mates.
And yet, as I lay down next to the fire to let sleep whisk me away, a small thread of guilt wove through my wavering consciousness. Because I knew that while he would and had risked his life to keep me safe in Hel, I would leave him behind without a second through the moment I got the chance.
Eight
Annabel
“Wake up, plum.”
The whisper threaded through my dreamless sleep and pulled me back from blissful oblivion. I forced my eyelids open and stared into a charcoal sky. Only the faintest trace of lighter gray suggested that dawn might only be a few hours away.
“Wake up. We need to leave now,” Mimir whispered.
I rolled up on one hip and looked for him. He was still perched on his stone by the mostly dead embers of our makeshift fireplace. He raised his bushy eyebrows at me in what I assumed was his way of tilting his head, indicating for me to get a move on.
I got to my feet as quietly as I could and turned to see what had happened to Grim. I’d half-expected to find him missing, but he was on the other side of the fireplace sprawled on his back, seemingly lost in sleep.
I spun back around to grab Mimir, but before I could reach the prophet, my gaze locked on a shadowy figure among the line of trees bracketing our campsite.
I froze, my body going numb as naked fear crawled down my spine.
Long, tangled hair swayed as the figure moved toward us, its gait awkward and halting. It was a woman, I realized when she got close enough for the shape of her breasts to become obvious. A naked and rail-thin woman.
“Mimir?” I whispered, forcing the muscles in my throat to work.
“She’s not here for us,” he answered, his voice still soft and quiet. Whether it was to not disturb the woman or Grim, I didn’t know. “I invited her here.”
“You invited her?” I croaked, swallowing thickly when my voice carried across our camp. Thankfully, neither Grim nor the woman heard me. Her sole focus seemed to be on the alpha on the ground.
“In a manner, yes. She will give us the time we need to flee this place.”
“So she’s a good… creature? Person?” Even as I said the words, every cell in my body screamed in denial. Whatever she was, she wasn’t good. I’d faced a lot of horrors since I’d left Iceland and the human world behind—Nidhug, the well creature, a humongous sea serpent, a troll, a murderous water nymph—but this woman? She set every instinct in my being alight with terror, as if my most primordial self recognized the danger she represented.
Possibly drawn by my panicked thoughts, the woman stopped her approach a few steps from Grim’s unconscious body and looked up. At me.
Where her eyes should have been, only black, empty sockets stared at me. Her face was as thin as the rest of her body, her cheekbones as prominent as her ribs. Her skin was as icy pale as Grim’s, but where his glowed softly, hers was dull. Like dead flesh made animate.
She tilted her head, thin lips drawing up in an unpleasant smile.
“It’s time to go, Annabel,” Mimir murmured. “Now.”
His use of my name as much as the note of urgency in his voice finally snapped me out of my panic. I took a step back, scooped up Mimir, and continued backing along the shoreline and away from her, never taking my eyes off her. My throat was tight, and my fingertips frozen around the head in my grasp as I willed the monster not to take up pursuit.
She watched my retreat with her hollow eye sockets until I was several yards away. Only then did she snap her head back to look down on Grim.
“What’s she going to do to him?” I whispered, the horror in my gut mixing with another thread of guilt.
Before Mimir could answer, the woman stepped over Grim and sank down on his chest, her bony hands weaving through his dark hair.
The alpha jerked underneath her, and she leaned forward to press her full weight down upon him.
That’s when I saw her back. Or what should have been her back.
Instead of skin and muscle stretched over bone, the creature straddling Grim was hollow. I slapped my free hand across my mouth to quell my horror at the gaping, deep wound that let me see into the monster’s body. No organs resided within, thank God, and no spine—just rotted, black