“You’re all monsters,” I snarl past the thickness in my throat.
Pompous laughter erupts from all but the stolid commander, a sneering voice threatening to bend me over a rock for thinking I could sneak into my brother’s kingdom undetected.
My fingers close around the jar of moonlight while I hold the commander’s cutting blue stare. “I can’t wait for the dae you’re forced to bow before the rightful queen and face your heinous crimes.”
A line digs between his pale brows.
I toss the jar. It shatters, frosty light exploding as I snatch Kaan’s weald, then shove up.
And stagger blindly through the clamor.
Istalk through puddles of red littered with bits of flesh and bone, breathing metallic air tainted with the reek of excrement, one of Kaan’s dragonscale blades twirling between my bloody fingers. With a spin, I toss the dagger. Watch itthunkinto the tattered remnants of Rekk Zharos’s flayed chest.
He hangs there, stretched arms tethered to the palletposts, head flopped forward—unmoving. Dead.
Verydead.
Hard not to be when your heart’s no longer in your chest. Not that I’ve been able to locatesaidheart, something I’ve decided never to think about again. Unless my Other threw it on the fire or perhaps tossed it out the window that overlooks the labyrinth of filthy streets below—doubtful—then I don’t want to know.
I also don’t want to think about …her.
My Other.
Not with the memory of everything I just saw stuffed beneath the ice where it belongs,neverto be touched again.
I sigh, tip my head to the side. Scour the mess my Other made of Rekk, leaving him utterly unrecognizable. Again, I hunt the visible parts of his skin, trying to find a segment that’s not been burnt.
Failing.
What I wouldn’t do to have watched her fold him up and stuff him in the fireplace. At least that’s what I imagine she did to cause such damage, forcing him to experience the feel of his flesh melting. To live through the same sizzling torture Líri endured when he flew her too close to the sun.
My gaze bounces from deep gory gash to deep gory gash, each wound likely made from Rekk’s own bloody boots tossed in the corner, the spokes covered in carrion. A creative flourish that went beyond even my own sadistic plans.
Credit where credit’s due.
Never have I seen such brutal slaughtering. She avenged Líri and Essi so thoroughly, there’s nothing left to work with. Only my flare of rage for the scars Líri will always carry and the continued ache of Essi’s absence.
Because ofhim.
I clear my throat and stride forward. Tuck the itchy tip of my finger beneath Rekk’s chin, push back his head, and look into the empty hollows of his mutilated eye sockets.
No idea where his eyes went, either. Something else I don’t want to think about.
“At least she made you suffer,” I say past the annoying thickness in my throat, dropping my hand.
His head flops forward.
I sigh and yank out the blade, spin on my heel, then stalk back to my spot by the door and toss it.
Thunk—right between his nonexistent eyes.
I crack my neck, advancing again when someone pounds on the door. “Password,” I mutter, trying to wiggle the blade free.
A long pause, a throat clear, followed by a whisper-hiss.“Rekk Zharos can eat a jar of spangle shit.”
I smile, finally free the blade, and tuck it into the laden sheath strapped around my thigh, about to open the door when I realize I’ve been so caught up exercising my frustrations on Rekk’s corpse that I’m still …covered in him. And not much else.
“Just a moment.”
