I shot across the Hall. Kolis started to rise, mist seeping out of him. I prowled forward, the bodies sliding out of the way as the eather slipping through my veins took hold. My flesh hardened as Primal mist spilled out of me, thicker and moving faster than what surrounded him.
Kolis’s eyes narrowed. “What the fuck?”
I launched into the air and through the stinging, churning mist. It tore at my skin and burned, but the pain didn’t stop me as my nails sharpened and strengthened. It couldn’t stop me.
He didn’t have the power to do so.
Not right now.
Crashing into Kolis, I thrust my hand into his ruined stomach and slammed him into the wall. He grunted as the impact cracked the gold-veined marble.
Kolis stared at where my hand was now buried below his sternum and then lifted his gaze to mine.
“MyQueen,” I spoke, my voice filling with shadows and smoke, “gave me more than just parlor tricks.”
Tearing out ropey tissue, I gripped a fistful of his hair and pulled him back from the wall. My head snapped down, lips peeling back. I sank my fangs deep into his throat and didn’t release them.
Pain erupted in my chest as he slammed his fist through it. Skin tore. Muscles snapped. Bones broke. I held on as I drank, pushing downward.
We hit the floor, cracking the stone. Still, I held on, drinking fast and hard, easing the burn of pain as my gaze landed on what had become of my father. My vision changed, contracting and lengthening until I only saw him through a thin slit.
The rage turned to an icy fire in my veins. Dual pain ripped through my back, right at my shoulder blades. This wasn’t Kolis. No, it was my bones—vertebrae expanding and shifting, breaking through my skin, unfurling.
Tearing through the flesh of Kolis’s throat, I jerked my head back and rose, lifting him from the floor.
Kolis’s brows lowered, and his eyes narrowed. “What the…?” His gaze shifted behind me, and his expression smoothed out, his lips parting. “Impossible.”
My vision rapidly expanded and returned to normal as I spat a mouthful of blood into his face. “What did you do to her?”
I twisted, throwing Kolis with a shout of rage. His body smacked into the floor, shattering several tiles.
He hit the ground and rolled. I didn’t give him a chance to recover. I was on him instantly, grabbing him.
“What did you do to her?” I shouted as I dragged him from the floor, twisted at the waist, and tossed him between the pillars and out the window, shattering the glass.
Blood poured down my chest, mine and his, as I prowled forward. My feet left the floor as I shadowstepped outside.
Sunlight broke through the remaining clouds, and I saw a shadow on the ground before me. Twin arcs that swept high as another quake ripped through the ground. Something exploded, drawing my gaze. Beyond the Rise, a smoke plume rose from the city as the sound of distant screams were swept away in the roar of the wind. I scanned the bloodstained ground, and the bodies littered about. So many. Most mortals—servants who had done as…
Kolis wasn’t here.
The eather rose—
A shock of pale-blond hair matted in crimson stopped me. Arms and legs broken into unnatural angles.
It wasn’t Delano.
But…
My chest seized. I turned sharply, willing myself back to the Great Hall, returning to them.
Hisa and Lizeth.
Delano and my father.
Kieran.
I staggered, then my legs gave out. My knees hit the ground.
