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With renewed resolve, Ridge flexes his grip on the hilt. “This is for Luna—it was always for her.”

He lifts the blade again. Ready to bring it down on me, a more accurate strike this time.

Tears flood my eyes. “Ridge, no—”

“I’m not doing this for the gold,” Ridge heaves his hatred, a feral flare alighting his eyes, “I’m doing this for her. You thought I wouldn’t?” His voice hikes into a guttural boom. “Expected that I would love the folk that took her from me?”

My sight blurs on my friend, someone I nursed to health, someone who—as I know now—was just biding time to be well enough to take me out, because he couldn’t do it when he was falling from poison.

And I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.

But I don’t ask questions. Because, truly, I am selfish.

The fight strikes through me. The ache in my chest fuels me like fire.

“Fuck you!” I scream and, tightening my grip on the hilt of my own blade, the one slick with the blood of the other litalf, I throw my arm up—and sink the knife into his neck.

Ridge’s lashes flutter.

“Fuck youuuuu!” The scream rips through me, and it’s a sudden frenzy. “Die, die, dieeee!”

I rip out the blade, and over and over and over, I plunge it into his neck, his clavicle, his face, his shoulder—anywhere I can reach.

Hot streams of crimson rush down on me.

Blood leaks into my mouth, a coppery taste that has my body flexing with a gag, and it’s all over my eyes and my hair, but I don’t stop, I keep stabbing, screaming, until—

Ridge falls off me.

He lands on the ground in a heap. A motionless, crimson stack of dead weight.

Lilac eyes face me.

Stare at me.

But there’s no surprise in them. No defeat, no anger.

Only death.

There is no death in me.

I won’t go quietly. Not softly.

I will go down in blood, in guts, and savagery.

My teeth bare as I flip onto my front—and I lock my gaze on the litalf attacker. He’s some steps back from the entrance now, staggered there, a hand cupped to the middle of his face. I know his eye is split, his vision obscured by all the blood, and I know I could run and he wouldn’t catch me, can’t chase, can’t hunt.

But fuck that.

I charge at him.

The shout that rumbles through me is nothing short of feral. That’s exactly how I feel, my insides thrashing, my fingers aching to draw blood and tear out the spines of my enemies.

Ridge.

His betrayal has snapped something in me.

And I tackle the litalf, hard.