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Her gods abandoned her.

A scream erupted from the trees. Lyra. She’d seen them fall. No mistake, she wanted to bolt onto the battlefield, but she held her position with the archers in the trees.

Through the heat of our bond, I felt her agony, like a hundred bone needles piercing my heart.

Those who caused it would pay.

Once before, the suffocating, insatiable craving for death had taken me. The night I learned that Tomas Grisen had opened the gates for ravagers to find Lyra.

I’d torn his body apart and spiked his head on the wall of Stonegate.

From the murky shadows the form of the deledan soul rose again. Dark mists pulsed around its shoulders, a sign of fury at the failure, a signal Lyra’s heart would break again, and the cost for such a slight would be blood and bone.

The dark soul whirled around, eyes burning with hate.

At my back, boots shuffled when the Dark Watch shifted in unease. In the next heartbeat, shadows broke apart and rushed forward down the slope again. But this was not made of desperation; this was a flood of savagery.

I gave a brisk nod to Gunter. He unsheathed one of the swords on his back and bellowed a roar. Warriors at his back followed.

We ran after the darkness. Half of the Dark Watch veered to opposing sides, aiming at the edges of the Stav Guard shield wall.

Archers shouted from the walls, the trees, the hillsides. Overhead, an arch of fiery arrows burned across the sky, a beacon leading us forward.

The barrage of the Dark Watch shuddered across the damp soil. From the far gates, more chants echoed from hidden units of watchers. Howls and snarls followed. The units of fara keepers and bonded wolves rushed through the trees. More than one cry of pain followed when Stav hidden in the trees, or archers tumbling off their branch perches, fell to the claws and teeth of the packs.

My chest burned as I ran, closer, closer.

Walls of shadows engulfed the Stav. I wanted their souls to be mine.

One breath, two. My dark soul converged like a cloak over the Jorvans. Like a frenzied warrior, a blade of darkness lashed through hearts, through throats. It rammed into chests.

Stav Guard roared commands behind their shields. Men stumbled as darkness engulfed their bodies, leaving them alive but empty. Swords dropped. Shields fell. Stav faltered on their feet the more I craved their destruction.

At long last, the shield wall split.

“Take them! Now!” Ten paces away, Elisabet shouted the remaining Dark Watch forward.

Another wave of burning arrows assaulted the Stav Guard. A collision of steel and blood burst between two sides. I braced, sword and ax at the ready, and leapt into the fray.

My blade struck a Stav’s short blade. We locked, and spun, and dodged until I swung the ax against his ribs. He fell. Another came. And another. Battle was euphoric and horrid all at once. The darkest pieces of my soul craved the slide of steel over bone. The other craved to survive.

Never before had I cared if I fell in battle. Now all I desired was to walk free of here, back to Lyra.

Hot, sticky blood splattered across my face. My muscles throbbed, desperate for more.

A man sobbed nearby when Gunter yanked on the Stav’s braid, dragging him to the ground. My old friend straddled the Stav and rammed his sword through the man’s throat, letting out a bellow of delight as the Stav choked on his own blood.

Another Stav fell forward, a knife from the queen buried in his middle. Elisabet moved like a wraith, there and gone. She leapt over a corpse and had her blade free of the Stav’s belly before his body struck the ground.

“The Sentry!” The captain who’d ordered the deaths of Lyra’s folk pointed his blade, aimed toward my heart.

He rushed at me, another Stav at his side.

I rolled my ax in my hand, crouched, and met their attack head-on. One slashed for my throat. I ducked and rammed the head of my ax across his chest when he stumbled. The captain was swifter. One edge of his blade caught my arm. I dodged a second strike and spun away. He jabbed. I swung at his limbs.

Our blades locked, drawing our faces near. Blood spilled over his brows. He bared his teeth. “Traitor.”

I grinned, tasting the hot drips of metallic blood on my tongue.