“You’ll have to find her. Consider it a treasure hunt. What do you say to a little dance first?” she teases, lifting her blades that glint in the moonlight.
“I’d say it’s a grave error to push a man to violence, when violence is the one thing I know better than anyone,” I growl, and my muscles ache for blood. For flesh. For lives.
Her face falls ever so slightly. But I notice. I hear the string on Ronyn’s bow flex backwards, ready to loose. A growl rumbles low in Therion’s chest, and that’s all the sign I need that we’re ready, odds be damned.
“Send every fucking one of them to the Final Gate. No mercy,” the words come out a low, lethal command. “Charge!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ELYSSARA
Hope flares in my chest—Ifeelhim. His presence. His urgency. His fury.
But somehow, he feels different. Still him, but changed.
I feel his frantic heartbeat, his lethal violence unfurling. I feel himclose.
I no longer question the voice down the tether.
He came for me.
So, I fight.
Maldrak looms over me, cruel and entitled. Like I am his to claim, brand, command, and rule.But he doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know how long vengeance has been my lifeblood. He doesn’t know that I belong only to Dravara. That I am a daughter of my nation—a queen in the making. A prophet of the gods.And I bow to no one.
Kael’s voice ripples down the tether, frantic and breathless:I’m coming for you, Elyssara. Don’t stop fighting.
Words evade me, but retribution doesn’t.
“Duskae, grant me your power,” I command, unyielding and vicious.
Duskae’s magic roars to life in my veins, mingling with the Lightborne magic that craves carnage. They meld together—Stars and forgotten deities alive in my very blood, and it feels holy to be this powerful.It feels godly.
Maldrak moves to touch me—to unleash his wicked runes, but I am no longer chained.
I spear my magic at his hand, singeing his tool of tyranny.
“You will not touch me again!” I growl, savage and bloodthirsty. He howls, clutching the ruin of his hand as it smokes and blisters beneath the wildfire of my power.
But mercy holds no sway here. I stand, and Maldrak stumbles back, agape at the sudden shift of power.
“You will not look upon me with your wicked gaze,” I snarl, stalking towards him, hand raised. I spear my magic toward his left eye, and hit my target with the precision of a woman with decades of pain cradled in her heart, poised at her fingertips.
Maldrak claps his good hand over his eye with a blood-curdling scream. “You bitch!”
But I’m not done. Not until I’ve cut a thousand scars into his flesh and broken his spirit will I be done.
You can’t kill him, Duskae.Kael’s voice crawls down the tether, labored and strangled.
Maldrak’s taunts scrape through me—whispers that Kael chose him, not me.
WHAT?I shoot back.
Panic seizes my lungs—is Kael really loyal to Maldrak? Why does he want him to live? After all of this, Kael still fights for him?
We can’t break the spell if he dies first, El.Kael explains, voice ragged. He’s fighting. I know he’s fighting by the frenetic energy shooting down the tether, but I don’t care.
I don’t care!I spit back, vengeance my only commander, and I raise my hands again to claim my kill.
