Page 101 of Under the Iron Sky

Morana dropped to her knees, snarling with a mixture of rage and grief. “Who was it? Who said I hadn’t left the temple?”

Like dominos falling one by one, every head in the crowd, Dar’rak and fairy alike, all turned to look at the human standing by Ikarus’s side.

To the human girl staring across the cave, at the cloud of rising debris and soot.

To the girl with no weapons or magic, who’d just sent one of the most powerful mercenaries in Ramapheal’s army to his death with only a few words.

And was smiling.

32

“Do you have any idea of the target you just put on your back?” Ikarus seethed the moment they materialized back in their room.

Soraya ripped herself from his arms, so angry that she hardly noticed the nausea coursing through her bones from phasing up here.

“What were you thinking?!”

Honestly, she hadn’t been. She’d been so focused on that soldier’s death there’d been no room for anything else in her head except for rage, rage, rage that had filled her so completely it’d tinted the corners of her vision red more than the vapor down here ever could. She’d wanted to hurt something. To bite down and tear strips off everyone until they were left just as bleeding as she felt on the inside.

And then Mortis had landed beside her. And he’d laughed and, well, she’d said what she’d said.

Ikarus’s expression was pinched into its usual scowl. In the low torchlight, the gold slash in his eye almost looked as though it was moving. “Morana isn’t going to let this go. She’s going to want blood.”

“I don’t care!” She didn’t. Didn’t really care about anything right now other than the soot and blood smeared all over her hands and face.

Marching past the bed, she yanked the bathroom door open and slipped inside.

“You should,” Ikarus called after her. “There’s a reason I’m not the only Demon in Ramapheal’s ranks.” His voice was cold as a winter breeze, but no quieter despite the good few feet she’d put between them. He was following her then. Fabulous.

“Again, I don’t fucking care.” Soraya made for the sink, grabbing the rock shard that acted as a tap and twisting it to activate the magic inside. The stone would not budge. She tried it again, heat flaring up her wrist with the effort, but the stubborn thing would not move. Growling through clenched teeth, she looked over her shoulder to the hulking warrior standing in the doorway. “Do you mind?”

Ikarus looked like he minded very much, actually, but he marched over nonetheless, an armored shoulder bumping against hers a tad too aggressively to be accidental, twisted the stone, and boiling water began to fill the basin.

“This is not a game,” Ikarus snapped, his tall shadow eclipsing the mirror mounted above the sink. “She’ll want your head for this, I hope you know that.”

Both hands braced on the basin, Soraya lifted her head, startling slightly when their gazes met in the mirror. She hadn’t realized how close he was standing behind her. If he’d wanted to, he’d barely have to raise a hand to brush against her hip.

“I may be your prisoner, Demon, but I am far from helpless. I saw an opportunity to kill one of your generals and I took it. Don’t pretend you wouldn’t have done exactly the same if our roles were reversed.”

The basin now full, Soraya plunged her hands into the water and splashed her face. Too hot. Her skin screamed.

She didn’t care.

She submerged her hands again, scrubbed and scrubbed until she was sure she’d burned her skin right off to the bone. She pulled her hands back out—

Her heart stalled.

You’re going to regret welding those things onto your hands one day, Noreen had said years ago, when Soraya had first had the spectacular idea to have these knuckle-dusters permanently fused into her bones.

For years, she and Theron had laughed about how wrong her mother had been.

Not now, though. Because she might’ve been able to wash the blood from her skin, but some remained, clinging to every scratch and dent in the rusting metal, marking every time she’d taken a life with them, as though she needed any more reminders.

There was more blood too. In her hairline. Drying on that patch of skin where the collar of her jacket met her jaw.

She was going to be sick.

Soraya splashed her face, scrubbing her hands again, again, not caring that the water was near scalding against her skin and—Gods. Why was it still there?