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“COME GET A PIECE OF THIS, FYKAS!”

It wasn’t long before the snow bloomed with crimson.

With only a few dozen more elites between me and the prison doors, I chanced a glance over my shoulder. Sasha and Sylvie were still on the ship, along with all of humans I’d told to stay back. Unless they were trained in hand-to-hand combat like my and Jagaros’s faeries, they’d only get themselves killed in this ever-waning web where only the elites could use their powers directly.

Sasha and Sylvie nodded at me. The cannonball that had crashed into the roof of the prison soared back up before pounding back down.

And my powers flickered in my blood.

Almost there.

Right as I was about to barge through, the doors of the prison flew open of their own accord. I half-expected Dyonisia herself to come striding out, but no—instead, various hulking shapes came prowling into the starlight.

Monsters. The same human-turned-monsters we’d faced in Hallow’s Perch.

Who charged in unison.

“Fuck.” I raised Old Veracious. Without my Walking power, stabbing their brands was going to be a lot harder than last time. I might have to kill…

Moments before the nearest one snapped at me with a many-mouthed jaw, a great, howling wind battered down from the sky.

Forcing it back.

I looked up in time to see Terrin, Dazmine clinging to him, wafting toward us on a boat made of snow-flecked air and touching down just outside of the web of antipower by the ship.

“Sorry I’m late, brother!” he hollered.

Despite the circumstances, a grin hiked up the corner of my mouth. I turned back to the monsters, shaking snow off their scales and fur, scrambling to charge again just as Kanuk appeared on one side of me.

“Should we retreat?” he asked, arrow nocked and aimed. He’d twisted his long, electric-white hair into a braid down his back, several droplets of blood splattered on his face.

“No,” I said. “But we should lure them away from those prison doors.”

“You can’t leave us, General.” It was the captain, appearing at my other side with her cutlass held high and several spikes protruding from her knuckles. “As loath as I am to admit it, we can’t defeat these things without you.”

She must have seen the way I’d been eyeing those open prison doors. Must have known that even if I still couldn’t Walk directly to Rayna, every one of my straining muscles urged me to run straight into the bowels of that prison to find her. To leave everyone else behind. To fend for themselves.

“You’re going in there?” Kanuk asked grimly.

“No. Not yet.” I cleared my throat, my tattoo writhing along my back and Mydusia’s last words hissing in my ears. “They are.”

I raised my hand to give the signal I’d planned out with Rayna’s friends right before I’d left for the temple. If I trusted anyone to get in and find her, to help her escape, it was the people I knew loved her, too.

Without glancing back to see whether they’d started moving, I sidestepped the next monster’s advance, spun, and sliced at the brand imbedded in its spiny shoulder. It shrieked. Thrashed. Turned bleary yellow eyes upon me.

I jogged backward, away from the prison.

“Come get me,” I taunted it. “Come make me pay.” To the soldiers and warriors surrounding me, I yelled out, “Try to destroy their brands before killing! These are innocent civilians made this way by Dyonisia Reeve!”

A monstrous claw swiped at me. I jerked back, hissing through my teeth at the pain that raked my arm before tossing Old Veracious to my other hand and slicing the blade down the opposite shoulder.

Then the brand on its forehead and arms.

It came slumping down. I rolled out of the way right as another monster pounced. This one didn’t have teeth at all, just a gaping mouth like a suckerfish that would swallow me whole if I didn’t turn my blade up toward its fleshy underside…

Cringing against the death blow I was about to deliver, I almost didn’t hear the shriek of animalistic glee behind me. But then Agathea was there, and a horde of cockroaches fluttered up into the gaping mouth meant for me instead.

The monster gagged, stumbled, flopped backward, and I rose to my feet with a nod at Agathea before rushing forward to slice its brands.