“Goddess.”Staggering to her feet, the High Priestess reached for me with bejeweled hand. “Mila no! You’re going to—”
“You will die at my feet, knowing what true power is,” I whispered, wrapping my free hand aroundhisthroat, in spite of the borrowed agony curled in my palm.
Eyes bulging—etched with tiny golden capillaries—flicked toward the door and the reinforcements who had been ordered not to come.
“You will die at the hand of a slave, knowing it wasyourpathetic life-force that freed my people,” I hissed, sweat dripping. “I will undo every nightmare you’ve unleashed in your wasted years, and you will be forgotten.” I paused. Mustn’t forget to savor the moment. To relish the sheen of sickness glistening on his cheeks and the terror thick on his tongue.
When he gaped for breath, I gave it all back. Filling him, drinking his agony even as it raced downmyarm.
“Mila,” the High Priestess whispered, edging toward her desk. “Stop. You have to stop.”
“Never.” Not when I was so close. Not when vengeance wasfinallywithin reach. Justice. For everything this monster had done. For the women he’d victimized.
For the High Priestess.
For my father.
Palm flat to heaving chest, I tore through every wall. Shredded every barrier keeping this beast from tumbling into the Void, opening myself to the chaotic beauty of his last moments, eyes rolling back.
The bond lurched, writhing in my chest. Fighting me for control. Trying to stop the pain infecting usboth.But it was too late, even for one such ashim.For at that very moment our hearts fell into irregular sync.
Stumbling together, all three.
I exhaled, pushing the tidal wave into General Harper Tilcot’s flailing heart, feeling it swell within my chestandthe captain’s. Watching the general exhale with us as his golden veins popped against flushed, blotchy skin. Pupils blown out as he stared at me in supplication, for he knew.
It was time.
One final draw, and he’d be mine…
“Enough!”
A rainbow of black stars exploded behind my eyes. Breaking my grip on my pendant as I was sent to the floor in a disoriented tangle of limbs, dirt, and shattered bits of clay.
I blinked, lungs pulled inside out and stuffed too full all at once. “What—” I pushed branded, trembling hand through my hair, fingers prodding a sticky, grit-filled wound at the back of my head.
But she wasn’t finished. Palms cupping my cheeks, the High Priestess stooped, brushing her thumbs beneath my eyes. Stroking. Her brows tilted, as if to convey something beyond my fractured comprehension.
“Your—” I wheezed, clinging to her wrist to keep myself from drifting away. “Your Grace, what—”
And then, right hand slipping over my lips, she began to take.
Everything.
“You stupid,stupidgirl,” the High Priestess whispered, stepping through a door left open—through the bond itself—she commanded his ki and mine to go to the Mistress of Milithia.
Struck stupid as she filled her cursed ring with the power ofthree, I could do little more than gape at a woman unbent, even with the weight of betrayal hanging heavy around her slender shoulders. She pulled until there was nothing left to give, until the only scrap of ki left to my parasite was the pendant itself. She offered no explanation, even when she finished her macabre task and stood, whirling, leaving my side to go to…his.
General Tilcot.
The Glaith mocked me while she worked, glowing white-hot for a moment until she channeled all that glorious stolen power into the man who’d taken my childhood. Bent over the fallen, unconscious General with a dark shadow glittering atop her knuckles, she gave what I’d taken.
“Why?” I asked, drenched in cold sweat, quaking in the horrible, sucking absence of so much power denied.Again. “Howcouldyou?”
“You would have died with him, you silly chit,” she snapped, voice a strained murmur, brow speckled with sweat as she worked to save the life of her abuser, his skin sallow. Absent that deadly golden hue. “You and Asher both.”
“That’s a price I would have paid, and one you hadnoright to take—”
“No right?” she asked, voice a vicious flicker. “Youareyour father’s daughter, aren’t you? An arrogant fool.”
