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“You flinched!” he said, his voice sounding like he had been in the grave for a week. “You will fear me now.”

But I shook my head, grabbed his bloody chin so he couldn’t look away in shame.

“I’m not afraid of you, Rhyder,” I said, holding his eyes. “You were in the Bloodmoon rage and still didn’t hurt me. I am not afraid of you.”

They were all gathered together in the center of the settlement by the time we got back, the bloodwrath gone from their eyes.

“Abel!” Rhyder shouted.

The other man turned around, his eyes sliding past me.

There was a sound like a low, dangerous slide of metal, sharp-edged and harsh.

And my brother stalked toward him, knives out in both hands.

He didn’t wait around for explanations or begging for mercy.

“You tried to fuck with what’s mine.”

I saw Abel’s dart eyes back and forth as the clouds scudded across the sky, unveiling the blood-red moon.

There it was. An omen of danger. An omen of death.

And no help was coming for Abel.

By the time he realized the Prophet and Enforcer weren’t going to save him, and tried to get his own dagger out, Rhyder had plunged two knives deep into his chest, cutting through his ribs with a boneshattering squeal of knife on bone.

This hadn’t all been Abel’s doing. But I had no way of proving that. Only the appraising eyes the Prophet darted between us as my brother yanked his knives out of Abel’s chest, kicking out with his big boots, the dead body making a hollow sound as Rhyder knocked the corpse halfway across the clearing.



















Chapter 19

Iaccompanied Rhyderinto battle. Because of course I did. Congregation whores were

allowed to stay at camp for holy men to slake their lust before and after returning to battle. The first incursion was designed for where the Prophet’s reconnaissance had found a weakness in the powerful electric border gates.

There was another reason I had come with Rhyder. And I knew it was because he suspected someone of arranging to have me kidnapped six years ago.