A snippet
From what I’m working on now. I don’t know if I will like it down the road, but I like it now.
Teeth dug into his jaw and cheekbones. Hot, fetid breath filled his mouth and nostrils. Above his left temple two pin-sharp venom fangs pressed into his skin. Carys waited for hilket’s jaws to snap shut, waited for the bones of his face to squeeze and shatter, for venom to send his body into paroxyms. Blood thundered in his veins, as he anticipated the hilket’s claws ripping away his armor and slicing open his stomach to let his intestines spill out onto the ground.
He waited.
The animal panted, but otherwise remained frozen. Its rough tongue pressed against Carys’s cheek and chin.
Rain fell, sluicing over them both, pattering loudly in the leaves and on the ground. Everything fell away until they seemed alone on an island suspended in time. The female hilket had gone silent. Nor was there any sound from Kydrian. Carys and the male hilket were statues in a ruined graveyard. Enemies captured in stone, forgotten and forever doomed to this sculpted moment of terror and pain. Or so it felt.