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Asher’s hand wrapped around my upper arm and he jerked me up. “Theyslaughteredthese people.”

“It’s forbidden,” I said. “They used to do this in the war. But the magic, it’s bastardized, it’s unclean. And culling it like this—the method is excessively cruel. It kills its victims from the inside out.”

His eyes searched mine, his lips curling back in anger and anguish. “And they did this to these people?”

I swallowed down bile. Another tear slipped out. “I think so,” I breathed.

Asher released my arm roughly, running both his hands—gun and all—through his hair.

Out of nowhere he let out an animalistic cry, kicking over a stand of religious votives.

“This isforbidden,” I reiterated. We weren’t all like this.

And this... I couldn’t even contemplate this kind of cold-blooded killing. All for power. Right after I had defended my people to Asher.

“You think your beloved primus gives a shit about what’s forbidden? Because it looks to me like he doesn’t fucking care.”

Bereft. Betrayed. The ache grew in me. “I don’t understand this.” My eyes moved over the other victims, their skin flayed and burned where they were cut open and culled of their blood.

For the primus, a lifebreather, to do something so cruel, something he himself had forbid...

It was one of the worst taboos to commit. A man without honor.

That thought was followed by another, one that had me hugging my arms close.

The same affinity that ran through the primus’s veins ran through mine.

It made me feel dirty by association.

“How many?” Asher asked, his back to me.

“How many what?” I asked.

“In the past, when they did this, how many did they kill?”

I swallowed, my throat dry. “Everyone.”

Asher

I gripped thesteering wheel with renewed fury, navigating us higher into the mountains, up twisting, barely paved roads that skirted precipitous cliffs.

They’d drained an entire village. Killed everybody. We’d walked into building after building only to find more dead bodies.

No one was spared. Not the elderly. Not the children.No one.

The images of all those people were burned into my retinas. My own personal tragedies replayed in my mind alongside these new victims. This was what demons did, Lana excepted.

No doubt, they were fueling up. Arming themselves. Preparing for war.

Culling enough blood magic to wipe Jame Asher off the face of the Earth.

They knew my plan, and they were taking no chances. They would hold the portal at Pico de Orizaba.

With that much blood, the misfortune would spread beyond the victims, it would seep down their bloodlines, curse their families for generations. The blight would hang over the land like a shadow for a thousand years.

Lana had said as much earlier. She could still sense the curses that draped over the land from millennia ago, when the people here worshipped her kind and bled for them. Died for them.

That was the legacy of demons.