“We’ll leave the horses here and go forward on foot,” she said, her mare already digging into the forage. Matheo and Andrian did the same, rejoining her in the center of the square.
“The army was clearly here,” Matheo said, glancing around. “But…where are they now?”
The same question had been buzzing beneath Mariah’s skin since they’d stepped foot in the town. Despite being at a crossroad, Andburgh was no strategic stronghold. It carried no great wealth or barracked any soldiers.
There was no reason for Kol to destroy this place. No reason, other than to draw Mariah out.
But if that was his reason, why leave before she arrived?
None of it made sense. Yet Mariah’s sick curiosity urged her forward, toward the far outskirts of the town. To the one place in Andburgh where she’d ever felt true happiness.
She hesitated, glancing over her shoulder. Her gaze met one of shadowed tanzanite. Her heart cracked to see the pain he didn’t bother to hide.
“I know it doesn’t fix anything,” she said down their bond. “And I want to talk about it more, when this is all done. But I’m sorry. I didn’t mean the things I said.”
Andrian was silent for a moment, a muscle working in his jaw. “You don’t need to apologize. We’re past that now. I’ll follow you anywhere,nio, no matter where that takes me.”
Mariah was too tired to argue. She just blinked slowly, then turned toward the familiar winding path leading away from the town square.
It took allof Mariah’s remaining strength to hold her tears at bay.
If Andburgh’s town square were ruins, then her home—the beautiful little cottage tucked into the woods, ringed by white-barked birch trees and meadows blossoming with wildflowers—was a tomb.
The house was little more than a pile of rubble. It had been set ablaze, some of the cinders still smoldering. The trees were chopped down and scorched into ruin, the flowers trampled beneath bloody feet.
Beside the ruins of her home were piles of bodies—all the people missing from the square. A towering pyre, piled without dignity or respect.
Those people did not deserve this. They were misguided, victims of a society that had lied to them for centuries, but they were not evil or bad.
Only the being who’d done this to them was.
Mariah forgot her guilt. Forgot her anguish and her fear and her regret. Forgot everything except one singular, consuming thing.
Rage.
Magic bubbled up in her chest, spilling down her hands. Ropes and coils of light lashed at the blood-stained earth, reaching for the rubble of her home, snarling toward the sun hanging heavily in the sky. The Marks on her wrists pulsed with the beat of her heart, a war drum against this tormented place.
Mariah slowly sank to her knees, gripped her hands into the grass, tipped back her head, andscreamed.
It was a cry of pain and heartbreak and all the broken pieces of herself. The battle sound of her rage, the lament to her vengeance.
She didn’t care what it took, what sacrifices she had to make. Mariah would burn the world to cinders, would shred the very fabric of existence, if it meant seeing Kol dead at the end of her blade.
“What a treat it is to see you again, little goddess. And might I say—the darkness of your thoughts is so very delicious.”
Mariah’s eyes snapped open. She jumped to her feet, hand falling to her dagger. Steel whistled as Andrian drew his blade. Wood clicked against wood as Matheo nocked an arrow.
It was as if her thoughts—and her scream—had been a summoning.
A tall man strode from the shadows of the tree line. Everything about his appearance struck Mariah like a fist to her gut.
The messy, blue-black hair. The sharpness of his jaw. The too-familiar tilt of his lips as he smirked. The casual grace with which he moved, long legs swallowing the distance.
The only unfamiliarity was the glowing red-gold of his eyes.
Kol halted several yards away, sliding his hands into his pockets. Two men followed him out from the woods, their receding hairlines and thick guts and rotting teeth twisting Mariah’s rage into a mangled, ugly thing.
Shawth and Donnet grinned, victory gleaming in their watery eyes.
