“Prove yourself.” A rider spoke. “And slay the monster.”

I sucked in a heady breath and jerked my arm back. My knuckles were smeared with blood. I stared at Tavius’s unrecognizable features. Slay the monster? I could do that. Gladly.

Rising to my feet, I stepped over the trembling piece of shit and picked up the sword. I straightened and turned back to him, dragging the tip of the crimson blade over the stone as I walked back to Tavius.

The promise I’d made to him before whispered in the back of my mind, but this time, I wouldn’t promise to see him burn.

That wasn’t good enough.

I smiled as Tavius rolled onto his side, curling up as if he could make himself the small, insignificant man he’d been when he was alive. My grip firmed as he trembled and shook. The curve of my lips spread. “You will not return to the pits,” I hissed, and this time, my voice was full of fire instead of smoke. “You will cease to exist in any form. Every part of you will be gone.”

Tavius stilled, one swollen, half-open eye fixing on me.

“The physical body. Your consciousness. Gone. You will be no more,” I promised. “I am going to end you.”

That one eye closed.

I lifted the sword above my head, barely feeling its weight—

Do not allow this to leave a mark.

Ash… He had said that when he realized I wanted to deliver the final blow to Tavius. Ash, a Primal of Death, had granted my request.

I’d gotten my revenge, right or wrong. I had it. Reveled in it because Tavius was a bad man. He had it coming, and my hands had delivered it.

“Prove yourself,” Polemus ordered. “And slay the monster.”

My heart thundered. I’d already slain this particular monster.

“Prove yourself.” Loimus’s whisper was a stale wind against my skin. “And slay the monster.”

I’d done as promised: I’d sliced the hands from his body. While I hadn’t carved his heart from his chest or set him on fire as I’d wanted, I had done enough. I’d made him pay, and it had not marked me because…

I was a monster. Like Tavius, just of a different sort.

Panting, I held the sword tighter. If one of the riders spoke, I could no longer hear them over the rushing of my thoughts: Was this right? Did he deserve a final death? Could I even make that choice when it came to him? Should I?

I blinked, my stomach churning. “I…”

“Prove yourself,” Peinea urged.

“I can’t,” I said hoarsely. “It is not my place.”

“You are the true Primal of Life,” Polemus responded. “You may not rule the realm of the dead, but your will supersedes all.”

My gaze cut to the shrouded riders.

“You are the Agna Udex and the Agna Adice,” Peinea said.

The Great Ruler.

The Great Condemner.

Robes stirred around Loimus. “It is your right, as you rule all. You hold within your hands the ability to reward and to condemn.”

Dryness coated my mouth. My arm shook as my attention shifted back to Tavius.

“You did not hesitate before when you were in no position to take a life,” Polemus said. “Why hesitate now when you bear the Crown of Crowns?”

That was a good question. It had been wrong then, and I’d done it without hesitation. I’d done it so many times, not really carrying any lasting guilt. Not even when I learned that by restoring the life of one mortal, I’d ended another’s. Ash had said it was the influence of the Primal embers. Maybe he was right. Primals weren’t meant to feel the way mortals do, not when it came to love and hate or life and death. Perhaps it was how I was raised—taught to become nothing. To feel nothing. It could’ve been the knowledge that I was nothing more than a sacrifice, a means to an end, that had sat side by side with me from the time I was old enough to understand my duty. Perhaps it was all those things that made me a monster of a different sort.

I didn’t want to be that.

I never had.

But it was a choice. I knew that. Because Ash had carried that blood-soaked guilt deeper and longer than I had. Others were raised as I was, and some experienced worse conditions: being abused, neglected, or forgotten. Yet they were incapable of such terrible things.

I didn’t want to be capable of such terrible things.

So, I made the choice not to be.

I would not be a monster.

“I will not condemn him.” Staring at Tavius, I forced my grip to relax. The hilt slipped from my grasp, and the sword clanged against the floor. Murmurs came from the riders’ direction, but something happened before I could look at them.

Tavius shuddered, and then he was…gone. There was nothing but empty space where he’d lain. The sword vanished in the next instant, and I stumbled back.

The horses each bent one bony knee, and all three of them lowered themselves. The riders’ shrouded heads bowed, just as they had before on the road to the Vale.

“You have not slain the monster,” Polemus said.

“But you have wounded it.” This from Peinea.

“Because of that, you have been found worthy,” Loimus added.

“Of us answering upon the time you summon us.” Polemus’s cloaked head lifted slightly, just enough for me to catch a glimmer of glowing, eather-lit eyes. “Until then.”

Before I could say a word, their white-shrouded forms became transparent, like they were made of nothing more than smoke. Within seconds, I was alone in the torchlit cavern—alone with the knowledge that the monster I had been ordered to slay had been…

The one inside of me.

CHAPTER THREE

I stood in the center of the cavern for several moments, waiting to feel disturbed or, at the very least, shaken by the realization that the monster had been me. That the riders had somehow known what existed within me. A coldness that had always bothered and often horrified me.

Instead, I was amused by the symbolism of the multi-headed beast. That one could inflict as much damage as they wanted to the other heads, the parts of themselves that reacted to turmoil and conflict by inevitably causing more pain and heartache. One could continuously hack away at themselves, but it was the center head they had to face head-on. It was sort of like treating the symptoms but never the disease. And Tavius? I exhaled loudly, folding my arms over my chest. I doubted that had actually been the bastard. He was still somewhere in the Abyss, living his worst life. Either way, he’d obviously represented the part of me that could so easily be provoked and reacted violently to feelings of helplessness.

The part of me that could be horrific in its cold cruelty.

The monster inside of me.

And I got why they’d tested me. They wanted to know if I could control myself—my anger. That made sense since I’d have the ability to summon them, which, from what I could gather given what I’d been told and what my intuition confirmed, would bring about the end of everything. Clearly, they wouldn’t want to serve someone who could get angry over something small and end the realms because of it.

My gaze flicked to the etchings in the stone. What left me unsettled was the fact that the riders had known I hadn’t slain the monster.

I’d only wounded it. And did that by the skin of my teeth. Only because I didn’t want to be the kind of person who made such choices.

But that was who I was.

The remaining question was why had they found me worthy when I hadn’t succeeded? And even more importantly… “How am I supposed to get out of this damn cavern?”

The torches brightened in response, the golden fire rushing toward the ceiling once more. As the flames calmed, that crimson light reappeared in the markings, filling them in a wave that encircled the entire chamber. Stone groaned against stone. Half-afraid the cavern might fall on top of my head, I unfolded my arms. Dust and small rocks dropped in patches from the ceiling.