Real, genuine shock.
I didn’t wait to see if the blade would find its mark. Instinct took over. There was no time for hesitation, no time for second-guessing.
Ilunged, driving my elbow into Merrick’s ribs with all the strength I had left. Bone snapped beneath the force of the blow. He doubled over, and I was already moving.
I wrenched my moonsilver blade from his hand. He made no move to stop me, didn’t even try to dodge or block, and that should have set off every alarm I had.
But there was no time to wonder why the bastard wasn’t putting up a fight.
The moonsilver keened against my palms, a sound of pure recognition.
They knew me. Remembered me. Had been waiting for this moment when they could sing their deadly song in my hands again.
Merrick straightened, dodging backward just as I slashed at his throat, the edge missing by a hair’s breadth.
Not fast enough.
I reversed my grip and drove the pommel of my dagger straight into his temple. The impact was solid, satisfying, a meaty crack that meant bone meeting metal with considerable force. His eyes rolled back, knees buckling, and he dropped like a stone. I bent and grabbed the second blade from his hip.
I didn’t pause. Didn’t hesitate. Didn’t waste a single second checking if he was truly down.
My hand found the collar around my throat, fingers scrabbling for the mechanism, for any weakness in the obsidian surface. The moonsilver screamed in my grip. They wanted blood, wanted to taste the magic that had been stolen from me, wanted to carve their way through everything that stood between me and freedom.
I didn’t hesitate.
With a vicious jerk, I shoved one blade beneath the collar at my throat.
The metal bit back, resisting, and painbloomed, hot and searing, as the dagger sliced into my skin. Blood welled instantly, thick and warm, trailing down my collarbone, but I didn’t stop.
I pressed harder.
The burn of metal against flesh was nothing—nothing—compared to the sheerragebuilding inside me, the furyscreamingthrough my blade and blood.
The collar held.
I twisted the dagger, forcing it deeper, teeth grinding against the sheer agony of it. Blood flowed freely now, dripping onto the stone floor in dark, sluggish streaks. I didn’t stop.
The metal groaned.
It bent.
The pressure broke open, the familiar hiss of strained magic filling the air as the collar’s holdweakened.
One more push. One moredesperatewrench of the blade.
The collarshattered with a crack like every bone breaking at once.
It clattered uselessly to the floor.
Behind my ear, the mark burned.
Not the surface burn of flame or blade, something deeper. Visceral. Like a chain snapping inside my skull, something that had been wound so tight around my magic it had become part of me.
And then it broke.
The world ignited.
Power, no longer caged, no longercontained,coursedthrough me in a violent, intoxicating rush.
