The first hound’s head separates from its shoulders before it can react. The second gets my blade through its core while my claws rake across its flank, tearing apart the magic that holds it together. Divine blood—if hounds can be said to bleed—spatters across the ice in thick, silvery sprays.
More. Kill them all.
My power surges, bright and hungry and absolutely focused on the single imperative that matters.
Destroy anything that threatens what’s mine.
“Two more—eastern approach—they’re coming fast?—”
I pivot. The last two hounds come at me from both sides, a coordinated pincer. My dragon doesn’t care about tactics. It sees threats to what’s ours and responds with savage efficiency.
Steel takes the first through the eye socket. Claws rip the second’s spine out through its belly. Both hounds collapse, twitching, their divine magic bleeding out onto the frozen ground.
Silence falls.
I stand in the clearing’s center, surrounded by the shattered remains of six Crown Hounds, my breath coming hard and my blade dripping with divine ichor. My claws retract slowly, scales sliding back beneath skin that’s still burning with the hunt.
Zephyra emerges from cover. Her eyes are still bright with the Veil’s power, silver gleaming in the darkness. She’s pale—paler than before—and I can see the fine tremor in her hands.
Her gaze drops to my hands. To the blood—divine and viscous—coating my fingers.
She doesn’t recoil.
“More will come.” She steps into the space beside me without a glance at the blood on my hands. “The scout will have reported our position before we?—”
“Already calculating.” I wipe my blade clean on a dead hound’s flank. “Defensible ground. Before the next wave.”
ZEPHYRA
We walkin silence before he speaks.
“The Arbiter knows what you could become if you survive long enough to evolve. It’s trying to destroy you before you reach your potential.”
The implication hangs between us. My potential. My evolution.
His expression doesn’t change. But there’s a stillness in him that speaks louder than any words.
“Why?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. The fire crackles between us, throwing shadows across walls that have witnessed centuries of desperate travelers seeking shelter from divine punishment.
“Because you don’t look away.” His voice is quiet. “The blood on my hands. What I become when the violence takes over. The deaths I deal without hesitation or remorse. You witness all of it, and you’re still here.”
“You granted them mercy?—”
“I killed them.” No softening in his tone. “Quickly, cleanly, efficiently. But I killed them. And you didn’t turn from me afterward.”
The words land somewhere deep. Somewhere I didn’t know was vulnerable.
“You’re not what you think you are.”
“I’m exactly what I think I am.” Simple. Factual. Not self-pity or self-aggrandizement—simple acceptance of who he’s become. “I’ve killed more beings than you’ve met in your lifetime. Humans, witches, dragons, the Arbiter’s soldiers. I’ve waded through blood for centuries and never once hesitated when the kill was necessary.”
“Necessary being the distinction.”
“Necessity doesn’t change what I’ve done. It gives it purpose.” He turns his body toward mine. “Most people see the blood and nothing else. You see past it.”
I don’t know what to say to that. Don’t know how to respond to the raw honesty he’s offering, the vulnerability beneath the brutal truth.
