That hope died the moment she saw him.
Her eyes—those strange, jade green eyes that had caught his attention during their first encounter—went flat and cold as winter stone. The grief didn’t disappear, but it transmuted into something far more dangerous. The shadows around him recoiled instinctively.
She was still for only a moment. Less than a heartbeat.
Then she exploded into motion.
Two daggers seemed to materialise in her hands. No, not materialise. He simply hadn’t seen her draw them, hadn’t caught the movement despite his enhanced reflexes. The blades gleamed with an opalescent light that made his shadows hiss and writhe.
Moonsilver.Fucking moonsilver.Of course the female had ended up with moonsilver blades.
She came at him like a force of nature, all feral intensity and killing intent. No technique, no strategy—just pure, undiluted fury channelled into violence. The first blade swept toward his throat in an arc that would have opened his jugular if he hadn’t thrown himself backward.
The second followed immediately, aimed for his heart.
Ashterion barely managed to deflect it with a wall of solidified shadow, the moonsilver edge carving through his darkness like it was paper.
She didn’t pause, didn’t give him a moment to breathe or think or coordinate a proper defence. She was on him again before he’d fully recovered his balance, moonsilver singing through the air. The desperate, vicious movements of someone with nothing left to lose.
One blade caught him across the forearm, parting leather and flesh with equal ease. Blood welled, dark and hot, and the wound burned with the particular agony of moonsilver poisoning. Another swipe nearly took his eye, close enough that he felt the wind of its passage.
“Clever little human,” he murmured, dancing backward as she pressed her attack. “But mourning makes you sloppy.”
She snarled like a cornered animal and lunged again. This time he was ready, shadows erupting from the ground to snare her legs. But black fire bloomed around her in response, consuming his darkness with hungry flames that felt like ice and midnight combined.
The collision of their powers sent shockwaves rippling through the forest. Trees groaned, their leaves withering as shadow and fire warred for dominance.
She broke through his shadows like they were cobwebs, moonsilver flashing as she drove both blades toward his chest in a cross-pattern that would have carved him open from throat to navel.
Ashterion twisted. One blade missed entirely. The other opened a line of fire across his ribs that made him curse in three different languages.
Impressive.
The thought flickered through his mind unbidden as he watched her recover from the strike, already spinning into her next attack. She moved like water given deadly purpose, adapting to each of his defences with a speed that spoke of natural talent rather than learned technique.
Most opponents became predictable after the first few exchanges. They fell into patterns, relied on familiar combinations, telegraphed their intentions through subtle shifts in posture or breathing. Warriors with centuries of training often became slaves to their own expertise, locked into forms that could be read and countered.
This female was chaos incarnate.
Her moonsilver blades wove patterns that defied conventional combat doctrine. She attacked from impossible angles, used her smaller size to slip through gaps in his defences. When he threw up walls of shadow, she burned through them.
Ashterion had expected many things when he’d descended from the storm clouds—screaming, begging, perhaps a clumsy attempt at negotiation. He had not expected this. Had not expected the grieving human to move like liquid death, to fight like someone who had been forged in violence and tempered by loss.
When she came at him again, he caught one wrist, shadows wrapping around her arm like iron shackles. For a heartbeat he thought he had her, then pain exploded across his jaw as her free hand drove the pommel of her second blade into his face with enough force to rattle his teeth.
Stars burst across his vision. Blood filled his mouth, copper and salt. The shadows around her wrist loosened just enough for her to twist free, and then both blades were coming at him again in a flurry of opalescent steel.
“You killed him,” she snarled, and her voice was empty of everything except the promise of violence. “You killed him, and I’m going to carve out your fucking heart.”
The words weren’t a threat. They were a statement of fact, delivered with the same certainty someone might use to comment on the colour of the sky.
For a moment, Ashterion was thrown completely off balance.
He’d never seen a former human fight like this. Most of them retained their essential humanity even after the crossing, clinging to their mortal limitations like familiar chains. But the female moved like she’d shed every constraint her human life had imposed, like she’d embraced whatever darkness the crossing had awakened in her.
It was... fascinating.
And those moonsilver blades. Where in seven hells had she gotten moonsilver?
