His expression doesn’t change, but I’ve learned to read the subtle shifts. The slight tightening around his eyes that indicates satisfaction. The fractional lift of his chin that suggests anticipation.
“Good.”
One word. It’s enough.
We clearthe farmhouse nest with practiced violence. Kaster handles the constructs while I anchor each death, our rhythm established through repetition. The creatures fight with wild abandon—hurling themselves at us without coordination, without strategy, driven by divine command to attack even when attack means certain death.
They all die anyway.
Twenty-three. Twenty-four. Twenty-five. The count climbs as the afternoon shadows lengthen, and the territory that teemed with divine constructs empties body by body.
I anchor the twenty-sixth kill and take stock. My magic flows freely, responding to my will without cost or hesitation. My body aches from exertion—the mating enhanced my endurance, not my physical conditioning—but it’s the ache of productive effort rather than panicked flight.
Kaster finishes the twenty-seventh with a strike that severs the construct’s spine. He watches it fall, then turns to me with blood on his hands and death in his eyes.
The sight should horrify me. Would have horrified the woman I was before this hunt began.
Instead, I cross to him and cup his face in both hands. Pull him down and press my mouth to his with heat that hasn’t diminished despite everything we’ve already done today.
He responds instantly. Hands finding my hips, body pressing against mine, the copper taste of divine blood mingling between our lips.
“Twenty-seven.” I pull back far enough to speak. “That’s more than we killed yesterday and the day before combined.”
“The population is thinning.” His voice carries that low rasp that makes my pulse kick. “Fewer reinforcements. The god is hoarding resources for the endgame.”
“Final confrontation?”
“Likely.”
I process that information. The logical part of my mind—the part that’s kept me alive through years of impossible odds—notes that a final confrontation means maximum danger. The god will throw everything it has left at us, desperate to eliminate the threat we represent.
The rest of me doesn’t care.
“Then we keep pushing.” I release his face, step back to survey the terrain ahead. “Give it less time to prepare. Force the confrontation before it’s ready.”
“Aggressive strategy.”
“Effective strategy.” I meet his gaze. “Unless you’d prefer to let it dictate terms?”
The curve of his mouth carries an edge that sends heat pooling in my core. “No.”
“Then we keep moving.”
The sun dropstoward the horizon as we advance deeper into corrupted ground. The divine pressure against my awareness intensifies with every mile, the god’s attention pressing harder as we eliminate its outer defenses.
It knows.
It knows we’re coming, knows its shields are failing, knows that the mating it tried to prevent has made us into exactly what it feared. A predator dragon who makes kills count and an Anchor witch who makes deaths stick.
A combination it has no answer for.
The constructs we encounter grow more frantic as we progress. Variants that seem half-formed, rushed into existence without the time or care the earlier models received. They fight with terrified ferocity, driven by divine command to attack even as their instincts scream retreat.
I anchor each death and feel the god flinch.
That’s a new sensation—one I don’t entirely understand. But every ending I lock into place sends a ripple through that distant attention. Pain, perhaps. Loss. The severing of connections it didn’t realize could be severed.
Let it hurt.
