Chapter 38 Vengeance
VENGEANCE
When I left the cave after talking to Ossivian, Serban had pressed the reins of the brown mare into my hand as though sealing a pact.
A small leather pouch followed—heavy with gold and silver, more coin than I had seen in all my years combined.
Enough to travel. Enough to survive. He said it wasn't generosity.
He called it preparation. But the truest gift he gave me was the last.
“There is a village north of yours,” he had said, his tone measured, offering information—not instruction. “A tavern near the square. Ivar and his men drink there most nights when they are not riding.”
He did not tell me what to do with that knowledge. He did not ask what I intended. He simply trusted me with it. I remembered the way he turned from me and mounted his horse without looking back, and how alone I felt in that moment.
Now I stood just beyond the doorway of that tavern, surveying my targets as they drank in the great hall.
The room stank of smoke and sweat, the sour musk of unwashed men.
I knew all the faces, but only one name among them—Ivar.
He lounged on a bench at the back, a woman draped over his knee, her blouse tugged low to bare a breast. He toyed with her lazily, pinching and prodding as if she were no more than a bored distraction.
The look on her face told me everything—she didn't dare cross him.
Perhaps she already had. Her left eye was swollen, her throat mottled with bruises, purple and angry.
I knew what it was to be a plaything for these beasts.
Men who were more monstrous than any creature our people called a monster—like the one I now shared my name and nature with.
At least I needed blood. At least my hunger had purpose.
These men? They harmed because they could.
Because cruelty made them feel bigger, stronger, more powerful.
How wrong they were. And it was time they learned the truth.
I tugged the hood of my cloak lower, shadows clinging to my face as I stepped into the room.
The first to notice me was the woman. Her eyes caught mine, and I felt it— her fear stabbing like a knife now, instead of the dull, familiar dread she held for Ivar.
This was different. A lamb sensing the lion. But she was not my prey.
I did not break her gaze. My power unfurled around her mind, a silken snare, just like Serban had taught me, irresistible and absolute. She stiffened, her will crumbling in the face of mine.
“You will tell him you're fetching more ale. When you rise, walk slowly. Do not run. Then you will leave through the back door. Tomorrow, when people ask what you saw—tell them I came to put an end to the evil of these men. Tell them I came to protect you—all of you—the poor, the rich, the weak, and the strong.”
And even as I released her, my command lingered—a whisper in her bones, impossible to disobey. She bent low to his ear, but he shoved her aside with a scowl. She stumbled a step and then slipped past me without so much as a glance, as though I were a shadow clinging to the wall.
I pulled down my hood, loosened the cord at my neck, and let the cloak fall to the ground. The flicker of torchlight shifted and rolled in the room, an eerie backdrop for the power that unfurled from me—slowly, like a beast stirring in its sleep.
Heads turned. Eyes lifted. At first, there was only sluggish curiosity—drunken men surprised to see a woman standing in their den. But then…recognition dawned. One pair of eyes, then another, and another.
They knew me.
They had believed I was dead, my life ended when they pushed me from the cliff to the rocks below.
But here I stood, alive—and not. As my gaze swept the room, I felt my eyes shift, a molten light flickering to life—embers roused from long slumber.
Then the glow receded, leaving only blackness, deep and endless.
I was the void, staring back at them. Whatever doubts they had about what I was dissolved in that moment. There was no room left for questions.
A new scent cut through the stale air, sharp and metallic.
The tang of fear. Five men, and not one of them could hide it.
One brave—or perhaps just reckless—fool stood.
The man with the birthmark on his cheek set his hand on his dirk, knuckles white.
His eyes were wide with terror, but still…
I had to grant him this: he was the only one with enough will to fight.
The others? Cowering. Hands trembling. Even Ivar had risen, his face pale as he stumbled backward. I hadn't even bent their minds yet, and still their true natures lay bare, exposed for the gods to see.
Cowards. All of them.
No, I wasn't ready to enthrall them—not yet. I wanted their eyes clear. I wanted them to watch as the shape of their ending came to claim them. This was their penance. For hurting me. For hurting every woman like me.
