Chapter 10 Evander
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.”
A runed collar winks at the hollow of the captive’s throat, the glyphs flaring as they siphon away his strength. My brother, Bastien, etched the shackles with magic to keep prisoners immobilized while Alexios plays.
I let out a whistle. “Must be quite the prisoner to get the royal treatment. What’d he do? Piss in your wine?”
“He’s a traitor. One old enough to remember the war”—he aims a brutal kick at the male’s side, earning a wet gasp—“and stupid enough to want to resurrect it. A scouting party found Turpori steel on him during the arrest.”
My head snaps up. “Where did he get it?”
Bastien’s blades are infused with his unique power signature.
They were his gift and legacy to our realm—before humans learned that consuming our flesh would transfer our power temporarily.
That our bodies were another resource to be exploited, carved up, and devoured.
Now, the godkillers are permitted to be carried only by a few, but there’s a bustling black market for them.
Every time some fleshbuyer gets their hands on Bastien’s feathers, they can use his magic to make Turpori steel. We keep having to track them down.
“I couldn’t torture an answer out of him,” he says. “Someone scrubbed the memories. But never forget how many of our own were complicit in the slaughter.”
He reaches down and wrenches the demigod up by his hair. “Maybe you’ve forgotten the screams of our dead. Or maybe you’re pissed off that the Eternals of Asteria and Nyholm are all that’s left. Is that it? Loyalty to a murdered Eternal?”
The demigod stirs with a rattling cough and gathers the remaining dregs of his defiance to spit a glob of bloodied saliva onto Alexios’ boots.
For a long moment, Alexios and I stare at each other, and I see my own grief reflected in his gaze. My own need to repay humanity’s sins. A part of me regrets him ever signing the Accords that prevented me from slaughtering every last one of them.
I think he knows that. I think he feels it, too. Understands precisely how deep this poison runs. This ugly, symbiotic rot that we’ll never get rid of.
“Just… kill me…” the captive says between choking gasps. “I welcome it…”
“Oh, I will,” Alexios says. “But first, I’m going to tear you apart until you’re a drooling, shitting husk.” His fingers squeeze around the demi’s throat. “Maybe I should have the Wolf put you back together so you’re lucid when I carve out your insides and feed them to you.”
I watch, saying nothing, as Alexios’ power burrows inside the prisoner’s chest and wrenches. The male makes a noise somewhere between a scream and a whimper as something in him gives with an audible snap.
The king winds his magic deeper. Wet pops fill the air as organs rupture. Blood gushes from the demigod’s gaping mouth, splattering Alexios’ hands and face.
He doesn’t so much as flinch.
“What do you think, Wolf?” Alexios’ voice is light. Conversational. “Want to dust off that healing ability? Should I start with feeding him his intestines or save that particular delight for the finale?”
“Depends. How long are you planning to stretch this out? I have a nice wine waiting for me at home.”
“Hmm, valid point.” He drops the body to the ground with a thud. “I’m leaving his corpse here,” Alexios says, wiping flecks of blood from his cheek with the back of his hand. “Let it be a reminder to anyone who foolishly mistakes my restraint for weakness.”
“You know for sure there are others?”
His smile is bleak. “There are always others willing to ally with the filth who cracked open our brothers and sisters and ate them raw, no matter how many carcasses I leave in my wake. That’s why we can’t ever show mercy.”
My mouth twists in a grim smile. “I know.”
“Yes, you do,” Alexios murmurs, and for a moment, it almost sounds like understanding. Like kinship.
Maybe that’s why he kept Bastien and me around. Saw the empty space where most people keep a conscience and figured he’d found the perfect killers, loyal not because we love him but because he’s the only one who can give our grief purpose.
After all, Alexios knows intimately what it’s like to watch your whole world burn.
He steps over the demi’s body and plucks the muslin from my hands. “Final offering from the princess. Let’s put it to good use, shall we?”