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The scream that followed was my own.

I braced my hands on the dirt behind me and twisted my hips, urging the head to roll off me, and then I very nearly covered the corpse with a spew of bile that choked the scream catapulting out of my throat.

Wren didn’t even look at me as he whirled, sword dripping with filth, and swung it around at the two caenim approaching him from behind. The third one was a little shorter, so instead of a clean decapitation, his sword cut into its head and became stuck, lodged halfway through its skull.

He grunted with annoyance and kicked its stomach, reaching for his weapons belt and drawing another blade. He took that blade—the poniard he’d used to peel his apple at the cottage we’d stopped at on our journey through the Court of Light—and threw it at me.

Notatme—behind me, straight into the heart of the caenim that was extending two clawed hands right towards my spine.

Pulling his sword from the other caenim’s skull, Wren acquired another small dagger and tossed it on the ground in front of my knees. I stared at it, then at him.

What is hedoing?

“Not to pierce the illusion of chivalry,” he said, throwing me a brief look over his shoulder as he speared his sword through the chest of another beast, “but you’re welcome to participate.”

I had no opportunity to reply as he charged forward, his steps like a dance, skewering caenim and slicing off limbs and heads as he pirouetted through the long golden grass.

His movements left an opening for one to stalk forward, taking his place in front of me, and it was instinct for my hands to grab the weapon he’d left, though I had never used one before in my life. I felt human and helpless as I cried out, eyes darting across the caenim’s body, searching for an opening between its arms as it lunged.

Shrieking again, I drove the blade into its chest, and its iron-tipped nails, closing around my arms, barely scratched my skin as it sagged and tumbled to the ground like a pile of bricks. My heart was beating so loud, I thought it was going to burst from my chest and take flight to the skies.

Wren jogged back and nodded in approval. “Very good, bookworm,” he remarked with a healthy amount of condescension. He leaned over me, dripping caenim blood into my lap, and yanked the blade out of my kill. Giving me a wicked smile, his green-splattered face only an inch away from mine, his eyes glowed like wildfire as he placed the hilt of the dagger back in my hand. “Now do that again, pretty girl.”

Caenim bodies were littering the field, and Wren resumed his dance, felling monsters that came too close or tried too hard. He ducked and weaved through skinny arms and outstretched claws as he brandished his sword, the high-pitched whip of it slicing through everything in its path the only sound I could hear. Green, festering blood coloured the land, squirting across the sky like paint being squeezed from its tube. My hands were covered in it, its texture thick and oily.

Most of the caenim lost their heads or suffered a blade through the chest, but others he took apart slowly—an arm, and then a hand, and finally a slash across the belly that sent greymucus pouring out of their bodies as they withered to the ground like dying flowers.

It was over before I could get to my feet.

Wren twirled the sword in his hand, a flash of silver against the dark forest as he faced down the final caenim.

This one was tall and gangly, wearing an ill-fitting robe that revealed its canine-like hind legs, impossibly long and misshapen. I couldn’t be sure, but I had a feeling that it knew it was over, too. Still, the monster made one last, valiant effort to kill its attacker, lunging at Wren with a wide mouth open—

He ducked and rolled, leaping to his feet behind it, and brought the blade upwards between its legs with unimaginable strength, nearly slicing the creature in half. Making a disgusted face, he spared a glance in my direction as the caenim’s body hit the ground, his sword still wedged inside it.

The horror-struck look lasted for a split-second before Wren vanished, abandoning his sword in the body of his last kill, evanescing through the air in a blur of black and gold.

He reappeared at my side, almost stepping on me as the toes of his boots touched the dirt and he tackled a straggler to the ground behind me.

I’d been so enthralled with his violence, I hadn’t even realised…

The caenim was bigger than him, almost as big as the last one, and he didn’t have the advantage of a sharp sword to spread between them. In a swift move, the caenim twisted, pinning Wren to the ground. It was all the High Fae warrior could do to bring his knee up at the last second, creating a barrier to keep the monster’s enormous mouth at bay.

The caenim lifted an arm in the air, iron-tipped nails glinting in the light, poised to slice open his throat.

Wren snatched its raised arm first, and then its other, holding the caenim’s hands down by its wrists. The beast’s neckwas so short that it was prevented from leaning down and chewing off Wren’s head, and he kept his knee firmly between their bodies while it struggled to free its arms.

I waited, eyes wide with shock, for him to make the killing blow.

He didn’t have access to his weapons, but he didn’t need them. Hewasa weapon. Wren had magic in his veins strong enough to light up an entire city with an arrogant wink, but instead of frying the creature from the inside out with the scalding light on his palms, he looked at me.

“Kill it,” he ordered, his tone as light as it would be if he was asking me to close a window. Golden eyes bore into mine, simmering with impatient expectation.

I didn’t move, didn’t give him even a hint of salvation in my own gaze. I had no weapons, and I couldn’t remember where I’d dropped his dagger.

The caenim snarled, mouth dripping with saliva, and Wren craned his neck away from it, giving me a demanding look. “Aura, my love,” he said with lethal sweetness, voice tightening, “will you please pick up the dagger at your feet andkillit?”

I glanced down at the blade in the grass, edges dulled with crusted green gunk, and then back at Wren.