I moved with the newfound speed I'd gained, the kind of power they'd only imagined in their fevered nightmares. I was at the doorway, and then—before the man with the birthmark could even blink—I was behind him, the blade from my belt pressed to his throat.
All eyes fixed on me. I saw the tremors in their hands, smelled the fear bleeding from their pores. It fed me. Propelled me. With one elegant motion, I opened his jugular. The red line blossomed across his neck, widening as a rivulet of crimson slid down to soak his shirt.
“Watch,” I commanded. My voice coiled around their minds, holding them in place, forbidding them to look away. And as they obeyed, I bent to the wound, lips brushing the hot skin. His blood filled my mouth—vital, potent, and bitter with the weight of his sins. Just as Buna said it would be.
I drank deeply, his life force spilling into me in a rush of heat and power, his body softening, sagging against mine. When he was emptied, I let him slip from my grasp. His corpse crumpled to the stone floor with a hollow thud, and I stepped over it without hesitation, blood still warm on my lips.
Another man lunged for the door, desperation twisting his face.
But he wasn't fast enough. The same blade—still wet with his friend's blood—swept cleanly across his throat.
He gasped, a wet sound, and I caught him before his knees hit the ground, drawing him in close.
My mouth closed over the wound, and his panic surged hot against my tongue, the taste of it laced with rot and salt.
One by one, they watched their brothers fall—if they'd ever known the meaning of brotherhood. Perhaps not. But now they understood what it was to lose everything, to be rendered powerless as death moved deliberately from man to man.
And Ivar…Ivar knew he was last.
Blood coated the lower half of my face, warm and tacky as it dried, the bite of iron lingering on my tongue. I knew what my eyes must look like—pupils blown wide, devouring the color from my irises until only a thin ring of light remained.
A predator's gaze. Just like Serban's when he fed. The first time I saw that look on him, it frightened me—not because it was monstrous, but because it was honest. There was no pretense in it. No civility. Only hunger, laid bare—and a terrible beauty.
I moved toward Ivar, letting him see the same in me now.
His eyes darted from my face to the blade in my hand—the one Dani had crafted for me with such care.
A man who, despite everything, had clung to scraps of love and fashioned something pure from them.
A good man, who wanted nothing more than to protect those he loved.
Who died, like my daughter and I did in Ivar's wake.
The blade gleamed, slick and red, heat rising from it in curling tendrils of steam—as if the metal itself had come alive, pulsing with intent. I brought it to my lips, drew my tongue along its length until it was clean, then slid it back into the sheath at my belt.
I stood before Ivar, close enough to hear the ragged pull of his breath, to watch the sharp bob of his Adam's apple as he struggled to swallow. His eyes—wide, unblinking—clung to mine as if I might let him live if he stared long enough.
“Did you think you'd seen the last of me?” I asked, each syllable laced with a cool, deliberate amusement. I let the silence after it linger—slow and tightening, a noose drawn firm around his throat. “Come now. You've always known your life would end in violence.”
I tilted my head, studying him as one might examine a specimen pinned beneath glass.
Desperation bloomed in his eyes, wide and feral, and I allowed a smile to curve my lips—measured, patient.
I wanted him to see that I understood precisely what he feared.
“But not like this.” I stepped closer, unhurried, letting the air between us thin and tremble with my nearness.
“Not at my hand.” My voice softened, almost intimate.
“Isn't that true, Ivar?” The smell of piss, and the dark stain on his crotch told me everything I needed to know.
I was conflicted—just as Buna warned I would be. Part of me wanted—no, needed—to make these men pay for everything. For my daughter's tiny body, stilled before its time. For Dani's goodness snuffed out. That hunger for retribution felt righteous. Pure.
But another part of me was frightened by the shadowed place inside me that enjoyed the killing.
That felt the rush of power like a drug, curling in my chest. For so long, men like him had stripped me of agency, reduced me to nothing.
Now I had it in spades, and this twisted, electric joy felt almost as strong as vengeance itself.
For a fleeting moment, I wondered what that made me. Goddess? Monster? Or some terrible thing in between? The question curled in the dark of my mind, but I didn't let it slow me. I pressed it down at the same time I inhaled the scent of blood and let wrath fill my lungs like fire.