Strips of flesh peeled back and flaked off, shattering into dust that was caught on and swept away by the wind. Within seconds, nothing remained of the knight but the clothing and armor he’d once worn, left in a pile on the ground.
The Craven didn’t die like that. Their bodies remained whole. That hadn’t happened to the Duke, but he’d been killed with a cane fashioned from a tree from the Blood Forest. And that hadn’t happened when I killed Lord Mazeen, but the blade was made of steel. Not bloodstone.
My gaze fell to my wolven dagger. That…that was what bloodstone did to an Ascended?
For a few very precious seconds, I was frozen where I stood, my gaze sweeping across the yard, over the clash of swords and bodies, over the blood splattering the snow.
The knights…they weren’t just fighting the Descenters. They were attacking them. Many still had their swords in their scabbards. Their weapons were their fangs and their strength. They overpowered the mortals among the people of the keep almost immediately, faces twisted in snarls, fangs gleaming in the moonlight. They flew at them, jumping on some, driving them down to the ground like…like a Craven would. My knees felt strangely weak as I stood there.
Bloodlust.
Maybe they didn’t screech like the Craven or appear decayed and half dead, but what I was seeing was clearly bloodlust.
Any lingering doubt I had about everything Casteel had claimed nearly vanished when I saw the chamber. But now, there was none. This was what the Ascended truly looked like, and I had never seen anything more terrifying.
Naill appeared. From where, I wasn’t sure. He grabbed a knight by the nape of the neck, tearing him free from a man. He shoved a short sword through the knight’s back, but it appeared to be too late for the man. He fell to the ground, his throat a mangled mess.
Delano suddenly rushed past me, jarring me from my stupor. With one powerful lunge, he took down a knight that had grabbed hold of a woman, his face buried in her neck—his teeth in her throat. The woman staggered a few feet, pressing her hand to the wound.
Blinking, I turned and saw Casteel shove a sword into a knight’s chest and then spin, leaving the sword there. He grabbed the back of another knight’s head, yanking it back. The Ascended’s head dropped, and Casteel…
Air leaked out of my parted lips.
He tore through the knight’s neck, ripping it open. Tossing the man aside, he spat out the blood as he grabbed the sword from the other’s chest, pulling it free a second before the knight turned to ash.
I scanned the yard, no longer seeing Lord Chaney, but I did see a knight backing up—the one who held the child. He used the boy as a shield, keeping the sword under the young one’s chin.
The wolven dagger practically vibrated in my hand, and I was finally moving. Instinct crowded out the horror, and it was like being on the Rise or recently when I’d faced the Craven. A sense of focus and calm settled over me as I darted into the yard, running for the carriage. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kieran leap upon a knight that had Elijah’s back pinned against the stone wall of the keep. He grabbed the knight in his powerful wolven jaws, flinging him to the ground. Magda appeared, thrusting one of the bloodstone swords down.
I slowed as I moved along the back of the carriage, stopping at the edge. Peering around it, I saw the knight dragging the now-struggling boy toward the stables, a thick arm around his neck. In the moonlight, the child’s wide, panicked eyes met mine a moment before the knight turned away.
“Keep fighting,” the knight growled. “That really gets the blood pumping.”
The child was no longer a shield.
He was food.
Fury pumped my blood as I slipped out from behind the carriage, crossing the distance between us as I flipped the heavy-handled dagger so I held it by its blade—just like Vikter had taught me.
The knight turned suddenly, dragging the boy around as if he were nothing more than a rag doll. He lifted the sword as his gaze, reddish black in the moonlight, flickered over me—over my face. The scars. His eyes widened in recognition. He knew who I was. His arm loosened, dropping a fraction as he lowered the sword.
I saw my chance.
I took it.
The dagger flew from my fingers, spinning through the air. The blade struck true, slicing through the knight’s eye and embedding itself deep in his brain. His hand spasmed open, releasing the sword. It fell to the ground as tiny cracks in his flesh appeared, racing across his skin. They were thin but deep, and when he broke apart, it was almost as if he caved into himself.
“Damn,” the little boy said, eyes wide. He turned, bending to pick up the dagger from the armor. He handed it to me. “You got him! You got him right in the eye! How did you do that? Will you show me?”