Before he can say another word, I launch off the cliff. Bastien follows closely behind me, those shadow wings spreading out in smoky tendrils.

I don’t hesitate or let myself think. I just reach for the bow at my back, the motions as mechanical as clockwork. Nock. Draw. Aim.

There’s something beautiful about that first moment of clarity. My mind goes quiet and my breath settles as the rage fills me like an old friend, swallowing everything—doubt, guilt, her face—until all that’s left is the bow in my hands and bodies waiting to fall. My arrow punches through a man’s neck, and I marvel at how clean it is. How easy. It’s always so damn easy once you get started.

Bastien doesn’t bother with the finesse of a tidy kill—he just tears through anything that moves.

“Please,” a man begs. My brother doesn’t even look at him as his shadows rip the man apart.

There’s a bleak sort of elegance in it, the brutal way he destroys. The way he tears apart the buildings and makes every death as violent and cathartic as possible. It’s his nature now, as breathing is to the living and rotting to the dead. But where Bastien is like a storm, I am precision violence. The killing calm. I place each shot where it’ll do the worst damage—throats, hearts, eyes. My focus stays on the ritual motions of draw-release-kill.

I orchestrate death like a symphony. With intention. A woman screams as her husband falls. Someone else begs me, and I place another shot. Doesn’t matter where they run or hide. There’s no escaping us. We’re the dark and all its teeth, and tonight, we’ve come to collect.

Through the haze of smoke and screams, I take in the scale of it. The magnitude of the ugly thing we’ve made of this place and its people. This is what we do. What I do.

Movement catches my eye—a woman with pale hair crouching low behind a cart. For a disorienting second, all I see is the Devaliant’s face. That same defiance in the set of her jaw.

So fragile. So painfully vulnerable in a world with no use for soft things.

Just for today. For this moment, I trust you.

I stumble with the force of the memory. It’s barely a blink, a tiny break in my focus, but it’s a crack in the armor wide enough for all those inconvenient flashes of humanity to come bleeding through.

Fuck.

Bastien lands beside me on silent feet, snowflakes drifting between the writhing shadows of his smoky wings. The flat void of his eyes meets mine, weighing. Assessing. Hunting for weakness.

“Something you want to tell me?” he asks.

I can’t look at her. Can’t risk him reading the sickness carved into my face. The hunger that’s eating me alive.

“Not a thing,” I reply.

Silence stretches between us. Without breaking eye contact, Bastien inclines his head toward the woman.

“Then I’m sure this won’t be a problem for you.”

I dredge up a brittle smile as my fingers tighten around the bow. “I’d hate to deprive you of the show.”

Nock. Draw. Aim.

Bastien isn’t only watching me. He watches her too, savoring each ragged breath, committing her terror to memory. And I know with certainty that he’ll remember this. That he’ll take this hesitation and use it like a crowbar to crack me open and dig through my insides until he finds the rot.

So I choke down my regret and let the arrow fly, watching as the light drains from a face that’s a breath away from being hers.

Whatever’s left of my conscience shrivels a bit more.

But monsters don’t get choices or happy endings, so I shut it out, shut it all out, until the only thing left is the mindless, mechanical repetition. Nock, draw, aim. Release. And again. And again.

It ends. Always does, eventually. The last body falls and silence creeps back in, and I’m left with the damning moment of uncertainty still infesting my thoughts.

“Want to tell me what the fuck that was about?” Bastien’s voice cuts through the quiet.

I keep my eyes on my bow. “Don’t know what you mean.”

“You hesitated.”

“My hand slipped.”

But he reads me. He always reads me. Something in my posture, some minute tell.

“Getting sentimental again, Wolf?” comes a voice from above, cold and pitiless as the void between stars. “That’s three times now.”

Fuuuuuuuck.

Alexios lands in a swoop of red and black wings, power lashing across my skin. There’s a promise of violence in his smile.

“Something under your skin again?” he asks pleasantly. “Another inconvenient flicker of humanity when you line up that killing shot after centuries of perfect service?”

I shove my feelings down and bury them deep. “Nothing I can’t cut out.”

“I just hate to see you making the same mistake you made in Hellevig,” Alexios says, settling his wings.

“What happened in Hellevig?” Bastien asks softly.

“The Wolf decided to play games with Bryony Devaliant instead of executing her,” Alexios says. His smile is a sharp reminder that he could reveal exactly what kind of game to my brother.

A betrayal.

Bastien’s gaze pins me like an insect under glass. “How merciful of you, Evander. Extending courtesy to a Devaliant.”

“She’s dead now,” I snap. “Where’s the problem?”

“Dead,” Alexios repeats, “but not by your hand. Now I have a city ready to tear itself apart because you still haven’t found them a corpse to weep over. I have Theodora Devaliant sending me messages down the Claim about riots in the streets because you left the killing to some human halfwit instead of doing it properly.” He stalks closer, power crackling around him. “This is how it starts, Wolf. First, you get sloppy. Then you get soft. Then you end up like our kin—strapped to tables while humans carve you up for parts.”

He casts a significant look over the smoldering rubble and ravaged bodies. “But I’m sure that’s not a lesson you need repeated. Is it?”

“It won’t happen again,” I say.

“No. It won’t.” Those crimson eyes cut to my brother. “Blade, you’re joining the hunt. Since your brother can’t complete a simple task, I need you to find what’s left of the princess.”

My stomach drops. No. No, no, no.

“If she’s in pieces,” he continues, “drag Severin into it. Have him use his magic to piece her rotting carcass together into something recognizable. I want a body. I want it in Hellevig. I want them to see her.”

Ice solidifies in my veins. I have to physically lock my muscles against a flinch. But Bas notices anyway—that minute tell, the panicked trip of my pulse.

He always could see right through me.

“On it,” he says, staring at me.

Alexios hums. “Good. Start in the forests beyond the ashlands. Lots of crows roosting out there, plenty of carrion for them to pick at.” He tips his head toward the sky. “Go on, then.”

Bastien’s jaw clenches. I know better than to assume he’ll let this go. He’s going to spend his nights examining it from every angle, puzzling out why his brother would let a Devaliant live even a moment longer than necessary.

I’m sure I’ll bleed for it.

Then he’s gone, launching into the air with a powerful sweep of his shadowy wings.

Alexios waits until my brother disappears before stepping in close. “Tired soldiers make mistakes,” he says softly. “Doubtful ones make betrayals. Be grateful I haven’t shared with big brother exactly what part of you was doing the thinking when you played games with the princess. Whatever’s poisoned you, dig it out, fuck it out, or carve it out. Understand?”

I nod. I hear his unspoken threat: Or I’ll do it for you.

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