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Sleeping out in the open made him itchy under the skin. It always had, a habit that formed while indentured in a vicious bastard’s manor and only made worse by the army and the saints and the images he couldn’t shut out of his fucking head: Jaro collared and led away, Maia unconscious in the uncaring arms of a saint, her other mates kicking and screaming, except for Azrail who looked… dead.

You need to heal that wrist,Viskae said, ignoring his remark.

“Thanks,” he replied dryly, scanning the grasses, the tall wall to his right shining like moonlight itself. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

The experiments made on him had advanced his healing, so his body had already begun grating the bones in his wrist, urging them back together, but he knew what Viskae meant. There were faster ways to heal. Ways he avoided at all costs because it made the monster in him stronger, brought it to the forefront when he preferred to shove it all the way back where he could pretend it was gone.

Your leg is already paining you, and with a broken wrist how will you defend yourself if you’re attacked?

Isak ignored her, content to linger in his misery. Jaro and Maia and their gang of merry men were being tortured and twisted and turned to monsters right now, and he couldn’t even get into a fucking city successfully. No wonder Viskae had chosen a fuck up like him.

I’m the saint of redemption too, as I keep reminding you, you ignorant bastard.

Proving that point, Isak ignored that, too, trudging on through the grass. He cast a scornful glare at the wall keeping him from the city, from helping the only person in the world he loved and the mate he’d accidentally claimed to Anzhelika. He couldn’t stop thinking about it, the way he’d called her his mate and it felt as natural as breathing.

The crystal wall was completely smooth, lacking handholds, and far too tall for him to climb even if he had two fully functional legs and unbroken wrists. He lifted his good hand, the handle of his stick cupped in his palm, and gave the wall his middle finger.

“Fucking wall,” he snarled, then froze when he saw that it wasn’tcompletelyfree of blemishes. He stabbed the top of his stick at the ground and rushed forward, wondering if he was going mad.

Goingmad?Viskae asked with a healthy dose of judgement.

“Shush. Do you see that?”

The crystal was smooth except for a single pockmark, the moon’s light bathing it in stark relief. When he got within a few feet, his breath quickened. A star. It was a fucking star.

The opal star.

“Oh, Anzhelika, you beautiful bastard,” Isak laughed under his breath, determined to become the greatest of friends with the surly woman.

He reached for the opal but Viskae stopped him with a curt reminder.Wrist.

Isak groaned and folded himself awkwardly to the floor, splaying his hand in the grass, making contact with the rich, verdant dirt beneath it. Lush with life, plump and overflowing, itbeggedto be used. Isak gave the darkness that lurked inside him a passing glance, the barest acknowledgement. That dark part of him sank its claws and fangs into the flow of life in the ground, in the dirt and grass and the very air around them. Power existed in everything, and the monster in Isak wanted to consume it all.

He curled his hand into a fist and ripped it away from the ground, panting hard as the darknessresisted.It fought and snarled, hungry for more, and a low, guttural snarl left Isak’s mouth before he could stop it. He pictured himself wrestling with one of those scaled, horned beasts that had been made inthe fell waters around the saints' circle, pictured himself caging it, trapping it, until it was powerless. Of course it was nevertrulypowerless, because even though he remained beastkind, he was half a monster.

Some days he thought it was the only thing that saved him—that the process hadn’t been completed, that he’d never been killed and thrown into the Crooked Finger like the others. Other days he thought still being himself, having intelligence and a mind of his own as well as this dark, poisoning power, made himmoredangerous.

When he pulled his hand away, there was a circle of black, dead grass on the ground. Isak avoided the sight and rose to his feet, leaning heavily on his stick but… stronger. Better than he’d felt in days.

Well, that wasn’t worrying at all.

Ignoring his growing unease, and checking the stars and moon still hung in the sky, Isak approached the opal star and pressed his finger to that carving on the wall. His breath caught when a portion of the wall swung inward, so soundless it felt like a hallucination.

Anzhelika was on the other side with a sharp grin on her pale face, a hood covering her inky hair and a brown-skinned, twenty-something woman with bark-like skin at her side. The stranger gave him a little wave and a sweet smile, as if they were old friends.

“What the fuck took you so long?” Anzhelika demanded and dragged him inside, into the ancient and powerful city of Saintsgarde.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Dark, rotten herbs clung to Azrail’s taste buds until he thought he would throw up. His energy was drained, all the fight beaten out of him. He’d been cut apart, drained of blood, had things taken and replaced with a dark, slimy substance he couldn’t name. He’d been bled and beaten and broken, until Dulan Bryath didn’t need the chains to keep him in check anymore. The Brightwrath laid him on the cold stone floor and did his wicked work while Az lay prone, forced into submission not by pain but by that disgusting black liquid he choked upon three times a day.

He laid on the ground even now, cold bleeding through his skin into the places he’d been cut and healed, the scars like fault lines on his body, so similar to what had been done to Maia by that Vassalian monster that Az felt sick.

He turned his head, used the last sad scrap of his strength to look at the jaguar who sat in the corner. Jaro’s fur was dull and matted with blood, the rosettes no longer glossy, his jade eyes devoid of life. Like always, he sat with his spine pressed to the stone in the corner of the cell and stared ahead.

“I’m with you,” Azrail rasped, moving his lips the only power over his body he could muster. “I’m right here, Jaro. I’m here with you.”

Don’t leave me.