I walked right up to his throne. The lions did not stir. I touched the brass arm, cut like an upturned lion’s paw, and thunder rumbled above me, heavy, slow, sounding black and leaving a rotten smell on the wind. Up in the ceiling, nothing. I was still looking up when the King jammed a dagger into my palm so hard that it dug into the chair arm and stuck. I screamed; he laughed and eased back into his throne. “You may think the underworld honors its promise, to be the land free from pain and suffering, but that’s a promise made to the dead,” he said.
