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CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Death was everywhere.
It was all I could smell when I shadowstepped to different parts of the kingdom. All I could see. All I could hear amid the wailing of those who remained. No matter where I looked. No matter where I shadowstepped. Death had come in the moonlight, during the quietest, softest hours, and reigned with supremacy over Lasania’s capital. Neither wealth, power, nor age protected them.
And even though I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, I knew. Gods, I knew whose screams I had heard first.
But I couldn’t believe it as I kept moving throughout Carsodonia and saw every one of their faces, each with waxy, stu
Bodies hung from blown-out windows. They lay in their gardens in pairs, faces forever frozen in horror, and crowded the narrow streets of Croft’s Cross, having fallen one atop the other. They choked the Nye River and washed in with the tide, some getting snagged on the rocks while others got pulled back out to be forever lost in the Stroud Sea. Bodies dotted the beach’s white sand, their arms and legs twisted. They bunched in scattered heaps along the battlements, forms broken from the fall.
And all the while, shadows moved silently through the city like wraiths, seeking to hide. But I saw them. I saw all of them. And I felt others I hadn’t yet seen. I was not alone here.
My gaze lifted to the towers and turrets of the castle, and I knew. Gods, I already knew what I would find when I shadowstepped beyond walls that had done nothing—absolutely fucking nothing—to prevent the horror that had come this night. Still, what I saw in the courtyard brought me to my knees.
I saw them between the flashes of lightning—silver-and-gold strikes that tore through the night sky. Impaled to the walls of Wayfair just as the gods had been on the Rise outside the House of Haides, staked through the hands and chest with shadowstone. Their heads were tilted back, forced into u
I didn’t want to look. A tremor started deep within me, and I made myself see them—see the faces of the servants and guards, maids and stewards I recognized. I saw the dark-haired, pale-ski
I saw Lady Kala.
My mother’s most trusted Lady in Wait, who’d made that long walk with me through the corridors of the Shadow Temple upon my seventeenth birthday. Who was always with—
Long, blond strands danced in the wind, tangling with Lady Kala’s brown hair. My chest compressed. A citrine hairpin glittered in the sunlight. A pretty, once buttery-yellow gown now glistened with streaks of red, but I heard her voice as if her lips moved.
I would like that…
I would like that very much.
A spasm jerked me forward onto my hands. There would be no future meetings. No desperately needed conversations. No attempts to try to understand each other. To forgive. No moving forward. Allowing time to tell new stories. No—
I rocked forward, lowering my head and squeezing my eyes shut. It did nothing to stop the rush of raw emotion. My cheeks dampened. I sucked in a metallic-coated breath, opening my eyes. A teardrop fell from my cheek and splattered off my hand.
Red.
It was red.
Another fell. Then another. The blood tears were no longer coming from me but from above.
I lurched to my feet, mouth and throat dry. I stumbled over a prone guard’s legs—a Royal Guard. And there were more. They’d died quickly, their necks broken, as had those I’d seen in the city.
Eather throbbed and pressed against my flesh. I searched faces through the crimson-tinted rain, feeling pieces of me break away with each sight of mouths stretched wide in silent screams. Beige and brown faces. Pale and pink ones. Olive-toned and—
My throat constricted. My steps faltered, and I fell to my knees once more. My vision went black and then came back as I stared up at a jaw that was no longer stubborn. An awareness pressed upon me, but more pieces of me broke away when I saw none of the compassion and cleverness in her beautiful, once-warm brown eyes. I shook when I saw the pinstriped waistcoat, now black-and-red instead of black-and-white.
Beside my sister was her wife, her head turned slightly to Ezra as if Marisol had turned to see her love in the very last moments of her life.
They’d died side by side. Together. And I hadn’t been here this time for Marisol. I hadn’t been here for any of them.
Everyone at Wayfair was dead.
All of them.
And more than half the city now rotted in the rapidly forming red puddles. I couldn’t comprehend the senselessness. Never in my darkest nightmares could I have imagined this kind of horror. This kind of—
Movement from the castle caught my attention. Too-dark and thick shadows filled doorways and moved in the breezeways. They were no longer seeking to hide.
They were how so many had been killed so quickly. Because what I saw weren’t shadows. They were Cimmerian—senturion warriors that could pull from the darkest hours of night to cloak their actions. And they would’ve done just that, sweeping through the city like a plague of nightmares, leaving indiscriminate ruin and despair in their wake. Most had served Hanan but defected once Bele Ascended.
