Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1)

by Leigh Bardugo

had been secured between the lion’s ears, and its eyes had been replaced with bright silver dimes. “Spin the wheel!” the young man commanded. The prisoner lifted his shackled hands and gave the wheel a hard spin. A red needle ticked along the edges as it spun, making a cheerful clattering noise, then slowly the wheel came to a stop. Nina couldn’t quite make out the symbol, but the crowd bellowed, and the man’s shoulders drooped as a guard came forward to unlock his chains. The prisoner cast them aside into the sand, and a second later Nina heard it—a roar that carried even over the excited baying of the crowd. The man in the lion cape and the prison guard stepped hurriedly onto a rope ladder and were lifted out of the pit to the safety of a ledge as the prisoner seized a flimsy-looking knife from a bloody bunch of weapons lying in the sand. He backed as far away from the mouth of the tunnel as he could get. Nina had never seen a creature like the one that crawled into view from the tunnel. It was some kind of reptile, its thick body covered in gray-green scales, its head wide and flat, its yellow eyes slitted. It moved slowly, sinuously, its low-slung body sliding lazily over the ground. There was a white crust around the broad crescent of its mouth, and when it