27
CODY
There’s something prowling around the Fang and Talon. Cody can feel it:
An icy draft that chills her veins.
A ravenous hunger – not her own. Her belly is full.
An affectless heart that chants kill, kill, kill.
She knows what it is. She thinks that she knows. But it can’t be, it can’t be a Night Beast. Not out of the wood, and not when the day is breaking. The Death God calls back his beasts at first light.
Through amber-glass, she watches the sun, a dribble of red on the horizon. First Festival has gone long, and the tavern is still half-full of patrons, some of them dancing, many of them asleep in booths or flat-faced on the bar.
The band has dwindled to three – two fiddles and a lute, and none of them properly strung.
Penn is dozing with his back against the wall,
