“Whoishe?” Cassandra asked, but Mireille either didn’t hear her or didn’t bother responding.
Vasok staggered to his feet. His serpent’s eyes had gone glassy, as if he’d resigned himself to his fate. His voice shook as he called out, “Put down your hammer and fight us as an equal!”
The Koenig lifted an incredulous eyebrow, and the Brethren swelled with whoops and hollers. He shrugged, then made a show of settling his hammer down gently onto the platform.
As soon as he raised his head, he barreled for Vasok.
The Deathstalker’s eyes went wide as he realized his mistake.
And all the blood drained from Cassandra’s body as she watched the Koenig tear Arseny Vasok apart with his bare hands.
This was a male who’d known nothing but violence for his centuries-long life.
Vasok’s screams were unbearable as the Koenig crunched a fist into his skull, stomped through his leg, and in a terrible, final move, lifted his limp body in the air and cracked his spine.
The Koenig tossed Vasok’s crumpled body to the boards. The Deathstalker was somehow still clinging to life, moaning faintly in a spreading pool of green blood.
The Brethren’s ravenous chants ofHarvest! Harvest!grew louder as the Koenig bent over to pluck up his hammer.
“Please,” Vasok croaked at the Koenig’s feet. “Please.”
Cassandra wasn’t sure if he was begging for help or begging for death.
The Koenig arced the hammer over his head, then brought it down upon Vasok’s skull with a bone-crunching squelch. The Deathstalker’s head popped like a ripe watermelon and though Cassandra desperately wanted to look away, she didn’t dare. Didn’t want to appear weak or squeamish in front of the Brethren.
Not to mention the Koenig had held her stare throughout that fatal swing.
He thrust the hammer into the air, green viscera and white skull fragments clinging to the black stone.
Applause exploded throughout the square as the Brethren surged to their feet.
Wormwood sidled up to the Koenig, his thin lips sliding into a grimace as he beheld the pile of mush that used to be prisoner 628432. “Let’s hear it for our Koenig, folks!”
The Koenig lifted the hammer once more, and the polemite heart began to glow. Cassandra watched, awestruck, as Vasok’s body dissolved in a flash of red mist.
Wormwood bowed his head and beside him, the Koenig did the same. The crowd followed shortly behind.
“Vestan, our Warrior God,” Wormwood intoned, “please accept this sacrifice. A soul to add to your divine eternal army. He gave his life that we may preserve ours. And in your name, we give our thanks.”
Red light flashed through the square, bursting through windows and flaring down side streets.
Barrels that had previously been empty filled with food—cuts of meat, root vegetables, leafy greens, fruits and grains, wheat and barley, and so much more. Casks of ale and bottles of wine appeared in front of the taverns and in shop windows.
The heart gem pulsed, bathing the Koenig’s face in macabre red shadows. Combined with his kohl-lined eyes and wicked smile, Cassandra could’ve sworn she was gazing upon a demon risen from the depths of Stygios’s realm.
And she couldn’t stop trembling.
“Are you okay?” Mireille asked, trembling slightly herself. When Cassandra shook her head, willing her tears away, Mireille pulled her from the bench. “Let’s go. The Brethren will be plenty distracted now that the feasting has begun.”
“They’ll think I’m a coward,” Cassandra breathed out.
A few prisoners began fighting over casks of ale and Mireille offered Cassandra a rueful grin. “They won’t remember much tomorrow anyway. Come on, we can sneak away before anyone notices.” She turned to Ronin. “Are you coming?”
“No,” was all he said before slipping into the crowd.
Mireille sighed, walking Cassandra—who was desperately trying not to fall apart in public—out of the square and back to her shop.
As soon as Mireille opened the door, Cassandra rushed up the stairs to the apartment and burst into the bathroom.
