The Elder Blood Chronicles Book 3 From the Ashes by Melissa Myers Page B

combined weight of me and my armor flattens you,” Valor
shot back. His breath was coming in shallow rasps from the effort
of the climb and their long walk.
    “You shouldn’t be doing this with broken
ribs,” Jala scolded but ceased squirming.
    “And you shouldn’t be forcing me to talk at
the moment,” Valor replied, his words clipped short by the exertion
of getting them both to the cave.
    “So, how long have you two been married?”
Fiona asked dryly as they reached the cave entrance.
    Jala snapped her mouth shut and stared at
Fiona, eyes wide while Valor simply scowled at the woman. “You know
perfectly well that we aren’t married,” Valor snapped as he
carefully sat Jala down at the edge of the cave entrance.
“Personally, I’d like an explanation as to what is going on. While
I appreciate your holding the smaller demons at bay, I think we
deserve some answers as to what you want from us.”
    “Inside, and then we will talk,” Fiona said
with a smile that held no warmth to it at all. She turned away from
them and disappeared into the dark interiors of their make-shift
shelter.
    “I suppose we do bicker a bit too much,” Jala
mumbled. The loss of Finn was a deep wound and Fiona’s words had
prodded it sharply with her words.
    “She was being a bitch,” Valor replied,
offering her his arm for support as they headed into the cave. “I
will cut her some slack on it, however. Having your head removed by
your husband no doubt makes you bitter toward matrimony as well as
being dead for three hundred years. I suppose she has a right to be
nasty tempered.”
    “Speaking of bitchy,” Fiona drawled turning
to look directly at Valor with a smile, “I suppose hobbling around
with broken bones has the same effect on you. Sit down while I
rummage about in here and see if I can find anything useful.”
    “What is that smell,” Jala rasped, turning
her head away from the innermost part of the cave. The air was
fetid and the worst of it seemed to be coming from that area.
    “The rotting dead. This was Nasurai’s lair,”
Fiona replied calmly and summoned a light spell above her hand.
Raising her arm she held the light aloft for them to get a good
look at their surroundings.
    “Nasurai Blackwolf?” Valor asked in
astonishment. He barely seemed to notice the tangled bones and
rotting flesh that littered the floor of the cave. Jala however,
found her gaze fixated on the grisly display and felt her stomach
lurching in response.
    “The one and only. You just destroyed what
remained of him, but don’t trouble yourself over it. Anything that
was good in him died long ago. Death saw to that. He was one of her
five guardians. With luck I can guide you around the other four so
you do not have to fight them,” Fiona replied in a distracted voice
as she prodded the pile of bones with her boots.
    “I thought the Darklands held spirits. Yet,
you aren’t a ghost and those certainly have a bit of flesh left to
them,” Jala said weakly, her stomach still complaining at the
stench.
    “If you are going to vomit, hobble back
outside for it, please. There is enough filth in here without
adding more,” Fiona said without so much as glancing up. She kicked
aside another pile and a wave of putrid air rose from the tangle of
bodies. Small white forms wiggling through the rusting armor drew
Jala’s eye and she stared in disgust at the maggots until Valor
stepped in her path of vision.
    “Take out the bottle of brandy I have and
hold it under your nose,” Valor suggested quietly before turning
back to Fiona. “Answer her question. The Darklands is supposed to
hold the souls of the dead not the bodies. Explain why everything
we have faced so far is flesh and bone.” His voice took on a
sterner note as he addressed her and she stopped rummaging through
the pile long enough to look up at him with amusement.
    “Ahh. That’s adorable. Does it work in the
sunlit lands? When you growl and snarl, do the puppies above
cower?”