Another scream ripped through the air, and something in the sky shuddered. I knew that sound. I knew that torment. Even if I didn’t recognize the voice itself, I recognized the fear.
I’d screamed like that the first time Lord Byron had ordered me caned, standing by to watch my punishment as a child so he could be confident it was appropriately harsh. So he could make sure I bled for my insolence.
The murmur of male voices grew louder as Fenrir followed it through the forest, winding his way around the trees with his long, loping gait. I knew Caldris followed behind us, but we’d long since passed the riders who’d proceeded with far too much caution.
They’d never make it in time. They were already too late to save the woman from the worst pain she’d ever known.
She screamed again, and this time I was close enough that the sound of a whip cracking through the air struck into my chest. That hollow inside of me grew, expanding outward as if it wanted to feed off that pain. As if it needed it to survive, to breathe.
Fenrir burst into the clearing, vaulting over the shrubs that lined the space. All eyes turned to us as he prowled forward, stopping in the center so I could swing a leg over and stand beside him. The woman was bound, her hands tied together and suspended from the tree branch in front of her. They’d torn her dress open in the back, revealing the expanse of what should have been smooth skin, if not for the blood flowing down her back and the lash marks that tore her open. Her head hung forward, the faded light of a Fae Mark on her neck.
“Estrella!” Caldris called from far behind us—even once he’d extricated himself from the group, Azra hadn’t been able to keep up with the speed of Fenrir weaving through the trees. I stepped forward, tilting my head to the side as four members of the Mist Guard turned to face me. The one with the whip in his hand dropped his eyes to my own glowing mark.
“Looks like we found ourselves another toy,” he said, a smug grin twisting his face. He cracked the whip at his side once in warning as I stepped closer, bringing myself directly into his reach. I wouldn’t stop—couldn’t stop—until I reached the woman and cut her down.
The whip cracked whistling straight toward my face. I twisted back, pulling my face out of danger as I raised a forearm.
The whip caught me there, wrapping around my forearm and sinking into the flesh beneath my clothes. Fire lit my skin, burning through me as the leather sank deep. I grabbed the tail of the whip in my hand, winding it around my palm and pulling so suddenly that the Mist released it.
It stayed wound around my arm, the length of it twisting and coiling, changing into something new and eager. The newly-formed snake slithered along my skin before it lowered itself to the ground in silence.
The Mist Guard’s eyes widened, his expression one of horror as I stepped toward him. The forest floor seemed to come to life beneath my feet, the brush and dead leaves covering it moving from side to side as the three Guards who stood farther from the woman turned their attention to the serpents slithering toward them, mostly unseen.
“That’s impossible,” the one who’d held the whip said as I moved closer. He drew his sword, the iron carving a path through the air as he focused on me.
“Have you ever wondered what waits for you in the pits of Tartarus?” I asked, continuing to move toward him. I kicked out a leg, catching the knuckles of the hand that clutched his sword. He didn’t drop it, clinging to it as though he realized just how tightly his life depended on that weapon.
The snake that had shifted from the whip slithered up my legs, winding herself around my waist until she could place her head into my hand. I pulled my arm back then snapped it toward the Guard, watching in rapt fascination as the snake changed back into a whip. The leather wrapped around the blade of the sword, catching it and allowing me to yank it back and toss it into the trees at the side of the clearing.
It landed a few feet from where Caldris had lowered himself from Azra’s back, and paused to take in the destruction around me. A Guard screamed to my right, the sound echoing through the woods in a way that fed the growing storm inside of me. It was the only just thing in this world, that their screams would fill the night sky after what they’d done to the Fae Marked girl hung from the tree.
“Cut her down,” I said to Caldris, nodding my head toward the woman. He paused, stepping toward me slowly as if he might help me with the fight, but I wanted their deaths. I wanted to feed them to the Void.
I craved the music of their screams—craved the chaos of their fear.
The serpents dragged one of the Mist Guard into the woods, disappearing into the underbrush as something massive moved through it.
I felt connected to it; felt its soul as it moved to obey my call.
Basilisk.
I turned back to the Guard who’d wielded the whip. The one who’d committed the worst horror. He shrank back from whatever he saw in my gaze as I stepped forward, thrusting a hand out suddenly and grabbing him by the chin.
The darkness welled within me, looming to the surface as his terrified face angled over mine. He raised his hands, clawing at the raw marks on my arm where his whip had torn ribbons of flesh from my bones.
My dress hung off it in scraps, but I twisted his head to look at the mangled back of the woman he’d harmed one last time. “You wish to behave as if you do not have a soul?” I asked, turning his frightened stare back to me. He shook his head, his mouth unable to move beneath the force of my grip. “Your wish is my command.”
I summoned those golden ribbons that swirled around him, grasping them with my free hand and pulling them from his body one by one. When they were all gathered into my palm, I tore them free, severing the connection with his body at the same moment I released his chin and drew in a breath.
The light left his eyes as he fell to the forest floor, staring at the sky above him with an unblinking gaze. His chest rose and fell, his lungs moving as I lowered my stare to the golden ball of light held in my hand.
“Min asteren,” Caldris said, his voice soft as he stepped forward. “What have you done?” He stared down at the golden ball, the threads gone and blended together so seamlessly that it was as if I held a miniature sun in my grasp. I wrapped my fingers around it, around the warmth of it.
Squeezing them shut, I watched the light fade slowly until only snowflakes remained, falling to the ground like the winter snow.
“Gave him a far more peaceful passage to the Void than he deserved,” I said, staring at the empty, breathing husk of a man. Nothing remained inside him, and yet his chest rose with each breath.
“Animate him,” I said, tilting my head to the side when I couldn’t force him to rise. There were no golden tendrils surrounding him in the way I’d gotten used to summoning Caldris’s power.
“I cannot. He isn’t dead, Little One,” he said, stepping over the body and staring down at it.
Caldris spun suddenly, drawing his sword in a fluid motion and thrusting it into the gut of the Mist Guard who remained. He made to stab my mate, but his sword never reached its target as he stopped and gaped at the God of the Dead.
At his friend lying lifelessly on the forest floor, but somehow alive all the same. He wouldn’t be for long.
As the last body crumpled to the ground, the brush in the woods moved as something large slithered through it. The basilisk emerged. Covering its body, its scales were dark as midnight but gleaming in the fading light of the sun as it slithered into the clearing.