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Lonan shouts after me as I race toward the doors, my bare feet pounding on the cold floor, fear ripping through me. But the warrior is quick, tearing after me on legs as tall as I am. I’m nearly to the door . . .

He grabs me by my hair and twists me around, pinning me to the wall. The head of the monster lies on the ground behind him—I’m his new victim. He points his blade against my throat, elegantly proportioned face warped into a malicious sneer.

I don’t want to resort to the Dark. Especially not now. But the scars on my legs burn in reminder, and the calm of the Light is so out of reach. Terror rises like the moon, and for once, I give myself to it, frantically grabbing the timepiece around my neck.

He grips her hair

As he grips his sword

Monster slain

Victory assured

What was her crime?

Theft? Trickery?

Spilt blood?

Or wicked devilry?

It was her sovereignty

And desire to be

Free from the chains

Of men’s tyranny

I let the words burn, let them rip into my skin, carving my scars deeper, deeper, deeper. They crack into the face of the warrior just as the point of his sword breaks skin.

The reins of the Dark slip through my fingers.

“Stop,” Lonan shouts. And then I feel his Dark magic again. His shadows hit mine like a torrent. Dark against Dark.

And more than at any time since the Ridding began, chaos erupts.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Imeant to release it slowly. A small, controlled attack. I forgot the defiance of the Dark.

The warrior shatters, shards of marble raining around me. I feel them cut my body like dozens of tiny razors, but I can see nothing in the hurricane of shadows. My magic hitting Lonan’s sounds like the air itself is being ripped in two. The walls shake and rumble like thunder. Statues smash to the ground, hundreds of years’ worth of art shattered within the moments of our anarchy.

I’ve lost control. I don’t know where I end and the storm begins. And the pain. Oh, the pain. The confusion and brokenness and loneliness of a child too small to understand that mothers die, and fathers leave, and war rages on even when all you want is for the people you love to stay with you. I hadn’t reckoned with this, hadn’t even known it was sleeping inside me. I can’t breathe. My cheeks are wet. My leg bleeds with its fresh, deadly verse. I can’t find my scythe. A hand lashes toward me like a viper through the dark, grabbing my arm.

And then Lonan is there. This is his mess. He made me this terrible thing. I have never wanted the Dark. Lonan made me want this. He stoked this fury.

But I know that’s a lie. I know what this is, where it came from.

I am not my father’s daughter.

I am the thing that killed him.

The storm around me upsurges. I can feel the Dark like a chasm beneath my feet, a maw opening wide, readying to swallow me whole. But then Lonan’s arms are around me, firm anchor in the tempest. For once, my Darkness isn’t doused like water on a fire. Instead it fizzles out, slowly spent, smoking into softly glowing coals inside me, till I can breathe again.

The room is still. The floor is littered with crushed marble, constellations of rubble spangled across the floor. Lonan is in front of me, his knees bookending mine as we kneel. His arms are gripped hard around me, my head tucked under his, shielded from the chaos. I don’t remember grabbing hold of him, but my hands are tangled in his shirt. I forgot to hate him in the Dark.

“You aren’t bad,” he whispers. “It’s not wrong. It’s okay.”