“Stop talking.” I considered as she slammed her mouth shut, wiping her nose on the back of her sleeve.

I didn’t give a damn what the Eldest Sister knew. I’d send the old hag the maps myself, for all I cared; she would never betray Veladar, no matter how much she hated my kind. The Silver Sisterhood was a dying institution, and she was desperately trying to hold on to power, playing little spy games to feel like she was accomplishing something.

“I want you to answer exactly what I ask. Don’t ramble at me about anything else, understood?”

She nodded slowly, staring at me through puffy lids.

“Where did you get Makariy Agripin’s name? Who told you to contact him?”

Ellena shook her head, eyes filling with tears again. “Nobody. I’ve never heard of him before! I swear I’m telling the truth!”

I stared at her, and unfolded the latest letter Visca had given me.

It was written in a delicate feminine hand, simplistic, with swirls under her g’s and y’s. I looked it over briefly, scanning the damning report: Mines reopened last week. Shipments aren’t scheduled for another month. Walls in Fog Hollow weak to the east and south, repairs discussed…

“Is this your handwriting?” I held it up for her inspection.

Ellena opened her mouth, closed it. “I didn’t write that.”

“Is it your handwriting, or not?”

“I swear to the Lady, I didn’t write it!” she shrieked, breaking out into fresh sobs.

I picked her up by the scruff of her neck, keeping a tight rein on my anger. She would be easily crushed. I dragged her to the table, shoving the map aside and laying the letter out flat, picking up a pen I’d used to mark likely spots for new legions.

Ellena exhaled a long, shuddering breath as I put the pen in her hand.

“Go ahead. Write anything you damn well please. Right here, in this blank space.” I pointed at the empty bottom of the paper.

Her face crumpled again as she wrote: I did not write these letters and I don’t know how they came to be. I have never heard of Agripin. I wouldn’t betray you.

“Why not? I certainly have never shown you any gratitude, nor any love.” I picked up the paper as she dropped the pen like a hot coal. “How much gold were you promised for this information? Did Agripin tell you that Foria would welcome you with open arms after you’d leeched us dry?”

She simply shook her head again, face twisted into an unrecognizable mass, wet with tears. The sounds coming from her were more animal than human.

“It’s a perfect match, Ellena.” I held up the letter, both top and bottom written in the same hand. “This is written in your hand. Shaking your head does not change the truth.”

It was the only motion she seemed capable of, a constant negation and an obvious lie.

I had made a terrible mistake in trusting that we couldn’t be brought low by a single conniving, petulant woman with an ax to grind. Ancestors only knew what she’d been doing, a silent pair of eyes and ears, collecting information and sending it along to Agripin and Hakkon. All this time we’d thought she was simply writing the Sisterhood, when she was keeping far more damning secrets locked in her head.

I dropped the letter to the table, her choked sniveling the only sound in the room.

“What did he promise you?”

I had to know what they’d been worth. I didn’t know why, nor why I wanted to carry that pain inside me, but I felt that at least one person needed to know what all the denizens of Tristone had cost. What their lives had been worth. How much gold could be weighed on the scales against their souls?

Hypocrite, the monster inside me breathed, self-recrimination a hot flush of shame beneath my fury. But at least I wore my shame where everyone could see it.

Ellena collapsed to the floor, quivering. “Nothing! I was promised nothing, I don’t know who he is!”

Disgust welled in me as I watched her shake and writhe, sobbing into her hands again. And under the disgust, anger churned, an unstoppable tide that grew in fury with every second that passed.

How pathetic, that she could so easily sell my people, and then cry about it when she was caught out.

“Please,” she gasped, reaching out to touch my foot with shaking fingers. “I didn’t—”

I knelt and grabbed her by the throat, the fury getting the better of me. “Don’t touch me.”

The urge to reach into her chest and pluck out her heart, to eat it whole as the light died in her eyes, nearly overcame me, and yet I sounded as calm as if we were discussing the weather. I felt like an observer in my own body, watching a demon take over and operate my limbs, fingers squeezing tighter and tighter on that fragile column of a neck.

I lifted her upright, and Ellena let out a soft wheeze. Maybe a word. Maybe ‘help’.

She was past help now. Past anything. I would not only punish her, but leave her unburied and unmourned. Perhaps I’d toss her remains into one of the sinkholes leading Below, let her soul rot down there for all eternity.

She would be forgotten. I would ensure it. The Sisters would not receive her body, nor would I grant her peace in the afterlife with a pyre to free her soul.

“I am responsible for every life in the Rift.”

Her mouth opened and closed, pulling the threadiest whisper of air into her lungs. Her nails scrabbled ineffectually at the back of my hand.

“Every man. Every woman. Every child.” Her cheeks were turning red. “Every word you sold to Agripin was a direct betrayal of that responsibility.”

Ellena stared at me in disbelief, and shook her head again.

Red washed over my vision.

“How dare you shake your head at me?” My fingers tightened, and the veins in her eyes burst, sclera turning bright red. “How dare you deny their blood on your hands?”

I was roaring, but it sounded distant. I felt like I was squeezing air, but her bones were cracking against the palm. I would break her; I would ruin her. With every word the rage grew hotter, brighter, until I gave into the primordial beast screaming in my head.

Flesh tore; bones cracked beneath my fingers, as delicate as glass. I gripped the pulsing organ in her chest, squeezing it until my claws dug into my palms.

As the last burst of life left her crushed heart, the fury cooled.

Finally I stopped, staring at the thing I held. A bag of meat. No signs of life. Her face was nearly black, eyes bright red, blood trickling from a corner of her mouth. The sharp scent of her piss filled my nose. She’d voided herself in death, a final insult.

I dropped her, unsure if I was more horrified with myself, for losing my temper after so long keeping it chained, or with Ellena, for selling my people and having to gall to piss herself in her final minutes.

Her corpse twitched, and I snarled at it, wishing I could bring her back and murder her again, feel the life leave her flesh once more.

Something moved in the doorway. I looked up, fists still clenched, lips still drawn back in a snarl. Cirri took a tiny step back.

How long had she been there? Had she watched me kill her? Watched me become the beast I tried so hard to hide?

Her wide eyes went from me to the twisted remains of Ellena, and back again.

What have you done?

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Chapter 37 Cirri

My palms were sweating, heart racing with nerves.

How was I going to ask him? I would be as good as accusing him of being kin to the wargs. I could only imagine what the vampires of Ravenscry would think if they heard me making such a suggestion… but it needed to be done.

For whatever reason the vampires had seen fit to include Wargyr’s rune in their book, it was part of the root of a shared history, and even if every vampire alive in the Red Epoch was dead, there had to be some small hint of the relation between the two.