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I was already running by the time my boots hit the stone steps, the guards’ backs immediately snapping straight as they watched me fly down the stairs with wide eyes.

“Open it,” I growled, pressing my palm to the door.

They listened instantly, pushing their keys into the door and laying their hands atop the metal.

I was going to kill him.

I had given him every chance, every opportunity to help us. Now, knowing that he would never break, never give us anything—he would not live past the hour.

I threw myself through the doors as they cracked open, taking the stairs two at a time as I raced to the bottom of the prison.

“Who are you?” The question was a snarl that erupted from my mouth like the clap of thunder as my shadows slammed Taft against the bars of his cage.

My hand shot in the gaps between the metal, clasping around his throat as shadow flowed around his neck like a noose.

“I am nobody,” he hissed, struggling against my restraints.

My grip tightened. “You’re from Ammord, you’re a Daemon, I know that now. Whose Daemon are you?”

A vile smile cracked onto his lips at my words as the echo of footsteps pounding against stone began to fill the small space. I pulled my fingers from his neck, pushing dark matter into the lock and breaking it open as I stepped inside the cell. Taft took a small step backward as my shadows pulled the door shut behind me.

My fingers spread at my sides, green and black energy cracking and snaking around them as I took another step closer.

“Who is your master?”

“You will find out soon enough,” Taft said as his eyes flickered to the stairs opening.

I turned my head to the side as Landers, Andrues, Wren, and Ata broke through the opening, one after another.

“Hyacinth . . .” Landers said as he took a careful step toward the cage we were locked inside of. I locked my eyes on his and he gave me one small nod. “Today is the day he dies.”

A slow grin slithered onto my face as I turned back to Taft and watched as he raised his hands out to me in supplication, his eyes darting between mine and the four that stared behind me.

“Are you going to give me any information?” I asked.

“No,” Taft spat as I lowered myself in front of him.

“That’s what I figured,” I said, letting out a small sigh.

I reached my fingers out, running them along his jaw and down his neck, letting them linger over his chest as the death magic crackled at my fingertips.

“You see, Taft, it took me a while to realize that, in all those years of tearing me down, telling me I was worthless without you—it didn’t break me. It built me. You built me into something ruthless and I should thank you for that. You just didn’tanticipate the consequences of your creation, that it would be the very thing that kills you.”

My fingers plunged into his chest, magic ripping through flesh, clearing the path for my fist to clamp around his heart. An agonizing scream left his lungs as my shadows wrapped around him, holding him upright.

His eyes were locked onto mine, short bursts of breath coming out between his screams as my grip tightened on his life force.

“You cannot stop her plan!” he screamed again. “If you do this, she wins.” The words poured from his mouth in agonized gasps as his eyes pleaded with me, begging me to spare him.

“Whose plan?” I growled, tugging on his heart as another harrowing scream wracked his body.

His head slumped forward as he pulled in a ragged breath.

“Goodbye, Hyacinth,” Taft breathed, dragging his head from his chest, the movement slow and pained. “I will always love you.”

A snarl tore from my throat at the sound of those words as my fingers tightened around his beating heart and ripped it from his chest. His body slumped to the floor as my shadows released him. And where there should have been crimson flowing from underneath his dead body, a black liquid ran.

Static roared between my ears as I looked down at the muscle gasping for its last bit of life in my palm, blackened and hard as an onyx stone. I let it roll from my fingertips, landing beside his body as that black substance dripped from my hand where it had sat.