Chapter 42
“Ideserved that.” Karsan sat up, brushing himself off as if he’d taken a tumble.
His robes were in tatters, but his body was actively mending itself before her very eyes.
She had killed him and watched his heart pulse and stutter.
But now he stood. And breathed.
His tissue wove itself together, blood plucking into the air in crimson droplets, rushing back to his body to flow through veins as skin wrapped itself over his wound and made him whole once more in the matter of a minute.
The terror that crawled up her spine was primal, instinctive.
“You’ve been toying with the gods. So have I.”
Danika’s final warning echoed in her mind.
Her body screamed at her to stay frozen.
But she threw herself at Radegast, quicker than Karsan.
Her fingers closed around Krahomor’s handle. The cold bit into her palm, deeper than ice, colder than death itself.
Karsan’s eyes widened as he lunged for her.
Too late.
She swung the hammer down onto Radegast’s blade.
Black, luminescent lightning fractured from her fingertips, and she screamed. Brilliant, searing forks raced up her arm like cracks in glass. The light died, leaving scorched trails through her flesh, burning her from the inside out.
Red light burst from a fissure that now split Radegast’s center, the metal shrieking.
Raw, terrible, endless power erupted from the blade in waves of distorted air, warping and twisting reality wherever the energy touched.
“No, NO!” Karsan threw his hands up against the light, his face bloodless with fear and panic. “What have you done!”
Radegast and Krahomor fell from Ksenia’s limp hands, quaking from the pain, unable to do more than fall into a fetal position on the bloodied floor.
Footfall came down the hallway as a dozen Envorsen burst into the room, Bohdan leading the charge.
A few immediately retched at the sight. Bohdan himself grew pale looking at her, covered in blood from head to toe.
Dozens upon dozens of bodies strewn around the room.
“I’ll fucking kill you,” Karsan seethed. He scrabbled for Radegast amongst the viscera, his fingers closing around the hilt.
He screamed.
The blade glowed where he made contact—orange and searing white, the blade pulsing with unstable power. He jerked his palm back, already bubbling and blistered, the smell of burnt flesh mixing with the tang of blood.
His invincible hellbound weapon—the source of his compulsion—and he couldn’t even hold it.
A snarl twisted on his face as he whirled toward the hammer, desperate and frantic.
His fingers barely brushed the handle before he recoiled with a hiss of pain.
The cold bit deeply, with an instant frostbite that turned his fingertips black and dead.
Two weapons at his feet. Both unwieldable.
A high giggle burst from Ksenia’s throat.
His head snapped toward her.
She lay broken on the floor, raw scorches blistering her skin, blood and tears streaking her face, but her eyes were fever-bright, wild, and victorious.
“You have nothing!” Her shoulders shook with laughter. “No more bondsmiths, no kingswords, no Radegast, no way you could ever make me do anything again.” She laughed and laughed. “Let me live or kill me. Either way—you’ve lost everything.”
For a moment, Karsan could only stare.
At Radegast, cracked and glowing on the floor.
At the shattered remains of his kingswords.
At Krahomor, deathly cold to the touch.
At Ksenia, the catalyst of it all, lying spent and cackling maniacally.
The stronghold he had over Kraal was crumbling.
“I will make you beg for death, Drazan. Mark my words.” Karsan swung a singed finger at her, his melted, blistering flesh on display.
The threat rang hollow as laughter spilled from her, edged with hysteria.
“Arrest her!” He whirled on the guards, voice climbing. “For treason! Attempted regicide!”
His authority sounded more like begging.
The days and nights blurred together.
Ksenia remained on the stone ledge that served as her bed within the dungeon cell. Refusing to eat, drink, or respond.
She had completed her pact with Vornaya. There was no more agony from being separated from Caromir, yet her body still thrummed with her ill-gotten strengths.
The wound from wielding Krahomor had healed over, turning the skin from her fingertips to her elbow a deep black, a lattice of scars.
It served as a reminder of what she had done.
She had killed her own sister, countless others.
Guards and passing attendants skirted around her cell, as if her very presence would bring malevolence to their doors.
“Your sister was worth her weight in gold.”
Ksenia had become so used to hallucinations that Karsan’s voice barely rippled against the ebb and flow of thoughts in her mind.
He now stood before her cell, that same serpentine smile affixed to his face.
Ksenia didn’t move.
“You can still prove your worth like her, Ksenia.” His words were jarringly counter to every fiber of his being.
His impudence to show up and lay claim to her path to salvation was rich.
“You are, after all, Sevrant.” He waited, willing her to react.
She gave him nothing.
The silence stretched, his fingers drumming against the bar in an agitated rhythm.
He was slipping. He had lost control of the masses.
“Look at me.” His command cracked through the cell like a whip but was pitifully meaningless to her.
She still didn’t move.
He needed her more than she needed him.
A sound escaped him—half laugh, half snarl.
“You think this silence is power?” His voice clambered higher. “You think refusing to speak makes you stronger than me?”
He has no idea how to fix Radegast, nor what to do with Krahomor.
Nothing.
It’s only a matter of time before he’s dethroned.
He slammed his palm against the bars. “I could kill you! But I’m offering you a chance to live.”
Then drawn and quartered by his own men.
“So, kill me.” Ksenia pushed herself up slowly. Her eyes pierced his. “I can taste your fear.”
She spat at his feet. It hit the stone between the bars with a wet sound.
“Your time is coming, butcher,” she sneered. “You’re scared to bear the weight of punishment the way you freely doled it to others.”
Karsan’s jaw clenched with a quiver, blinking.
His skin bleached white as bone.
Then, he left.
Ksenia leaned back against her cold bed.
The presence of her soul only weighed heavier now—a burden she had fought so hard to reclaim, only to find it unworthy. She tried to defy Karsan’s demonization of bondsmiths.
And instead, she became exactly what he wanted everyone to believe: a weapon, with a human face, leaving bodies in her wake.
Petra. The bondsmith children. Danika.
She meant to be the hand that pulled them to safety. Not the blade that cut them down.
And beneath it all, the knife that twisted the deepest: Bohdan had seen what she was capable of. Every ugly, blood-stained piece of her.
Whatever he thought of her now, she had wholly earned.
There had been some spark of hope within her. Despite her best efforts, she had begun to cling furtively to the idea of them and all the mess that entailed.
She had promised him that he wouldn’t have to live his lie after killing Karsan.
But somehow, he hadn’t died. Not when she had pushed his own hellbound blade deep into his heart.
Her body seized with silent sobs with remorse for what she’d done and what she’d become.
The monster Karsan had always known she was.
The monster Bohdan could finally see.
The monster she couldn’t escape.