“But this will have to do for proof.” He straightens and stares down at me again, clutching that bloodied dress. “I’ll make it a good story, Bryony. I’ll say you were brave. That you didn’t beg when the Wolf came for you.”

His jaw tics, and for a moment, he almost looks sorry.

Almost.

Then he climbs into the carriage and leaves me to bleed out in the dirt.

Memories flicker.

I’m an infant, receiving my first drop of Alexios’ blood in the temple to form the Claim that binds me to him.

Five, when the childhood fingerpricks on the altar change to the dagger in my chest.

Sixteen, when I cut notches into my skin after an anchoring ceremony makes me feel so untethered and adrift that I lose grip on what’s real.

Nineteen, watching Idris drag my father’s body out of the palace woods.

Twenty, when he stumbles into my bedchamber, reeking of wine. “Odessa fell. We’ll tell them it was an accident. Off the Celestine Tower.”

Twenty-one, the last time I die.

I’m ageless as I sink into my memories. They layer over each other: every knife’s sting, every death, every resurrection. Every time I counted my five notches and understood this was all real. An eternity compressed behind my eyes, played out again and again and again.

Not the death I bargained for. But then, I suppose that was another lie I told myself. A sacrifice, bartering for dignity like a starving dog groveling for table scraps. Begging for the right to choose, even if the only choice was in how I met the knife.

We’re all just walking corpses in different stages of decay, the Wolf had said. The only difference is how much of the world we take with us when we finally lie down.

Everything hurts, and at the same time, nothing does. Ice and fire, a strange, floating numbness spreading through me as my surroundings go soft and gray at the edges.

There are worse ends, maybe. Crueler ones.

But as the Void reaches up to claim me, I think this is a particular kind of cruelty, too.

To be left to the dark and the cold. Alone and unmourned.

Already forgotten.

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10

EVANDER

ILAND ON a narrow ledge along the Duehavn Ridge, kicking up flurries of snow.

Alexios doesn’t turn at my approach. His red and black wings flare wide against the night sky as he places a boot on the object at his feet—a body. Well, more a broken pile of limbs and torn feathers. Guess someone pissed him off.

That’s about to make two of us.

“Been entertaining yourself, I see,” I say.

The leather jerkin he wears is worn at the edges—something he trains in, not his usual formal attire. It leaves his arms bare and his tattoos on full display. I recognize the celestial constellations inked onto his biceps, but the script flowing up his forearms is a language that’s been dead longer than I’ve been alive.

The shimmering veil of the Shroud stretches before us. The colors ripple and churn, ribbons of emerald and amethyst threading through fading starlight. But all I notice are the holes. The places where the Vartenan landscape across the divide is visible when it shouldn’t be.

“You didn’t deal with the princess,” Alexios says.

I suppose kings and killers don’t need to waste their breath on pleasantries.

Just like that, I’m in the Devaliant’s bedchamber, with her thighs bracketing my hips and her body arched against mine as she raged. There was no artifice in it. Just the purity of all that pain and anger unleashed, as if she’d wanted to swallow my heart whole.

You’re untouchable in a way I’ll never be. Powerful. Immortal. And you squander it all on meaningless shit like this. It’s pathetic.

What the fuck does she know about the prices I’ve paid? She’s only a doomed sacrifice paying the well-deserved penance for her family’s brutality. So why do I still feel her weight on me? The heat of her skin?

Why am I so eager to go back and see how all that hatred and rage looks when she comes on my cock?

“You promised me an oathbreaker,” I say, dragging my attention back to the god-king. “I didn’t find one.”

Alexios pivots to face me, his red eyes glowing as his power lashes out and slams into me so hard that it rattles my teeth. “She never bled on the altar. I didn’t feel her blood hit the collection channels.”

“The Accords never stated an offering had to be given on the altar. She tithed on the temple grounds. Ergo, not an oathbreaker. Ergo, no bloody smear on my pretty knife. Your Anchor found the loophole to your loophole. You should appreciate the irony.”

I’m baiting him when he’s already primed for violence. But this delicate push-pull is a path we’ve walked many times over the centuries, and fuck if I don’t get a thrill every time I remind him that his leash isn’t as tight as he thinks.

Those tattoos of his flare red. “Did you honestly believe that pathetic excuse would hold? Even if she’s not an oathbreaker, she’s Unclaimed. Nothing stops you from opening her throat.”

I tilt my head, considering. “That needs a second order, then, doesn’t it?”

The air changes. Electricity crawls across his skin, blue-white sparks jumping between his fingertips. Thunder rumbles in the distance. “I would tread very, very carefully, Wolf. If you disobeyed me to be contrary, it’s pointless now.” He reaches for a scrap of fabric on the ground and flings it at me. “This was left on Hellevig’s temple altar, and I felt my Claim fade. Bryony Devaliant is dead.”

I rub the bloody muslin between my fingers. The scent hits me instantly—jasmine, lilac, wisteria. Her. Some strange, nameless emotion stirs behind my ribs. “Who carved her up? Her uncle? Sister? Some noble licking your boots?”

“Does it matter? Killing her lanced the infection before it could spread.”

I don’t know why I should care. She’d leaned into my knife and dared to judge me. She was an arrogant mortal who believed she could dictate terms to a god.

But I made her a promise, and I’ve never broken my word.

I wonder if she thought of me in those final moments—of the death she’d bargained for and the god who failed to deliver.

It shouldn’t cut so deep. I’ve sent countless people to their deaths. Pretty faces, pretty girls, all of them blurring together. She was a Devaliant, and that made her more worthy of a brutal death than anyone else.

It shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. I just don’t like leaving debts unpaid. I’d abandoned her to be hacked apart by vermin who didn’t give her the execution she earned after cutting me open. Her dying breaths belonged to me.

“Anything else?” I keep my voice controlled, bored. As if I don’t care if he gives me another order or tells me to get fucked. “More throats to cut? Bodies to bury?”

“Find what’s left of the princess.” He says it like he’s asking me to fetch his boots. “My Claim snapped when she died, but traces of my magic will cling to her. The worthless idiot who gutted her was too much of a coward to bring me the body.” The tattoos on his arms pulse again, and more lightning crackles between his fingers. “I want a public pyre for the Devaliant bitch. Everyone in Hellevig needs to see her burn and understand that not even Anchors are spared my wrath.”

Something twists in my chest, sharp and unwelcome, as I picture it. Her corpse. Violet eyes now dull and empty, the heart that beat so fiercely against mine entirely still. All that vibrant emotion snuffed out on a king’s orders.

I blink, keeping my expression neutral. “Now?”

“After.” He gestures to the crumpled demi on the ground. “Watch me finish playing with this one.”