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A haunting laugh shook Silver’s body, and I yanked the blade from her back as she crashed to her knees. She’d bleed out faster with the wound flayed open anyway, and only then would we be free of the cruel sound echoing around us.

Fucking finally I’d be free to just be with Lux. That was it. I wanted nothing else, even if it meant sitting on that hideous throne Loki built, and dealing with the hunger and fear and needs of all of Vylheim. With Lux, it would be worth it.

I wanted to meet her eyes and tell her we were almost free, but she stood across from me—only her sister separating us—with her eyelids sealed shut.

“It’s not over.” Silver’s voice rattled through me. Though Silver was slumped forward with blood soaking the side of her white dress in a bloom of scarlet, she twisted and glared up at me. A disturbing smile carved across her pain–addled face, and as soon as she opened her mouth again, her brows relaxed and nose stopped flaring. Whatever she was focusing on tore her attention away from the pain, and it was fucking terrifying.

Instinctively, I stepped back from her with the dagger still in my hand. Her blood trailed down the jagged blade, racing to drip onto my skin.

“Point it at her, Drakkar,” Silver said. I glanced at Lux, whose eyes flew open, and my body wrenched past Silver and toward my wife with the blade pointed at her, as if I could no longer command my own body. My muscles were tired, but this was different. This was… my heart collapsed inward, crashing into my gut as my jaw dropped.

“No,” I breathed. Silver could still compel me. Fuck! I’d been trying so damn hard to forget the cracks in my soul that I didn’t see the obvious. Of course she could still compel me. My soul remembered being a vampire, and she was my maker, my destroyer, and the shatterer of my eternal essence.

Silver barked out a laugh at my shock from where she still knelt on the cobbled stone behind me. “Attack her.”

Lux’s golden eyes flicked from me to her sister and then back to me, but even with her foresight, she didn’t seem to process what was happening until her gaze dropped to the weapon directed at her. She stumbled back, but not fast enough. Silver’s compulsion pushed me forward in time to grip my wife’s forearm.

I clenched my teeth so hard I swore they’d crack, but nothing kept me from moving at Lux just as Silver had compelled me to. Words tumbled out of me as I lunged at the woman I loved. “You can’t do this, Silver, I’m not vampire anymore⁠—”

“I shattered your soul once already,” Silver said. “I was your maker, and I still own you.”

“No,” I growled, fighting back with every ounce of energy. My pathetic, weak body had little effort on its side now.

With a ragged, desperate inhalation, Lux forced the words out, her voice cracking. “This isn’t possible. I restored you⁠—”

“Pin her down!” Silver shrieked. My body—no, my soul—obeyed, and I had no power to stop it. Hel, we were so stupid, stupid in love, distracted, and too hopeful, and through it all we ignored the worst that could happen.

I flung myself at Lux and as I crashed down on top of her, slamming her against the floor, I winced at the sound of her skull cracking on stone. She’d feel every bit of this but wouldn’t die.

“Cut her open,” Silver commanded.

“No—”

“Slowly,” Silver continued. “Drag the tip of the blade along the veins in her arm, all the way down. Make it hurt.”

Tears flooded my eyes as Lux screamed and scrambled away from me. “Drak, don’t!” she begged. The horror contorting her face broke me.

“Use…your…” each word took effort, but I spat them out one by one. “Foresight.”

“Keep going,” Silver said. A shadow splayed behind me, casting long over Lux and me.

Silver stood over us, watching every drop of blood as I jammed the dagger into the soft spot at Lux’s inner elbow. She kicked and wriggled beneath me, but I was stronger. With my hips pinning her waist to the floor and my knee on her other arm, she had no way to fight back.

“Come on now, Drak, pull down. I know you still crave a little blood. Carve every vein in her arm open and let her bleed out for you. Again and again and again.”

I shook my head, but my arms and legs remained obedient to my maker. I resisted the force of the compulsion for only a few seconds. When my effort gave in, the dagger split Lux’s arm open all the way from her elbow to her wrist. Blood seeped out, fast, faster.

She arched beneath me, quivering and tense and wracked with the agony of my blade digging through her flesh and muscle down to the bone.

Everything got messier when I couldn’t swallow back my tears. Salty and hot, they splattered across her arm, and she seethed from the sting of it.

“I’m so sorry,” I breathed.

“Again,” Silver shouted. Her shrill tone was a throbbing ache at the back of my head. “The other arm!”

“No,” I whispered, even as I cut open my wife’s body and watched as her blood stained the floor beneath us. “I will never forgive myself.” A sob broke through, and I shook my head.

Fuck this weakness. Not the crying, but the inability to resist my maker. I hated it. I was weak in body and soul, a monster inflicting inexplicable pain on the person I loved most. Tears blurred her face as I repeated my sorrow over and over. “I’m sorry, Lux. I’m so sorry. I can’t stop…”