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Old studies from boyhood drew out a memory of the custom, an old ritual in battle where the one who sent a soul to Salur would point their head, acknowledging they knew they’d done the killing, then touch the earth, a symbol for the soil to now take the body back to dust.

Before Jordis could stand again, some force, some power in my chest doubled me over. As though a fist curled around my lungs and squeezed, I could not draw a deep enough breath.

I had no voice, but my mouth was open in a silent cry. My body shook. Distantly, I thought I could hear Thane’s shout of my name. Pain lashed across my scar. Frost lined my veins. Craft roared like a thousand battle cries in my head. I thought my skin might shred off my bones.

In the moments when I thought my bones might flip inside out, a burst of shadows erupted from my scar, my pores, my damn soul.

I stumbled to my knees, surrounded by walls of inky shadows. Mists of frost and night curled over me like a storm rolling over the sea.

I drew in a rough breath through my nose, again and again.

The viciousness I kept beneath my skin was free.

One half of my mouth twisted in a wretched sort of grin. Take them. Take them all.

Swift as the strike of a blade, rivers of inky black shot across the battlefield. The dark skeins of my soul wove in and out of warriors, hunting for those who stood against our melder, our wife.

“Roark!” Thane skidded to a halt, nearly falling off his feet when he reached me. “Are you all right? By the gods, you look frightening. The red is still in your eyes.”

My grin widened into more or less a snarl. Because I am he and we are we. In this moment, we are united in the same purpose. I am nothing but wickedness until they’re all dead.

Thane kept a hand on my shoulder, but his eyes tracked the battlefield. “Well, then, I’d say your twisted soul is making good on that.”

True enough, across the field, Stav Guard toppled over, confused when the strike of Skul Drek stole their souls. Dark Watch warriors were there to meet them with their blades.

Gunter whooped nearby and sliced at a fallen Stav whose eyes had gone bleary. Auki, Keela, and Yanson took down the guards the moment I left them as nothing more than shells.

“Roark!” Brynn shouted. “Virki!”

Near the trees, my uncle battled the queen. My mother was two heads shorter than Virki, but she fought with the pain of a broken heart. Virki slashed and cut at the queen, clearly trying to escape into the woods rather than engage.

Elisabet would not let him go.

She struck and jabbed and parried. Virki backpedaled, then slashed at my mother’s middle. The point caught the queen across her side. She cried out her agony but struck again.

I scrambled to my feet. Thane close behind.

Virki struck my mother’s shoulder. I quickened my pace. For what he’d done to my brother, to my cousin, and to Lyra, Virki would meet the hells.

Fifty paces, twenty. I drew nearer.

My mother made another strike. Virki dodged swiftly enough that she stumbled. My blood froze. Before Elisabet gained her footing, my uncle gripped her hair and plunged his sword into her chest.

No.

“Shit!” Thane’s curse near my side rattled in my skull.

Virki ripped the blade from my mother’s heart.

Ten paces at his back, I let my ax fly. A wave of violent delight rushed through my veins when the edge buried into the blade of his shoulder. Virki fell forward. He groaned and tried to crawl away, the head of my ax in his flesh.

I stepped onto his spine. Shadows closed in. My uncle let out a sob when coils of black wrapped around his throat. The form of my depravity took hold of Virki’s throat and heaved him off the ground. Copper rage met gold hate when the deledan spun my uncle, dangling in his grip, to face me.

I gripped his jaw and mouthed, Beg me.

Virki trembled. The ropes of darkness tightened around his throat. His skin turned a sickly shade of blue. His veins popped in his forehead. “P-please.”

I flashed my teeth. No.