The curse howled its approval, but it wasn’t joy I felt. It was the old hollowness of the life I’d left when I decided to return to Darreth. The endless ocean of magic swelled within me once again, but now I realized how cold the water was when the people I cared about weren’t around.
I didn’t want to fight. I wanted only to find her. But it seemed like all the universe wanted was for me to spill more blood.
I dismounted mid-charge. My boots struck the ground just as the first soldier lunged.
Brave idiot.
I slapped Arth’s rump and shouted the word that meant “return” between the two of us. He was clever. The stallion could find his way back to our camp alone.
I drove my shoulder into the first man’s chest, lifted him bodily, and smashed him into the nearest tree. Bone crunched.
He didn’t get back up.
The next came with a pike. I ducked under the thrust, grabbed the haft, and kindled it with a touch. He screamed as the weapon burned in his hands. I kicked him in the gut and moved on.
The way the soldiers moved suggested they wanted to drag me into the shadows of the tree line. I had no intention of playing their games. Even the monster was growing impatient. It wanted death, but it wanted Isca more.
I cast wide with my off-hand, forcing the magic surging through my fingertips to form a line of white-hot fire. It ignited the line of soldiers charging toward me in an instant. They flailed as their armor turned into ovens.
I spun through the next line like a god of ruin. My steel sliced through hardened leather jerkins as if they were damp parchment. The men’s screams didn’t sound human to my ears anymore, but neither did mine.
She’d kissed me last night. Told me I was a good man. Asked me to touch her because I, the lowest of the low, unworthy of her affections, had made her want. She’d made me feel something close to peace for the first time in years. And these men thought they could take that from me and live?
Spells lashed from my fingers—arcs of ice sharp enough to flay a man in half, walls of fire that turned men into ash before they could scream. I called stone from the ground and shattered horse and rider alike.
But they kept coming.
The arrow that grazed my shoulder landed where her head had rested. I crushed the archer’s skull against a boulder with magic.
Her name was my anchor to sanity and the reason I abandoned it.
Smoke, shouts, and the heat radiating from my flames consumed the world around me. There were too many men. But that was the point. He’d planned for this.
Cadoc had expected me to burn bright then burn out.
He simply had no idea how eager the monster was to serve—nor had he ever seen it in action. He’d come into this battle expecting to see a different version of my father.
King Euros had been strong, but he wasn’tme. I was worse.
Eventually, the lines before me all broke. The soldiers retreated, dragging the wounded as they went, dropping their blades onto the blood-soaked ground. Smoke thickened the air, heavy with the iron stench of blood and burned leather.
Only then, only when he saw no way of avoiding it, did Cadoc abandon the perceived safety of his horse.
“They were right,” he said, trying to taunt me into stupidity. “You’ve gone mad over a woman. She’s pretty but…nothing special.”
So he’d seen her.
My vision narrowed to the point of a blade.
“Certainly not worth the kingdom you’re about to damn for this,” he chided, all bravado, no substance.
The grip on his sword was so tight, his knuckles were white, and there was the slightest quaver in Cadoc’s voice. This was a seasoned warrior who saw that he had no chance and wanted a quick death. He wanted to leave this world holding his sword.
“Where is she?” Blood dripped from my gauntlet onto the ground.
“You want her back,” Cadoc spat, circling in the ash I’d left behind like he thought I would allow him to fight me. “You’ll have to make a trade.”
The rage inside me drowned out my ability to speak for a long moment. I fought the monster for control, blunt human teeth to sharp ones made of magic. The beast didn’t want a trade. It wanted no more words. It wanted Cadoc’s tongue sliced from his mouth for daring to say that Isca wasn’t special.
