Page 16

Kit snapped her fingers, and the mist consolidated, sheathing him in ice, freezing him in place—a monstrous statue.

With a flash of white fang against dark blue lips, Nox swung a baton with their uninjured arm, and Tyrren shattered.

“Well, shit,” said Tristan, running up beside the pair. Zephyr was already there too, pale green light flowing from her hands as she held them over Nox’s shoulder. Tristan made a face at the frozen, fractured pieces of Tyrren strewn across the floor before him, crystallized black blood trickling off each one. “I don’t know whether to be impressed or disgusted.”

If he said anything else, Cedric could not hear it. Not over the howls now coming from Ignatius as whatever bit of man was left inside the beast realized what had happened to his brother. He flailed, throwing Thraigg from his back. The dwarf collided with a stack of crates, releasing a string of curses. And then the sanguinagi fell to his knees.

For a fleeting, flittering moment, the vicious, bloody haze in his eyes seemed to clear. “Please,” he croaked, his voice mangled, rasping. “End it.”

Cedric hesitated.

Ignatius shuddered, his whole body convulsing, as though this terrible spell, this cursed oath was taking hold once more. His eyes were pinned to Cedric, roaming wildly from his neck to his wrists to his hands, locked on all the places sunfyre was searing beneath his skin.

“Please!” he rasped again.

“You can grant him the peace he desires,” called Nox from where they stood with the others.

Cedric’s skin was streaked with the golden light coursing through his veins when he gave a resigned dip of his chin. Heat flared under his palms—no longer healing, not now. Sunfyre wound up Ashrender, encircling the blade like a snake.

“I’m sorry,” he said, before piercing Ignatius’s bucking chest with steel and flame.

Ignatius blinked, the red veins in his eyes receding, relief twisting with the obvious pain in his visage. “Kinsgaith,” he said, the words wet. “My village. My family. My daugh⁠—”

The flame snuffed out. “We will tell them. We will help them.” Cedric mustered as much resolve as he could into the words. He meant it. These were not men made monsters by choice.

“Mira.” Ignatius coughed, black blood dribbling from the side of his mouth. “That’s her name.”

“Mira,” Cedric repeated, turning it into a vow. He looked up, caught Tristan’s eye.

Tristan nodded.

“May Noctis guide you through the Hereafter,” said Cedric, before pulling Ashrender free—clean, fast, merciful.

Ignatius sagged to the floor.

No one spoke.

No one moved, really, until Sid leapt deftly from the spot where she had remained perched during the entirety of the scuffle. She felt like little more than a gentle breeze as she landed on Cedric’s shoulder, making a throne of his pauldron. Pressing her shadowy cheek to his jaw, she let out a low, rumbling purr, and Cedric blinked into motion.

He sheathed Ashrender at his hip, then grabbed a nearby tarp and covered Ignatius and what was left of Tyrren.

“Why do they always think they can take on all of us?” Tristan said, shaking his head.

“Normally, I’d agree with ye, laddie,” huffed Thraigg, back on his feet by the splintered pile of crates that broke his earlier fall. “But I think we all know this weren’t an act of their own making.”

“Precisely,” agreed Nox, thumbing the tear in their coat. “The blood oath they swore to Malakar has clearly been twisted to proportions even I could not have predicted. This was something . . . new.”

“Something awful,” Kit said at nearly the same time. “What was that? That transformation? I’ve never even heard of anything like that before.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Zephyr said meekly, “but never in a thousand lifetimes could I have dreamed of witnessing it. This type of magic, this perversion, has not been seen in Arcanis since . . .”

“Since Malakar last roamed this world,” Cedric finished for her.

She nodded. “He wove something dark and horrible into the oaths they swore. There is no telling what his followers might do, what they may be capable of, once called.”

“This was my doing.” Cedric swallowed, his jaw tight, and Sid nuzzled against his face once more, like she could sense his distress. “It’s like they were reacting . . . awakened . . . by my power.”

“It is nobody’s doing but Malakar’s—and Varyth Malchior’s before him,” said Kit.