I knew exactly where they had gone.
The air around me charged, reacting to the energy sparking from my pores. A bolt of lightning struck the coast of Carsodonia. The night deepened, and my attention shifted to my kind, smart sister. At the Queen and Consort Lasania had needed. And then I thought about what Callum had said. How he’d wanted to visit with my mother one last time.
He’d known.
I’d told them all they had to do was call my name. Why didn’t Ezra do that?
Electricity rolled down my splayed fingers as I stared at the loss of hope. Of a future. Eather seeped from my fingertips. I couldn’t breathe, but that was okay. Grief gave way to fury.
The distant howls of the living faded, and awareness thudded in a hollow echo through me. The storm inside me spilled into the realm. Wisps of eather crackled around my arms.
“Kolis has come to a decision regarding the deal you offered. You now have his answer.”
Muscles locked all along my spine. My heart stopped. My mind clicked off. Wind heavy with salt and blood whipped through the courtyard, stirring the stained silk gowns and mauve ba
Our eyes locked across the field of dented armor, bent shields, and still-sheathed swords. He’d finally gotten what he’d wanted, even though this wasn’t the Shadowlands.
Vengeance had been unleashed.
And it would continue.
“He apologizes for not waiting until the eirini ended but he has grown rather impatient.” Kyn’s bronze helmet dulled underneath the clouds the starlight couldn’t penetrate. A long spear was embedded in the ground beside him, its blade a milky white. “What did you think would happen? That he would accept your deal? That you would somehow rule? Win? You ca
That laugh ended me.
I was no longer who I once was or was now. I was made of the anger and sorrow of my sister’s tortured expression and my mother’s forever-silenced voice. I was nothing but the fury and wasted hope of those small bodies left in gutters like trash and the souls lost at sea. I was nothing but a vessel of rage and the anguish of the great, unforgivable loss of all those who’d perished.
I rose, not as the true Primal of Life but as a Primal of devastating ruin and wrath.
That combustible mix poured into every fiber of my being. I turned to see Kyn and the Primal God of Wisdom, Loyalty, and Duty flanking him. An aura of silver and gold pulsed as a shockwave of ruinous wrath erupted from me. The ground began to tremble. Fissures appeared in the battlements. Dust clouds rose from streets and homes, and roofs peeled back, shattering in the wind, and walls collapsed. Flashes of vibrant orange, yellow, and brilliant, flickering red flames fu
“And you will soon learn that for yourself,” Kyn promised, wrenching the bone spear from the ground.
The land stopped trembling. The wind ceased. Blood rain no longer fell. The very air itself contracted. I saw the flash of unease loosening the corners of Kyn’s mouth, erasing his fucking smirk, and Embris’s eyes widened. All the violent, devastating energy came roaring back to its creator. Me.
My head jerked back as the pressure built and built, joining my will.
“Shit,” Kyn growled, launching the spear.
Eather streaked from my hands, slamming into the ground and then lifting. The energy rammed into the spear, shattering the bone.
“Fuck,” Embris rasped, moving fast. His hands were a blur.
Hot, stinging pain erupted in my shoulders, causing me to stagger back. I looked down to see two hilts vibrating from where the daggers were now embedded.
Reaching up, I pulled the first dagger free, wincing as pain radiated down both arms. I tore the second one out. The midnight blades were slick with shimmery, blueish-red blood. I lifted my head, breathed in the pain, and let it become part of me.
I laughed.
And the wall around Wayfair turned to dust.
Stepping forward, I threw the shadowstone daggers. Kyn cursed and spun. Embris lurched to the side. One grazed Kyn’s arm. The other struck Embris in the chest.
Too bad.
I’d been aiming for the head.
“Fates,” seethed Embris, yanking the dagger free.
“Well, now I think you just pissed her off,” Kyn spat, his head jerking to the right as he shouted a command.
Cimmerian peeled away from the walls and raced from the now tomb-like halls of Wayfair. More ran past where the wall had once stood. Hundreds of them. They rushed toward their end as the two Primals stood back.
Cowards.
They were fucking cowards.
Blood dripped from my arms when I thrust them forward. Bands of eather rippled out and split as I pictured the essence forming tendrils. They snaked across the ground, glancing over bodies before rising like vipers, striking their targets to my left and right.
Screams once more tore through the air when the streams of eather fu
Kyn’s glare met mine.
I smiled and closed my fists.