My feet take me forward, following Varia automatically again, even as the fear crawls up my throat and tries to pull me back. Suddenly my eyes catch a haze of light, growing from one of Varia’s fingers—one of the wood fingers she used to replace her lost ones. A flame. It gives off a little halo of orange luminescence, beating hard against the dark. With it, the corners of my eyes catch a sliver of a massive steel gate, of a dirt floor extending for what seems like forever into darkness. And then the flamelight reveals something in the dirt as Varia walks forward: scratch marks, impossibly deep and impossibly long.

My breathing is so shallow, it hurts. It can’t be—

Something slithers in the darkness beyond the firelight, the hissing sound of scales growing louder. It’s huge. I can hear how huge it is—how the air moves to make space for it. The rhythmic breathing stops all at once, and so does mine. A heavy spear of air moving fast pierces in front of me, so fast I can see the dust clouds curl before it, and then a mouth lunges into the firelight.

Teeth. Hundreds of them. Thousands.

a fellow monster. The hunger leers.

Teeth, serrated and made for ripping, each one bigger than my entire arm and dripping thick strands of saliva. A forked tongue lashing against the teeth, tasting the firelight. It’s not the whole mouth—it’s simply a small part of it, the lower corner of a giant, wolflike white jaw—and yet it could swallow Varia and me comfortably whole right this instant. I can’t think—all I can do is watch, petrified, as Varia calmly looks at the jaw not three feet in front of her with her dark eyes. The hot, heavy smell of rotting meat and decaying innards intensifies as the creature’s breath washes over us, in and out like the tide.

“The answer to my question, Zera,” Varia demands evenly, watching as the fangs drop a puddle of drool larger than her on the ground. The firelight flickers over her placid face. “What is it? What was the thing that made humans and witches unite under one banner, again? I’m so absentminded.”

Through my gritted teeth, I manage a single hoarse word.

“V-Valkerax.”

…

The princess is braver than anyone in the world.

For example, she’s standing three feet away from a full-grown valkerax without an inch of terror on her face.

She looks resolute, proud, as if trapping this giant wyrm down here is her greatest accomplishment. It’s like she’s showing it off to me as a child does a particularly beautiful beetle they’ve caught or a river stone they’ve found.