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Aidan meant for me to feel the suffering of my people trapped here in the ice.

That ended now.

“You are protected,” Selene said. “Let it begin.”

The ice exploded in a blaze of moonlight, setting me free.

Chapter Three

Paris

Thankfully, I didn’t hit the ground, but staggered across it, staying vertical. But I felt the throb in my knees from their earlier crack on the ground. Whoa. I’d really gone down hard on the poor things.

The pain soon took a back seat as the violence around me really sank in. We were close to the North Bank of the Albion River, standing on Highwall Bridge. Bodies littered the ground, about twenty of them, some on their last breaths.

I froze, watching a human woman crawling on her belly toward me, reaching out a bloodied hand. A series of stab wounds dotted her back, leaking blood.

She wasn’t getting back up from this.

I rubbed my eyes, unsure of my own mind. How were there bodies around me? Where were the emergency services and the guardians? They wouldn’t stand for a damn massacre.

Right?

No amount of rubbing my eyes changed the scene. Blood still stained the ground, and the bodies didn’t vanish. The sounds of screaming continued to drill into me from everywhere, and the stink of burning assaulted my nostrils.

An explosion sounded to my left, a plume of smoke burping into the sky. Possibly from one of the many museums in midtown; a historical area proudly focused on Oreflame City’s mining past.

A pile of metal debris sat by the edge of the bridge. Gold metal. A scanhawk? Those robot birds were always scanning for executioners, their cawing never failed to give me goosebumps.

Golden.

Aidan.

He’d brought me here.

The dickhead in question leaned against the ornate iron bridge barrier, examining his fingernails. He was using the body of my friend Hal to move around in. Golden hairs twisted in Hal’s beard and threaded through his buzzcut, while the same molten gold swirled in his once green eyes.

Fuck. This sucked.

“Terrible, isnt it?” Aidan opined. “Such carnage.”

I moved closer to him, cautious, ready to deliver an uppercut should the need arise.

Please arise!

I’d love nothing more than to pummel the living shit out of him. Man, the things he’d done, the lies he’d spun. And that was just the tip of the iceberg of his evilness.

A rumble in the distance got my pointy elf ears tingling. I drew luck down my chest for the latest victims of this fucker.

“What’s going on?” I demanded.

Aidan pushed himself off the barrier, giving me his smuggest of grins. “My dear, sweet… Wait. There’s nothing dear or sweet about you.” Cue obnoxious cackling.

Yeah, so fucking funny.

He wiped his eyes, super pleased with himself for dropping such hilarity.

Prick.