I couldn’t look at them. I couldn’t stand to see what he’d done.

There would be no more words for me, ever.

Please, I mouthed to the ceiling. Who was there to hear me? No one. At this moment in time, alone in the tower, I didn’t believe there was a Lady of Light, nor a Mother Blood. No one who cared at all.

I wasn’t even sure what I was asking for.

My mind drifted, wandering aimlessly—wandering anywhere it could where there was no pain radiating through my arms, making my heart pound unevenly and my stomach churn.

But the sounds of battle outside brought me back to real life. Back to the terrible consciousness of agony and blood, of knowing I was silenced forever.

The screams of wargs. The squelch of metal through flesh. The shouts of vampires and men…

When had it started? While Hakkon was gleefully bringing the hammer down on my hands, or after, while I floated in a sea of dizzying pain?

I licked my lips, tasting my own blood—I vaguely remembered the wet splatter of it across my face, my mouth stretched in a silent scream so wide my jaws ached now—and fumbled to get to my feet, keeping my mutilated hands in the air.

The floor swayed under me, the entire tower tilting sideways, back and forth—I closed my eyes, trying to take deep breaths through my raw throat, trying to steady to the world around me. Another dry sob escaped me, and I swallowed the next one whole.

This was the end for me. I couldn’t cry; I had to see, to do something.

I didn’t look at the blood-soaked table. Instead I forced my gaze past it to the window, where dawn was just brushing its long, pale fingers across the barren land.

Where wargs boiled from the earth, rising by the hundreds, the thousands, dragging down the legions and tearing them apart.

I slumped against the window frame, panting for breath as I looked at it all, wishing Hakkon had simply killed me so it wouldn’t come to this.

From my window, I saw it all.

The land, soaked with blood. Rose, the wargs tearing at her. A storm of crimson petals swirled across the fields, scattering across the mud slurry all around the tower.

I stared down at the ground far below, at the petals fetching up against the stone in a bloody drift.

The wargs and the vampires, their faces so similar in some ways, blind with fury and bloodlust. But gods… the legions were losing. I shook my head, wishing I could scream for them to back off. To let the wargs have this—it was better than my people dying in the burrows beneath the earth.

And yet… there were things out there among the legions.

I gulped down another breath, another sob, squinting through swollen eyes.

Fiends. Fiends standing tall among the legions, each horrific in his own way. Wroth was there, his muzzle split almost to his ears, blade-like protrusions rising from his shoulders and spine. He tore a warg’s throat out, eating it whole.

A fiend with the head of a jackal, a brilliant red eye blazing in the middle of his forehead, his body long and sinuous as he slid among them, numerous hands tearing and gutting.

The last stood upright, painted with red from chin to toes. Bodies hung limply across his broad rack of antlers, and he raised another, goring it in place through the heart on a razor-sharp tine. His long, pointed face opened like a flower, revealing the spines within.

All of them were torn and shredded, flesh hanging loose, mortal wounds on immortal bodies.

But where was Bane?

I slumped against the wall, staring down into the chaos, and finally looked up.

Up, into the reddened sky, where a creature I only half-recognized fought desperately against a huge, dark warg.

Blood rained down in thick spurts. The tattered wings spread wide, blotting out the sight of the setting sun, his skull a crown of horns that grew over his back in wild profusion.

But he fell, an angel of death brought low, the ragged remnants of his wings failing even as Hakkon went for his throat.

I realized I was smiling despite my utter terror for him. He was here.

And as soon as I thought that, my heart swelling, a wave of wargs clawed out of the soil, spilling over him in a relentless stream, ripping into his wings.

No, I shouted silently. No, no!

I needed to go to him. I needed to unlock the door with these useless stumps of agonized meat, to escape and find him…

A dark figure ducked through the wargs, not fighting, but fleeing.

Fleeing for the tower. It was Thorn, hardly recognizable. He was a skeleton of thorns, his head tilted up to the window, seeing me with his eyeless face. He clambered over the wargs, who backed away as they bit and took mouthfuls of thorns into their throats, until he reached the base of the tower and fought towards the door.

I turned away from the window. With Thorn, I could get out.

It took more effort than I expected to simply get across the room without stumbling, panting shallow breaths. Even breathing was painful, hot spikes of pain spearing through me from wrists to chest.

The door was wood, reinforced with iron. I leaned against it with one shoulder, praying it was unlocked and trying to push, but it didn’t budge an inch. A fresh wave of torment sizzled through me, my arms trembling so badly I had to let them drop.

I would kick, then. Thorn would hear me and find a way to unlock it, or break it down.

I rammed my foot into the door, hardly hearing it rattle over the screams and howls outside.

But something knocked in return.

I pressed my forehead to the wood, and another knock came, vibrating through the wood.

Thorn. I exhaled on a sob of relief, kicking again, trying to tell him that I was in here, I was here, come through the door.

Another knock, loud enough to shake the door in its frame.

I backed away as it began to vibrate harder, dust puffing from the wooden slats as Thorn smashed into it from the other side.

All the way to the far wall, bracing myself for the golem to tear through.

But when the boards tore apart, splintering and falling to the floor in pieces, it wasn’t Thorn who entered.

I stood frozen as a snout, hairless and smooth as skin, poked through, drool hanging in strings from the many teeth. Warped, oversized hands tore more boards away, claws ripping deep furrows in the wood.

The warg that pushed through the shattered door was Miro.

His jade eyes were wide and bulging, white pinpricks glowing in the shadows of the tower. His dark hair now spilled in a mane down his back. His body was patchy with fur, skin slick with blood. Deformed, deranged, warped beyond the bounds of the human body… but recognizably him.

“Want… what was… promised,” he panted, a shrill whine in his gravelly voice. His face was not so much wolf as monstrosity, the snout only half-formed, some of his teeth human and flat, others long and jagged.

He crouched in the remnants of the door, his breath heavy and bubbling.

Hakkon had taken the hammer, and my hands couldn’t grip a pen. I had no weapons. I remained still as Miro eyed me, hoping beyond hope that he wouldn’t feel the urge to hunt.

“He… lied.” Miro’s tongue, long and distorted, slithered out and lapped blood from his face. Each word emerged painfully, exhaled on his thick, mucus-roughened breaths.

I didn’t even dare to blink. Sweat dripped down my temples, coated my back—a cold fear sweat, every muscle in my body trembling uncontrollably.

He shuddered, drool oozing over those misshapen jaws and dripping to the floor. Miro rose on all fours, taking one painful step at a time, his head tilted so one of those bulging eyes was fixed on me.

He reared up, stumbling as he tried to walk like a man, a low, guttural groan tearing from his chest and moaning out into the world.

“Eat you,” he whined. “Eat you… take what’s mine.”