Master of Crows (Master of Crows, #1)

by Grace Draven

“No!” Silhara bellowed, crashing to the floor with her. Her momentum catapulted her over the balcony’s jagged edge, and her scream echoed in the cavernous dark below. Her knife and Silhara’s crossbow fell, the bow glancing off her shoulder before striking the ground with a clatter. The ache in her hip was a twinge compared to the agony bursting across her shoulder and back. She dangled midair, tethered only by Silhara’s iron grip on her arm. He sat on the floor, one foot braced against a broken pilaster to keep her from dragging him off the landing with her. “You don’t look like you weigh this much,” he grunted through clenched teeth. Martise barely heard him. The darkness below gaped like an open mouth, waiting to swallow her. The ghostly cloud paused on the landing, rolling and turning back on itself. It picked up speed as if sensing its prey’s helplessness. She could feel its hunger, a craving for the very essence of life. Her life and Silhara’s. Her wrist and forearm burned, chafed by Silhara’s rough palm as she slipped slowly from his grasp. “Let go,” she whispered. “You promised me a clean death.” Shattered bones on the stones below were preferable to what the soul eater planned. He tightened his grip, hard enough to numb her fingers. “Don’t be tiresome,” he snarled. “You’re holding the papers and the knowledge to translate them.” Were she not hanging midair and facing imminent death by either a long fall or a lich’s avaricious appetite, she might have laughed. He...