It was still unimaginably large—she had to crane her neck back to be able to look up at it. It dragged the rest of its body out of the painting, leaving a charred hole in the middle of the wood panel. Bitter could see that the sheet underneath was singed, and she said a quick and futile prayer to no one in particular that the floor wasn’t damaged, because she had no idea how she’d explain that to Miss Virtue. The creature’s several eyes looked at Bitter without blinking, out of that scaled and shifting face, the chasm of its mouth perpetually stretched as wisps of smoke drifted off it and
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