A cultist lunges for Arwen from behind. I catch his wrist before his blade can connect, twist until bones snap, then throw him into the path of two more attackers. They stumble. My sword finds them before they can recover.
Arwen glances back. Our eyes meet for a single heartbeat—acknowledgment, gratitude, something fiercer burning beneath—then she turns back to the fight.
No words needed. We understand each other without them.
The altar looms ahead. White marble that hasn’t been white in living memory—its surface stained with old blood, carved with channels that direct liquid into collection basins at its base. Behind it, a massive iron frame holds torches that burn with fierce intensity.
And standing before it, blade in hand?—
A woman. Older than most of the loyalists, her robes marking her as someone of rank within the cult’s hierarchy. She watches our approach with eyes that hold no fear, no desperation, only the calm certainty of someone who has already accepted her fate.
But she’s not looking at me. She’s looking at Arwen.
And Arwen is looking back with recognition that speaks of history. Of pain.
“Go.” Arwen’s voice is steady despite the blood coating her face. “I need to handle this.”
“I can?—”
“This one is mine.” Her eyes meet mine. Gray-blue and unflinching. “Clear the rest. Make sure no one escapes through the side doors. I’ll find you when it’s done.”
I shouldn’t leave her. Every instinct screams against separating, against letting her face an enemy alone while I deal with stragglers.
But I see something in her expression that makes me step back.
This is personal. This is about more than survival.
This is about closure.
“I’ll be close.” I move toward the chapel’s eastern wing, where more loyalists are trying to form a defensive line. “Scream if you need me.”
“I won’t need you.” A ghost of a smile crosses her face. “But I’ll scream anyway. Just to see you run.”
Then she’s turning toward the woman at the altar, blade raised, and I’m wading into the remaining loyalists with renewed fury.
The sooner I finish here, the sooner I can watch her back again.
FORTY-SEVEN
The fighting in the eastern wing continues for what feels like hours but is probably minutes.
The loyalists die with the same desperate fury as their companions—screaming prayers, clawing at my armor, refusing to surrender even when surrender might have bought them mercy. I give them quick deaths when I can, efficient deaths when I can’t.
The executioner’s work. I have never stopped practicing it, and it has never stopped costing me.
Smoke rises from a dozen points around the chapel now. Torches knocked loose during the fighting have found fuel—the wooden pews, the tapestries covering the walls, the dried flowers that decorate the devotional displays. The flames are spreading faster than they should. Someone must have prepared accelerants.
The devotional art on the walls—preserved bodies posed in attitudes of ecstasy, Bloom flowers growing from their preserved flesh—begins to blacken and curl.
Good. Let it burn. Let everything here burn.
The last loyalist in my section falls with a gurgle. I turn back toward the altar, searching for Arwen?—
And find her standing over a body.
Not alone. Circe is there too, the young initiate we saved days ago. She’s shaking, tears streaming down her face, her hands still raised from whatever blow she just delivered.
I cross the chapel floor, navigating around the dead.
