Do you still want your Wolf?

Alexios once told me that desire is the most selfish of all impulses. That it drives the infected to incinerate worlds. I’d laughed it off, too young and stupid to heed the warning. Monsters like me don’t want. But now that she’s gone, all my ugly wanting is pouring out, and I finally understand.

I could lose myself in it, I think. In the contemplation of ruin… of the mess she’s made of me. And maybe some part of me is grateful she left before I could infect her with this crude emptiness that gnaws and gnaws and—

A sudden burst of power tears me from my thoughts.

Amara hits the garden square in an explosion of leaves, gasping for breath. Sparks of power flare and gutter around her. She’s on the verge of a magical flameout, and her weaker wing must be in a lot of pain.

I’m at her side in an instant, grasping her arm. “Breathe, damn you.”

I help her onto the garden bench. Amara’s eyes slip shut as she drags in a lungful of air.

“What happened?”

“Flew through the Shroud as fast as I could. I tried… Idris, he…” She coughs. “Bryony’s sister was in trouble, so she went to help, and he… he has her. They’re readying wood for the pyre.”

I go still. Cold purpose settles in my bones.

I knew Bryony planned to settle things with Idris. I should trust that she’ll solve her own problems, mete out her retribution. But the feral thing wearing my skin doesn’t give a shit about shoulds. It wants to raze Hellevig to the ground and paint the whole damn realm red to keep her safe.

Idris Devaliant has debts to pay, and I intend to be his most devoted collector.

“Give your wing some rest and then make yourself scarce,” I tell Amara. “I have an overdue reminder to deliver to Hellevig about its place, and Alexios will feel it. Stay out of the blast radius until the dust settles.”

Amara studies me. “Can you… do anything to the Claimed with Alexios’ leash on?”

I grin slowly. “I’m nearly as strong as Alexios, and I’ve had a long, long time to learn how to slip my collar. He can’t keep his grip on the Shroud and me at the same time.” My power flares again, and I let it fill my veins until I’m blazing with it. “And Bryony Devaliant is mine.”

Because here’s the truth—the secret I’ve been trying to outrun. It’s pointless and trite and hopelessly mortal.

I love her. I love her, and it’s the most idiotic, suicidal thing I’ve ever done in the entire thousand years of my existence.

And I would rather let the world burn than lose her.

*   *   *

I slice through the night sky toward Hellevig Palace. The speed, the chill, the burning strain in my shoulders—it all fades beneath the relentless drumbeat of a single imperative.

Find her and destroy anyone who touched her.

I reach for the tether that shackles me to Alexios, that suffocating collar cinched tight around my power—and I pull. The response is an instantaneous cold so searing it scorches my skin.

What the fuck do you think you’re doing? His voice slams through my head.

Disobeying.

Another lance of agony. My wings falter, nearly dumping me out of the sky. I wrench myself upright with a curse.

I’m not in the mood for your shit, Wolf.

I grin. One day, if the realm blesses you with someone who owns your heart the way she owns mine, you’ll get it. You’ll understand what it feels like to raze worlds for her.

Then I sever the connection and brace for the backlash.

It’s like swallowing an exploding star—like Alexios carved a path into my ribcage and cracked my bones open one by one. But I’d cut out my heart and eat it raw if it meant getting to Bryony. I’d let the god-king tear the wings from my back if those were the terms.

Because monsters like me—we don’t just love. We obsess. We fixate. We annihilate anything that threatens what’s ours.

Hellevig sprawls beneath me, the red spires jutting up across the landscape. The palace emerges into view. The sun is just rising over the compound, casting long shadows across the ground. It looks almost peaceful.

Shame I have to kill everyone.

I angle my wings and dive, the wind screaming past my ears. My boots hit the courtyard with a crack that splits the stone. Guards stumble back when I straighten to my full height.

“Alarm!” someone shouts. “Sound the fucking alarm!”

The idiots fumble for their swords, and I let out a chuckle. “Really?” I ask them, tilting my head.

One’s eyes go wide. More guards swarm in, weapons raised—twenty, maybe thirty of them, circling like they think numbers will save them.

I smile. “All right, then. Go ahead, everyone.”

They strike all at once, and I let loose the beast inside my skin. Let it shake off the rust and stretch its claws.

And I let it sing.

Bones crunch and splinter in wet, tearing sounds muffled by the roaring in my skull. Someone’s screaming. Might be me. Might be the hysterical din of the palace sentries pissing themselves.

I don’t know. I don’t care.

I’ll reduce this palace to rubble and leave it a monument to my wrath so they understand the shape retribution takes when someone puts their hands on what’s mine.

Through the frenzy, Alexios rakes my mind. Talons sink into my brain as he tries to yank me back under his control. I stagger under the onslaught. He’s beneath my skin, a thousand hooks ripping me open.

Obey, he snarls, or bleed.

In answer, I send him a mental image of myself creating a spear of light and punching it through a guard’s chest. It burst out the other side in a spray of gore.

Option three, I say. Immolation.

Fire magic surges in my veins and builds in a wave of rippling heat. Guards scream as armor melts, sloughing from their bodies along with charred skin and muscle. The stench saturates the air.

I could compose arias to the dulcet tones of men boiling alive in their own skin. It never gets old. It’s the simple things, you know?

Alexios slams into the barricades of my mind. Listen to me very carefully. If any more of my Claimed die, if you so much as look at either of my remaining Anchors wrong, I’ll melt the gray matter in your skull and make you lick it off the floor.

The world flickers at the edges, and blood trickles over my lip. Instinct shrieks at me to submit, to fall to my knees, but no force in this realm can bring me to heel except for her.

I seize the nearest soldier. “Where. Is. She.”

A garbled keen is his only response.

Wrong answer, you trembling little cunt.

I snap his neck and drop the corpse, stepping over a dozen bodies as I stalk toward the palace stairs. A beautiful massacre, just for her.

My Devaliant has always deserved nice things.

“Enough.”

My head snaps up. Idris Devaliant stands at the top of the steps wearing his imperial red robes, lip curled as he takes me in—the disdain of a ruler looking down on an insect. But it’s the figure on her knees before him that stops the breath in my lungs.

Bryony.

Her hands are tied behind her back, and Idris’ knife is at her throat. There’s blood on her face, in her hair, saturating the tattered fabric of her shirt. She must have put up a damn good fight.

That’s my girl.

There is no pain I would not endure for her. No horror I would not rain down on her enemies until the bards sing of the Wolf and his Chosen for a thousand years.

Idris drags my Devaliant close as he descends. “I should have known she’d slither from the grave and get one of the god-king’s dogs to join her cause.”

I grin. “What can I say? Your niece has excellent taste in monsters. Give her to me.”

His grip tightens, and the blade makes a shallow cut along her throat. He’ll be paying for that. I’m the only one who gets to make her bleed.