He stands framed in smoke, grinning that feral, starving-wolf grin that always marked him as dangerous, even as a youth. Blood—not his—splashes his bone plates, trailing down the sharp ridges of his elbows.
“TRAITOR!” Yorta roars.
Arnab laughs, a low, wet sound. “Pretender king,” he spits happily. “Today you fall.”
More bodies pour in behind him—Reapers I’d trained, fed, trusted. Their eyes are wild. Their faces twisted with the thrill of sanctioned violence.
The coup begins.
And it begins with my own warriors raising blades against me.
I launch forward.
My claws slash the first throat before the traitor even lifts his weapon. Warm spray hits my chest. Someone screams. Someone else cheers. The hall erupts into chaos—metal on bone, bone on flesh, growls and shouts colliding into a single monstrous roar.
I’m not thinking.
I’m moving.
War takes the reins—muscle memory older than diplomacy, older than the reforms I’ve forced down too many resistant throats.
I tear through three bodies in seconds. Spur, fist, knee. Bone hits armor. Armor splits. A rib cracks in my grip like brittle kindling. A blade slices my shoulder—shallow, glancing—but it’s enough to send heat surging through me.
Blood slicks the stone under my boots. My breath tastes like iron.
Yorta falls back beside me, fighting one-armed—his other hanging limp, bone spur shattered. But he’s still deadly, even wounded. He snaps a younger Reaper’s neck with the butt of his elbow.
But there are too many.
Too many blades.
Too many traitors.
And somewhere behind them—Trebuchet’s shadow lingering like a curse.
Arnab steps forward again, raising his sword. “Look at you,” he sneers. “Drowning in your own idealism. Did you truly think we’d follow a king who beds a soft-skinned pet? Who trades raiding for… farming?”
His voice drips contempt.
Rage floods me cold and clean.
I charge.
He blocks—but barely. Our blades clash with a thunderous crack. He slides back several feet, boots carving trenches in the stone. His grin widens, maddened.
“Still strong, old friend,” Arnab taunts. “But not strong enough.”
I am about to rip out his throat?—
—when I hear her.
“Vokar!”
Freya.
My heart stutters. I whip around and see her across the hall—barreling toward me, weaving through toppled chairs and broken stone. Her eyes wide, terrified, but blazing with that human fire I crave like air.
“Freya—NO!” I bellow.
