Chapter 131: Leigh
The Counselor's birds circled lower overhead as if to see what would happen to us, and I genuinely wanted to know that, too. They flew together in a perfect V formation, then dove for a landing a safe distance away from the plummeting liquid fire. The air blurred around them until they morphed into the Counselor of Death standing across the blood pool from us.
Lava fell faster and faster, but Gretchen never wavered. She kept pointing. Something was happening to her other hand fisted at her side. It looked as if the black veins under the thorns had expanded to color her fingers and knuckles into inky darkness, the same color that would mark her footsteps topside, but the Counselor didn't seem to notice.
"You loved me once upon a time," he said. "You could love me again as my queen."