He’d stopped talking to her, ceased taunting her. His silence was worse. As if he’d excised the last of her humanity, transformed her into nothing more than a ritual sacrifice to his feverish bloodlust.
August leaned in with the scalpel, and Cassandra clenched her jaw in delirious anticipation as the cool metal pressed against her skin. But the sharp bite didn’t follow.
He paused, cocking his head.
“Don’t move,” he growled.
She almost laughed. Where did he think she was going to go?
He stalked for the door, ruffling his feathers.
Despite her weakened state, she pulled at her cuffs, unwilling to let him crush her lingering defiance. Her blood-drenched wrists and ankles provided enough lubrication to inch the cuffs back, but not enough to slip free. She strained against them, her frustration boiling over, and she bit her lip to muffle a howl.
August placed his ear against the door before it flew inward. The whining metal crumpled, crushed by some massive force, and August skidded across the floor into the curved stone wall.
The air in the room rippled as something—or someone—pushed in, and Cassandra swore she could feel a combustible rage radiating from the invisible mass.
August cowered against the wall, rubbing at a gash on his temple. He sensed the presence as well, and wind erupted from his outstretched fingers.
It was deflected by a stronger gust that shot from the rippling air. August scrambled to grab the scalpel that he’d dropped on the floor before a large hand burst from the mass, hauled August up by the throat and slammed him into the stones. Wind churned around him, stirring his dirty blond waves and ruffling his feathers, sucking the breath from his lungs.
August choked, then stabbed the scalpel into the hand. A yelp, and the hand released August before disappearing into the swirling morass.
August tried to duck, but a fist slammed into his face, sending his head ricocheting off the wall with a fleshy thud. Crumpling to the floor, August pressed a hand to the back of his skull, then roared as he examined his blood-soaked fingers.
He attempted to rise, but booted feet burst forth, stomping his wings and pinning him to the ground as more gusts attempted to tear the breath from his lungs.
Gasping like a dying fish, August clawed at his throat. He shot out with another gust, a powerful blow that sent the mass slamming into the opposite wall.
Iridescent, black feathers parted to reveal Tristan, his chest heaving and his face twisted in tempestuous fury.
A sob built in Cassandra’s throat, along with a bubble of blood as she tried to scream his name. She pulled at her cuffs, desperate to break free and help take down this winged asshole. Her eyes met Tristan’s, and his wrath and anguish cracked her open.
He’d become a mindless killing machine. All because she’d been threatened.
Tristan rose, spearing a typhoon of concentrated wind towards August. The powerful gusts shredded August’s feathers and he screamed, unable to lift his hands, unable to move at all as the torrent crushed him against the wall.
Tristan increased his power as he stalked forward, the force of his wind ripping through August’s clothes and peeling away his skin.
Tristan towered over his rapidly deteriorating enemy, a bellowing war cry pouring from his mouth—the world-ending roar of a furious, vengeful god.
Cassandra raised her head in gleeful anticipation of witnessing August’s messy end, but couldn’t see anything other than spurts of blood and feathers swirling through the torrent.
The veins in Tristan’s neck bulged as he drained the last of his power.
As soon as the last breeze evaporated, revealing what had become of August, a horrified cry tore from Cassandra’s throat.
A ghastly, grinning skull bobbled atop cream-white bones draped in strings of chunky flesh, and a corona of crimson stained the stones behind the corpse—what was left of it.
Tristan panted in the middle of the room, his arms at his sides, his eyes darting around like a caged animal. As if he were trying to calm himself, soothe his rage, before he approached her.
“Tristan,” she croaked out, and his trance snapped.
He rushed to her side, scanning her cut-up torso. “I’ll fucking melt him to blood and bones all over again.”
She tried to reach up, needing to touch him, but her cuffs clanked against the table. He cradled her wrists in one hand while he ripped through the chains with the other. He did the same at her ankles and she curled in on herself, yowling as the most recent cuts re-opened, leaking fresh flows of claret.
“Don’t move, Cass,” he said. His gentle tone belied the fury crawling across his beautiful, savage features. He unzipped his leather jacket and pulled out a silver tin of healing balm.
