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Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

They each fell in turn, collapsing into the water and across the causeway linking Hurlock Island to the mainland.

“Delightful,” Selene whispered.

Vampires and mortals cheered below, warchoppers whirring around me in celebration, the boats honking their horns.

This wasn’t over yet.

I smashed through the ice smothering my palace, landing in my chambers. Every stride forced the ice to retreat, rolling back in frightened waves, piling into lumpy drifts at the edges of the room.

Outside my chamber door, one of my guards stood with a thrall. Two women, hate drawn across their faces, eyes alight with golden rot.

The vampire attacked first. I spun her, slamming her into the onyx wall.

“In Aidan’s name, you must die!” she hissed.

I pinned her arms behind her back, quickly sinking my fangs into her neck. The blood flowed hot and warm, full of a thousand sensations. Her blood, the mortal blood the people of this world provided us.

And decay. Bitter, disgusting, a poisonous slime sliding down my throat.

It tasted like Aidan’s kisses and his false promises of love.

Camilla’s past words rolled through my mind. “Aidan has rotted your reason. See sense, Silvanus. Before it’s too late. Ask him what he took from you. Demand it. He has no right to hide it.”

But what was this thing she’d mentioned? What had he taken from me?

The rot boiled in my stomach, hot and acidic. I released the vampire, letting her collapse into an unconscious pile as I turned on the attacking thrall, a knife in her hand.

Patti. Sweet and loyal, infected by the disgusting touch of Aidan.

I drank from her, taking him out.

Patti slid to the floor. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, hurrying down the corridor while the rot burned in my belly as a hot ball of iron.

“Keeping going, darling king,” Selene encouraged.

Two vampire guards charged toward me. I made short work of them, picking up speed through the corridors and drinking from every Aidan-afflicted body I found, letting them sleep off the aftereffects.

The acidic heat began to cool, becoming less toxic, losing its potency.

“Leaving,” Selene said again. “The rot is undone in them.”

My goodness, the damage to my palace was extensive. Collapsed walls, windows destroyed, ceilings caved in from the weight of the ice that was recoiling from the moonlight of my body. The cold night air rushed through the corridors, whipping through my hair.

While no vampire had died since I broke free from the ice, they all cried out to me through the Heart of All.

But there were dead thralls everywhere. Crushed, mutilated, their blood and sorrow soaking into every corner of this palace.

A devastating sight, spiking my sorrow.

Only Patti and Elio registered as alive now.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I promise I will avenge you.”