Chapter 2
Her limbs grew numb as her vision narrowed to the darkened trail leading into the forest. She forced her body to comply, one foot in front of the other, wading carefully through the tall, bloodstained grass. At this rate, the growing rain would erase the trail.
She clutched her dagger with a white-knuckled grip, blade angled downward.
She had never killed before, but gods, the butcher king tempted her.
Tempted her to be a monster like him.
How she would love to be the dagger in his heart. For turning the people against bondsmiths, for enslaving them, for working them to the bone and executing them.
If he took her sister, she would spend the rest of her days hunting him down if only to rip him limb from limb.
The squall became riotous as she crossed the forest line.
Suddenly, all sound muffled, as if Ksenia had been plunged into deep waters without a splash, her only companions her quickening heartbeat and trembling breath.
The earth beneath her boots was choked with brush, fallen logs, and tangled undergrowth. She picked her way around the massive oak and beech trees. Their ancient, gnarled trunks were so wide that the hollows could swallow her whole.
As she ventured deeper, her head swiveled back and forth looking for threats, but she found herself woefully surrounded by trees that seemed more like animals than flora.
Knots in the wood like curious eyes, their dark centers following her as she trudged on.
Ragged, wet breathing broke the numbing silence.
Ksenia whirled around to find the source of the blood.
Not Danika.
A goat, staked to a tree trunk, its body gutted but somehow still alive.
She cursed, then fell backward into the mud at the grotesque image of its rectangular pupils and distended tongue, covered in blood from its horned head down to its cloven feet.
The commotion sent birds soaring overhead, fleeing the canopy with squawks and cries. She dug her fingers into the mud and pushed herself to run, dagger dropping in her haste. Her slick boot sent her crashing into another tree as she tore away from the body.
The forest line was dim in the distance.
The mud sucked at her shoes, holding her firmly with each frantic step.
Her bondsense picked up a blood-curdling noise that rattled in her skull. This one sounded dark and disembodied—booming like a cathedral organ through her ribcage.
A hellbound blade. She knew the difference the way anyone knew the difference between a scream of fear and a scream of rage.
Soulbound blades sang. Hellbound blades howled; fed deliberate cruelty which corrupted the weapon. Kill by willing kill, until bloodlust was all it knew.
The sound echoed and reverberated off the trees and back at her till she had no idea which way to go, and it was a miracle she reached the edge.
“You shouldn’t have returned.” An even voice broke through, and she spun on her heel to face its owner, brandishing her empty hand in defense.
A half-lidded but intense gaze sharpened with lethal precision on her, and she froze before a tall figure silhouetted against the rain.
His eyes were a startling green—like moonlight striking an emerald’s surface, brilliant but cold.
The rain had plastered his sable curls to his forehead, and she could see his aristocratic cheekbones casting shadows down his face.
She bolted.
He caught her collar and yanked her backward, tearing a scream from her throat.
After a decade on the run, the cat had finally caught the mouse.
He turned her to face him, and her gaze snagged on the gold brooch at his shoulder.
An emblem reserved for one person only: Bohdan Saranov, the captain of the Envorsen, an elite, fearsome guard that surrounded Karsan.
He was scarcely a year older than her at twenty-eight and was desperate to prove his worth as the king’s bastard son.
His illegitimacy had done nothing to blunt his ambition and everything to sharpen it into Karsan’s most ravenous instrument.
“The bastard himself,” she spat, writhing in his grip.
“I had expected more out of you.”
She screamed and kicked, but he held fast and forced her back into the forest. His green eyes dulled the deeper they went.
They reached a clearing in the dense wood, where moonlight and rain punched through the canopy, and there stood a lean man.
Ksenia froze.
King Karsan Saranov was disarming, like a common garden snake, unremarkable in height and thin in musculature. His balding, wheaten hair pulled at his nape, and his washed-out, blue eyes ran cold.
Ksenia had evaded him all her life, but she knew royalty the moment she saw it.
A delicate circlet rested on his brow, and gold rings adorned each finger. But most of all, that suffocating air of entitlement wafted from his fur-lined cloak.
A cold tremor racked her body, her clothing soaked through as a dozen Envorsen appeared between the trees, their blood-red garb so dark it looked black.
The surrounding noise drained away. Birds quieted. The steady drip of rainwater faded. The forest’s darkness seemed to recoil and flatten against the cold, muddy earth.
Leaving only the visceral sound of her throat closing.
