“That girl has an impossible power!” the general continued, throwing Sasha to the cobbles once more. “Unlike anything I’ve ever felt! And, brothers, I have a witness! The slaver who brought her in is ready to speak of all he saw in that forest! Now I ask you—is it right thatoneman claims her as personal property? Is that the Empire you swore allegiance to? I sayno!”he shouted, trying to stoke the Elites into a seething mob with passion alone. “Hers is a bloodline that should have been added to the Imperial library and passed through the generations—creating obedient Priestesses each more powerful than the last! Sacrifice now, so thatallElites might know the strength thatoneman hoards!” He took a breath, pointing at Asher, sallow cheeks marked by deep crevasses that hadn’t been there before he’d danced with darkness. “It shames me to discover my own kin behind this travesty! As such, Asher Rawlings, you are hereby stripped of rank and charged with high treason for the crime of knowingly binding a Priestess without permission and damaging property of the Empire!”
The gathered Elites shifted around us, attention flicking between wild-eyed general, shirtless captain, andme—an unsightly, damaged mess.
I almost smiled. Where the general painted a picture of a hidden, Divine power, they saw a wild, broken thing with no fight left to speak of and only one thing left to give. No matter the general’s pretty, rousing words, the Elites saw a creature spattered in blood and dirt, dressed in ragged layers of borrowed clothing. A girl who clung to her Elite, hardly able to stand, much less spawngenerationsof enslaved hybrid Priestesses.
They didn’t see the curator’s Golden Boy augmented by an unparalleled power, but a man who was too pale beneath his golden tan—and green beneath that. A man who leaned on his filthy, disheveled Priestess for support and faced judgment unarmed.
They couldn’t see what had ignited the general’s madness, caught no whiff of a power that could ruin them all. And if I took just a little more of his weight… allowed just alittleof my fear show on my face… only a dead Goddess would ever know.
Allowing weakness to disguise chaos, I cowered in his shadow. Played the trembling victim with left hand planted on my bonded’s lower back, pendant dangling just above my bleeding fingers. For if this was to be my ending, I wouldn’t go without satisfying the vengeance that had driven me here.
Wouldn’t meet my father without hands soaked in the blood of his murderer.
Marco melted back from the front step, putting distance between us and him. Taking a position that would save him from the fallout of a last stand.
“Have you nothing to say for yourself, cousin?” the general asked, throwing his hands wide. He didn’t acknowledge the startled shouts from those who ducked, cringing back from the arcing path of an Elite with his finger on the trigger. No, standing in the center of a ring of onlookers, his lips parted to reveal a mad grin. “Or shall your silence be taken as admission of guilt?”
“Guilt?” Asher asked, having the gall to smirk. “That’s a bit of a reach, even for you,sir.I’m merely trying to understand the nature of your accusation.” Pulling me forward, he clamped both hands on my shoulders. “You thinkmyPriestess is capable of making an attempt onyou?I know she’s a savage little warrior, but surely that doesn’t equate to attempted murder?”
The mob began to murmur, soothed by rational words.
“I have to admit,” Asher continued, tucking me close to his bared chest. Making me look as small and fragile as I felt. “I’m concerned for you, cousin. Radical, baseless claims aren’t like you at all. Are you sure you’re well? I heard you had an episode of some sort, just this morning.”
Snarling over the crowd, the general took aim—though for the moment, it was absent that deadly glow of building ki. “She’s Trila-Glís, you snivelingdog!And as such, I hereby claim her in the name of the Emperor!”
“Trila-Glís?” My bondmate laughed, then, pushing me behind him, though hardly clear of danger. “Only in my most selfish fantasies, I’m afraid. Did she not fail to make the Lotus bloom?Twice,at your insistence?”
At this, all those gathered stilled. All butonegreen-eyed impostor lurking beyond the circumference of our last stand. Edging toward the captain’s house, Alicia’s cheeks were stained with incriminating tears. Come to witness the rotten fruits of her labor, had she?
Trembling inside and out, I couldn’t muster the vitriol to sneer. Even when Sasha rose from the cobbles, standing at her master’s back as if drawing a line between sides.
“Where is your evidence?” Asher asked, addressing his brothers. “Would you dispense a death sentence without trial? Where is the justice in that, cousin? I did not swear fealty to an Empire that would claim a Priestess at will and betray the sacrifice we make as soldiers! Where does it stop? What’s to sayyouwon’t be next?” he asked, pointing at the closest Elite.
“You are not fit to keep her!” General Tilcot screamed, spittle leaving his manic grin wet and slimy. And then, before Asher’s rational words could bolster support, a shower of brilliant green lit the faces of those gathered. Sleek metal glowing with the power of three.
I bared my teeth amidst the screams and shouts for reason, wrapped bandaged fingers around the pendant, and called the darkness to the fore. Asher didn’t fight me, not even when my veins began to pulse with sluggish gold and Marco prepared to end it for good. Taking aim.
Asher stood, chest bared and unarmed, watching the general disgrace himself and flout Imperial law before an audience.
In life or death, condemned by his own hand, General Tilcot screamed, “Step away from the witch!” flinging drops of vibrant plasma with every syllable.
But it was Sasha—lips split, left eye swollen shut—who stood. Sasha whose right hand spit shadows, and whose veins flooded with gold. She, who threw back her head and laughed, wrapping her dainty, bejeweled fingers around her master’s elbow. Silencing him with the slightest touch. “You want a witch?” she purred, ki swirling and whipping at her unbound hair.
Jaw slack, I could do nothing but stare. Struck stupid as the High Priestess was reborn. As she stripped away decades worth of protection and gave herself to the dark. “Goddess,no.”
Molten gold surged beneath her skin, bleeding into the general as he strained against her. Helpless, ki belched from the muzzle of his weapon. Not a torrent of misery, as it had been on the front lines, but the dribble of too much ki gathered in one place. Overflowing, it landed with a hiss, charring the cobbles with lime soot.
“You arrogant fool!I am your witch!”Sasha screamed, head thrown back. “I am the last of the Goddess’ chosen! The last true Trila-Glís! Not this pathetic girl and her mundane Elite.” Grinning, she batted the general’s hand away when he clutched at her skirts. “I am the last of the line. There will never be another like me, with power likethis!”Spine flexing at an impossible arch, she writhed as Elite ki pooled around the general, her voice coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. Glaith glittering as she worked to topple a monster. “For your crimes against my people,” she said, and forced the big man to his knees, “you will burn.”
Eyes bulging, the general began to smoke. Kneeling in an ever-widening pool of plasma, his mouth dropped open in a silent scream as clouds of green steam billowed around them. Thickening with each passing moment. Obscuring the High Priestess and the man she’d given everything to destroy.
“Take cover!” Marco bellowed, shocking the stunned crowd of mixed slaves and soldiers into action. “Asher, get back! Take the wildcat and go!GO! Get back!”
But I slipped the captain’s leash before he could utter a sound of protest, for Iknew. I knew what she was going to do, because it had beenmyplan that had inspired her.
Running flat out, I leaped off the porch, ends of my dress snapping against my heels, kicking up swirling eddies of lime fog as I plunged into the cloud. Sidestepping the plasma, my eyes were not for the fallen general missing from the waist down, but the woman consumed in blackest flames.
Without thought, I lunged, tackling her free of the deadly plasma before it began to chew on her flesh and bones. Tumbling together on the cobblestones, I seized her right hand, trying to pry her Caledonian ring off her finger. Trying to break her connection to the parasite dragging her into the Void.
