was no changing