Free The Fire King by Marjorie M. Liu

gritted teeth. “For now. Prove you deserve it.”
    “No shifter would agree to such a thing.” He gave her a sharp look, which darkened instantly into a frown. “Are you certain you are not hurt?”
    “Yes,” she muttered, and turned from him to walk unsteadily down the hall, trying in vain not to look at the bodies on the ground. Listening hard for the living. No way to know how many gunmen were left, and Serena’s own men might not react well to seeing Karr loose.
    She glanced over her shoulder and found him standing very still, this giant of a man, inhuman and bleeding. Watching her with that same frown.
    “You prefer to stay?” she asked.
    “It is a trick,” Karr said. “Why are you helping me?”
    Soria set her jaw, suffering a trembling weakness in her knees. Her stump throbbed. All she could smell was blood: her hand was sticky with it. She wanted to go home and hide for another year, in shadows, away from the world and its nightmares.
    “No one else can,” Soria told him, and started walking again, not waiting to see if he followed.
    But he did, moments later.

Chapter Five
    No one stopped them. The halls were silent. Karr did not trust the quiet. During his days of captivity there had been voices, footsteps, the clink of metal and glass. Always, someone nearby.
    Now, nothing. Everything felt emptied, broken, like the remains of a village after an army’s sweeping pillage. Even the small white lights burning cold and bright from the ceiling held a hint of death about them; there was no spirit in their odd, unwavering flames. He wondered if his elderly caretaker was safe.
    Soria walked in front of him, quick on her feet, almost running. She was his guide through the labyrinth of rough-hewn corridors, the walls little more than dirt and stone. He was led by her, defended, perhaps manipulated—but it was all done in such a manner that Karr found himself unable to turn her away, to shed himself of her presence. She was, he thought, indispensable. And that, in his view, was almost as strange as coming back from the dead.
    “You are unwell,” he said, as Soria stumbled. Three times now she had almost gone down, and she had begun clutching her empty sleeve, twisting it in her hand, her knuckles white.
    “I am fine,” she told him.
    Another dead man lay in their path, the seventh that Karr had seen since the first encounter in his cell. Blood seeped from a massive head wound, pooling along a slant in the floor away from the body. His bowels had voided, and the scent triggered memories: battlefields churned to mud and ravaged flesh; shape-shifters and chimeras, lost forever in death, bodies halfway between animal and human. His vision darkened, as though the sun were setting again in his mind. Sunset had always brought out the scavengers.
    Soria stopped, staring at the body. “You need clothing.”
    “I think not,” Karr replied.
    He was finding it difficult to speak. His voice sounded wet, thick, as though made of mud; and he swallowed hard, struggling to remain impassive when all he wanted was to charge ahead, quickly, and be free of this place. His body ached to shift as well, but the hall was narrow and small, and he could not say what would happen. His control had always been limited to what skins his instincts made him wear.
    Soria frowned. “I was not suggesting
his
clothes.”
    “You misunderstand,” he replied.
    “Then tell me.”
    Karr struggled for words. “It is another cage.”
    A peculiar expression passed over Soria’s face, and he pushed past her to take the dead man’s weapon. It was heavier than it looked, and he tried to hold it as he had seen the others do. Soria gasped. He found her staring at him with alarm.
    “You should put that down,” she said.
    “You fear it?”
    “I do.” Soria held out her hand. “Please. Give it to me.”
    His fingers tightened, but her unease was infectious. He wondered if it was wise to hold something so dangerous, a weapon he knew so little