CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Rahul and Elisa became numb as they entered the chamber. The room smelled of gore, and they stared at the blood, the dead bodies, and the skeletons hanging beside the cage in horror. The cage was now filled with villagers once more.
The chamber was dark. Only four cressets were ablaze, two on each side of the door and the other two near Dansh, who stood beside where Dali sat on her throne, its carob-colored timber barely visible as it matched the chamber’s walls. A dead body of a man who, from his wrinkly face, looked to be in his seventies, lay in Dali’s lap, and she was picking at the flesh through a hole in his stomach.
Dali sucked her bloody finger and looked at them. “Welcome, my well-wishers. What brings you here? To end my terror? Or to beg for the villagers’
