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I look up at Mara, my wrath in my eyes.

Youwillpay.

I’m still staring at her when the snap of the whip echoes throughout the room. I feel the laceration a moment later.

With a sickening crunch, the delicate bones of my wings break under the blow. I gasp as pain floods my system. I can barely see through it.

Several bloody feathers float to the floor.

When I hear the headsman draw back his arm again, I have to tighten my grip on the shaking woman beneath me to keep myself between her and the whip.

Beneath me, the servant is still shaking.

“It’s going to be okay,” I whisper, glamour thick in my voice. I’m not going to let them get to her.

I hear the whip hiss through the air once more. This time, when it splits my flesh and crushes bone, I can’t hold back my scream, the sound horrifyingly harmonic.

Warm blood drips down my back as more feathers fall to the floor.

Twenty lashes. Eighteen more to endure.

At this rate, I will have no wings by the time the headsman is done with me.

Through my pain, I begin to laugh, feeling the horrified gazes of the crowd around me.

Isn’t that what I wanted? To be rid of my wings?

Suddenly, the once brightly lit room darkens. Leaves curl up and vines retreat, as though they’re repelled by the shadows. Darker and darker, the room grows. The vines binding Malaki now dry up and waste away, allowing him to break his bonds.

The crowd was silent before, but now they’re quiet in the way dead things are.

I hear the whip hiss through the air a third time.

It snaps as it strikes flesh, and I flinch, waiting for the pain. It never comes.

I glance up, and there Des is, the end of the whip in his fist, a line of blood sliding from his palm and down his wrist. He yanks the weapon out of the headman’s hand before tossing it aside.

“What is the meaning of this?” he says, his voice deceptively engaging. He spins in a circle, looking about the crowd. His power fills the room, the space growing darker by the second, and the once blooming plants are now shriveling and dying.

I slide off the human woman’s body, slumping to the side. I can’t move either of my wings; it feels like they’re one giant open wound.

“What grand fun you all have had while I’ve been away,” Des says to the room, his gaze lingering on Mara and the Green Man, both still seated on their thrones, “allowing my mate to be flayed alive.”

He is my vengeance. He is my violence. He is winged death come to deliver all these fairies to their fates. I nearly smile.

“Malaki,” he says, “take stock of who’s here. Make sure the Lord of Nightmares sends them his regards.”

“Gladly,” Malaki replies, shucking off the last of the dead vines that once bound him.

“And you—” Des turns to the headsman, his footfalls echoing ominously in the room as he approaches him. “You stupid fool. What were you thinking? Surely you know the rules: an injury deliberately inflicted on a fairy can be avenged by their mate.”

Des grabs the man’s arm before twisting it behind the headsman’s back. My mate leans in close. “And I’m avenging.”

It doesn’t matter that it’s Solstice and there’s a neutrality agreement. The Bargainer is out for blood.

For the third time in that many minutes, I hear the sickening snap of breaking bones as Des shatters the headsman’s arm. He doesn’t stop there either. He breaks the man’s other arm and then his legs. In between blows, he whispers things into the headsman’s ear, and they must be horrible, for the fairy cries louder in response to them than he does the pain.

Just then, the double doors open, and a man with pointed ears is led inside by two Flora guards. Unlike the human woman dragged in earlier, this fae wears no cuffs.