She met King Karsan’s calm gaze. He had closed the distance between them in an instant, the steady rise and fall of his chest tangible, the bemused smile mocking her.
Every instinct in her body screamed that she looked upon death in human form. But death would be too kind a personification for the butcher king.
“Where is Danika?” Ksenia demanded.
“Safe, with me. She has a bright future at Hearth, training the next generation of bondsmiths. They’ll grow up knowing no other king but me.”
She lunged at him, flecks of water from her hair speckling his face before Bohdan pulled her back.
“We would sooner die than forget what you did, butcher king,” she fought fruitlessly in the bastard prince’s iron-clad grip.
“And so your version of history will die with you, petulant child.” He casually wiped his face before unsheathing the thing of nightmares from the scabbard at his hip.
The hellbound kingsword’s presence exploded outward with bone-deep malevolence. It drove fear deep in Ksenia’s soul, but she stood tall against it. His retinue wilted, as if the blade’s presence weighed them down.
Radegast. A long, sleek blade made of Grastelian steel with sweeping, gold-curved quillons that flowered outward.
The silvered grip had a spiral pattern that led to a pommel resembling a rook from a chess set.
The legendary Damascus-patterned blade bore dark tide lines of blood that stained it permanently—a patina from countless kills that no amount of cleaning could erase.
It glowed an eerie blue in the moonlight, a thing of deadly beauty. The last sword of master bondsmith Gavril Drazan, Ksenia’s grandfather. Forged as a coronation gift for the golden prince, Aleksander Saranov, it had found its way into the wayward hands of his brother, Karsan.
“And history will always reveal how you bear a false crown and an undeserved sword,” she hissed, clenching her trembling hands.
In a blink, King Karsan gripped her throat and bludgeoned her against a tree.
She couldn’t even manage a cry of pain as she clawed with dirty, broken nails against his wrist. Their sizes were comparable, but he held her still with surprising ease.
Ksenia gasped for breath, stemming the hot tears that pricked the corners of her eyes.
He tilted his head, a sick curiosity in his gaze. “How the illustrious Drazan bloodline has fallen. Your grandfather forged weapons for kings. And here you are, crawling through the mud.”
He released her.
She hacked a cough as she slid down the trunk, her knees buckling. “And here you are, playing king. Scared of people you don’t understand and can’t control.”
He pondered this, his free hand scratching the light stubble of his chin.
The kingsword emitted a discordant, buzzing roar as it skewered Ksenia’s shoulder into the trunk.
Her scream was raw and ragged.
“Tell me now, who is your rightful king?” Spittle flew and his eyes turned crazed as he leaned into the sword, sending more blood pulsing out of her wound.
“Aleksander Saranov is the rightful king, you pitiful fucking murderer.” She coughed as blood bubbled to her lips.
Strands of his hair fell forward, his pupils blown wide. “Tell me how—how are you people able to fight my influence?”
She smiled, her teeth red. “You—can’t turn steel against its own kind.”
He withdrew Radegast with a sickening sound. Her blood ran down its edge, and still, her mind was her own. Bound metal couldn’t command bonded blood.
Karsan slaughtered bondsmiths not because they were dangerous. But because they were unconquerable. He couldn’t compel them with Radegast, couldn’t rewrite their recollections. They were proof that his power had limits, and Karsan could not abide a thing he couldn’t control.
He could shape the children. He could only purge the rest.
“I will work your sister to her dying breath until she makes me a proper kingsword, not that oaf’s leftovers,” he whispered in her ear.
Ksenia’s gold irises were ringed with white, pupils shaking.
A cruel smile twisted his lips.
He cleaved her flesh in two, sinking his blade straight into her heart.
Ksenia blinked, her eyes awash with blood, and stared down at the silvery sword pinning her. Unbelieving.
Then, splitting from her being, an iridescent strand of silk tore away from her sternum, luminescent and impossibly thin, seeping into the blood-letting fuller of the blade.
Her fingers twitched imperceptibly, helpless to do anything but feel it.
She slid her eyes down to where it pooled in the groove like a glowing drop of dew before absorbing into the metal without a trace.
She wasn’t ready.
She wasn’t done.
There were more people she could help if only she could survive.
And yet, the choice had been made.
She faded, the tremble stilling in her fingers.
Bohdan’s gaze cast over Ksenia’s corpse.
The king staggered back with wide arms, his eyes fluttering closed as he angled his face skyward in the storm. An ungodly injection of power shuddered through his body as Radegast drank deep.
“That feeling never gets old,” he whispered between thin lips.