Soldiers fall at her hands, dissolving into dust on the jungle floor.
Therion’s axe doesn’t swing—it cleaves. Each strike lands like a death sentence. No flourish, just brutality. He’s not fighting for glory. He’s ending threats. He’s slicing through men with precision and calculated fury. He unleashes an avalanche of brutal attacks—sliced throats, cracked skulls, mangled bones. He senses movements before they happen, calculating in less than a heartbeat, and killing in a single breath—he’s made for war.
I fight like the warrior Revryn prepared me to be—I cut through flesh like silk, my blades the beginning of their afterlife.
Ronyn picks off Maldrak’s men with unerring accuracy, moving like a blur of stealth and finesse.
But it’s Kael that takes my breath away. He moves like shadow incarnate, not a man, but a force—swords spinning with deadly precision, each strike choreographed in violence and grace. Hisblades sing through the air, leaving behind trails of silver light as if the Stars themselves mourn each soul he sends to the Final Gate.
His shadows crawl along the earth like hounds loosed for the hunt—wrapping around ankles, necks, slicing breath and bone. But it’s Kael’s eyes—cold, unyielding, divine—that silence even the boldest soldiers. He doesn’t look at them like enemies. He looks at them like ends.
Markings of the night sky peek over his armor, veins and muscles tense with exertion as he deftly wields his swords, his piercing blue eyes the last thing these soldiers will see in this world.
Kael. My Starbound. My ruin and my salvation.
I should be terrified—but I’m mesmerized.
A soldier with veins as dark as night rippling out from his bloodshot eyes rushes me. His mouth twisted in a snarl, a shiver licking up my spine at the sight—aBloodbond.I drop low, instincts screaming at me to incapacitate him first. I pull my arm back, ready to embed my blade in his groin.
But invisible hands wrap around my wrist, twisting my arm with inhuman strength.
Pain screams up my shoulder, a jagged blaze of fire. My blade clatters uselessly to the dirt.
“KAEL!”
“I’ve got the Lightborne bitch!” The man behind me snarls, his breath rancid, festering.
Chains clink behind me, and another soldier materializes holding heavy silver chains.A Shadowweave cloak. They’ve been hiding in plain sight.
I hiss in pain.
They wrap the chains around my wrists behind my back. I cry out in agony as they sizzle against my skin, and the tether to Kael snuffs out, going completely silent. The tingle of my magic that hums under my skin quiets, and I feel... empty.
“KAEL!” I cry, and that’s when I see it.
Jax, Merrik and Daelen are already on the ground. Faces pressed to the forest floor, knees digging heavy into their backs, cutting off their air.
Five men crowd around Kael, dragging him to his knees, chains hanging from his wrists, too. He fights, snarling at the men who played a cowardly game.
Seren is dragged down by men twice her size, knees pressing into her delicate back, shoving her body into the dirt, “They’re lillath chains, El. They nullify magic.” She wheezes the words, and a soldier presses their boot to her neck to stop her from talking.
“NO!” I cry, desperation pressing down on my chest, clawing at me to do something.Anything.
Ronyn’s bow is crumpled and broken, lying splintered under a looming tree.
Panic seizes me. I can’t see him.
Ronyn!
We’re vastly outnumbered. More soldiers with the Mark of Morrathys break through the treeline, descending on us in droves.
Kael’s roar of defiance ripples through the jungle, a battle cry, but the cowards who hold him down in chains of lillath land a hit on his jaw, and blood trickles down his chin. “You fucking cowards!” He grits out, his jaw clenched in unhinged resistance.
A strangled grunt escapes me as I throw my head back, connecting with the soldier behind me.
“You fucking bitch,” he snarls, and the blunt force of his hilt cracks into my head.
My vision blurs, but in the distance, I can make out a figure lying unmoving in the dirt.
