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“I did my job,” he shoots back, smugly.

“No. Your job is to follow my orders, not Silas’s. You are not to put someone on the brink of death before I have the chance to question them. He could barely speak. We could have used him had you not wasted him the way you did.”

Elias’s final breath echoes in my head and I feel a surge of rage, hot and blinding.

“Now he’s dead.”

“This isn’t how the Slayers Academy runs,” Korrin fires back. “You’ve become weak. Silas would never have allowed this.”

Weak? I stand, arms crossing slowly over my chest, forcing every muscle to remain still instead of following the urge to drive both daggers through his throat. I came here with his death already decided. All that remains is for him to make it deserved.

Go on, then. Give me another reason, I silently urge him.

“You are confusing restraint with weakness.”

“You haven’t dropped a single body since taking over,” he adds. A sharp, humorless smile pulls at my mouth as the bodies I threw into the fire at the burning flash through my mind.

“I haven’t dropped a single body?” I step closer. “I dropped the most vile of them all—your so-called leader. He was very easy to slaughter. Me on the other hand?” My voice lowers. “You’ll find that I’m much more difficult.” I begin to pace, channeling the violence into movement before it chooses its own direction.

“You have no idea who I’ve killed in the last week. How many. Or how long I ran an entire slayer’s underground before I ever stepped back into this academy.”

I stop and face him. I feel the weight of every gaze in the room tracking my movement as I circle him, measuring the distance between us, deciding whether or not I want to make an example out of him. Whether I end him now… or torture him the way he’s done to so many others. But do I have the time to waste?

He grunts and raises his blade again. Every sense in my body sharpens. “You’re going to run this academy into the fucking ground. You don’t have the stomach for this life anymore.” His voice grates me like nails on rusted steel.

“If you don’t like the new rule, Korrin, I already gave you an out.” I gesture lazily to the room, my dagger glaring with the lantern lights, though my eyes never leave his. “I remember asking everyone here if they wanted to leave.” My head tilts slightly. “That was my only act of mercy. Your only chance to walk out without me hunting you. Without me killing you.” A small shrug rolls through my shoulders and I step closer. “But I’ll ask you one more time. Do you want to stay?” The decision is already made. His answer will change nothing.

“Another sign of weakness,” he says with a sneer. “You hand out second chances like candy.” Something inside me goes very, very still.

Before the thought can even form, I move. There is only two feet between us, and I close the distance, my dagger driving straight for his heart. He’s faster than I expected. His blade snaps up and steel collides with steel in a shriek that slices through the room, but my second dagger is already there, punching into his side.

Blood pours hot and dark from the wound. He grunts, breath shuddering, yet still forces his strength into the only defense he has left, pushing against my first blade with everything he has.

“I was supposed to take over this fucking place,” he chokes, red spilling down his lips. “Not a weak woman.”

I grin. “This weak woman you speak of is going to be your undoing.” I drive him backward. His body slams into the wall hard enough to rattle the lanterns, blood splattering the stone behind him in a violent bloom. His eyes narrow, one hand clamping over the wound in his side while the other drags his weapon up again. Stubborn to the end, I’ll give him that.

“Korrin,” I say, “it really is a shame you see women as weak when you came from one. We are stronger than you will ever be. And this academy? It has never been in better hands.”

I throw the first of two daggers. He falls for the distraction and dodges exactly as I want him to. While his attention follows the spinning blade, I make my move and drive the second dagger clean into his heart. The sound he makes is small, shocked, nothing like the monster fueled by the screams of others. His sword slips from his fingers and crashes against the stone, the clang echoing through the chamber like the toll of a bell.

His blood runs in hot waves down my arm as I twist the dagger deeper into his heart. Korrin groans, the sound breaking into a wet rattle in his throat. I watch as his eyes slip into a hollow, soulless stare.

“It looks like I’ve dropped another body,” I whisper just to him. “Say hello to Silas for me.” His final breath leaves him in a thin, shuddering exhale.

I keep the blade buried in his chest a moment longer, just to be certain. The fury that had filled every inch of me drains away the instant I feel his heart stop.

I pull the dagger free. His body hits the floor with a wet, heavy thud, blood fanning across the stone and painting the wall behind him. The room smells like iron. On the nearby table, his forgotten mug still sends up slow curls of steam. Korrin is dead before his coffee cools.

I turn. Every pair of eyes in the room is locked on me, wide, unblinking, and reverent in their fear. Blood stains my leathers and drips from my clawed fingertips, striking the stone in a steady, echoing rhythm. I swipe a cloth from the table beside me and wipe my blade clean with unhurried precision.

“Now,” I say, my voice calm, carrying easily through the silence. “Is there anyone else who would like to join our dear old friend? Anyone else who doubts my leadership?” A faint smile touches my mouth as I glance down at Korrin’s body, then back at them. “May the gods rest his soul.” My accompanying laugh is sarcastic. No one moves. Fear rolls through the room like a living thing under my control.

Thalos steps forward, breaking the silence. “I can speak for all of us,” he says, clearing his throat as he approaches me. “We were glad to see the last of Silas. We will follow you through anything. Even death.”

He drops to one knee and bows his head. My attention lifts from him and sweeps across the room as, one by one, every slayer follows. Steel and leather shift, knees striking stone in a rolling echo that fills the space. Heads bow in allegiance.

The sight steals the air from my lungs. Tears burn at the back of my eyes, but I don’t let them fall. I stand in the center of it, of them, feeling the weight of what this truly means.