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“Where is my sister?” The shaky male voice seeped through my anger. When I did not answer, he repeated the question as if I had not understood him.

My eyes flashed up to see the prince limping towards us in the gore-filled ballroom.

Only one strand of fucking hair was out of place, but his shirt was ripped and he was splattered in blue gore.

“Taken,” I ground out. How thick was he?

“Yes, but where?” the prince asked slowly, articulating each word as though I were a beast incapable of understanding the Mortal tongue.

I knew what I looked like. My eyes were pure black, dark veins pulsing beneath skin slick with the blood of the monsters I had torn apart with my bare hands.

But it was not the panic burning through my veins that made me look like a wild beast—it was the feral, possessive need to rip apart the God who took what was mine.

“The Hells,” I growled, watching the colour leach from his skin and his mouth turn slack.

“How do we get her back?” he asked without hesitation, swallowing visibly but setting his shoulders in determination. I could already tell he was going to be a fucking pain, but for Lyra, I would keep him alive.

I gave him my back; I not only had no time to waste on the miniature princeling, but I did not know the answer to his question.

“Caelum,” I said coldly. “Find me a passage to the Seven Hells.”

Caelum watched me with the same cool, calculated mask he always wore. He was my oldest friend, one of the few people who had helped me have a purpose outside of my curse over the last thousand years.

He opened his mouth, eyes softening as if he were going to deliver something I would not like. Like he was going to tell me it could not be done.

“Find a fucking way,” I demanded before he could respond. My boots squelched against the blood pooled on the floor as I pushed past him and Solas.

“Where are you going?” Solas demanded, voice filled with concern as he fell into step behind me.

“To hurt something,” I shot back without pausing. If I did not distract myself, the pain in my chest would render me into a useless husk.

I dissolved into my shadows mid-step, letting them tear me apart into nothing.

It was not long until I found my victim.

He paced relentlessly in his room like a spooked animal, wearing a track of gore into the plush carpets. Gore that he could have only picked up by running like the coward he was.

“Little King,” I said slowly, my accent rolling over the words as I materialised from the darkness.

His steps faltered, and Vaylor became unnaturally still as he tried to school his features.

But he could not fool me. Fear rolled off him in hot and metallic waves. My nostrils flared as I inhaled the intoxicating scent, fingers twitching with the need to hurt him.

“Commander—”

I lunged. Shadows ripped him from the room as the world dissolved into suffocating darkness.

The void pressed in, weightless and endless—then stone slammed back into existence around us. Damp air filled my lungs, heavy with iron and rot as the dungeons of Castle Obsidian closed over us like a tomb.

The pathetic tyrant dropped to his knees, grey as a rotting corpse, and vomited his stomach contents onto the cold stone.

I crossed my arms, my gore-splattered shirt straining against my biceps as I leant against the iron bars of his new cage.

He coughed and spluttered before looking up at me, anger making his face gain some colour back. “We had an alliance,” he yelled, spittle flying as his voice echoed off the walls.

“Had,” I repeated, shadow-jumping directly in front of him and slamming my fist into his gut. The air ripped from his lungs in a broken wheeze as he crumpled, dropping into his own vomit like the pathetic excuse for a male he was.

I crouched next to him, threading my fist into his hair and hauling his head up with a violent snap of my wrist.