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We will show you the way. We will guide your power. Tell the prince to prick his finger, and we’ll begin.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The clouds bled shadows that made cold skate over Azrail’s skin. He watched his magic, not quite knowing what it would do until it was done. The dark trails spiralled past the sea, past the beach, past the saints' circle on the hilltop, and across the rugged, tree-dominated lands in the distance. He could feelthem—the corpses. They’d been buried in mass graves beneath trees older than Kraeva itself. The Dead Lands had been full of bodies for so long that no one remembered who had killed them, or who the people had been when they lived. They could be fae, could be a pantheon of saints, could be the origin of beastkind in the Saintlands. All Az knew was they were dead.

The ghost crew had fled the second they sensed the magic.

Samlyn was smiling again. Az tried to ignore him, tried to shut out everything except the memory of Maia’s face when she grinned, the way her gold eyes sparkled, the little flutter that went through her wings when she was happy. He would get to hold her again, get to wrap his soul around hers and protect her, even if for only thirty minutes.

A clang went through him when his power reached the heart of the Dead Lands. All life had been sucked out of the groundhere, the trees skeletal and blackened, the dirt lacking the vital nutrients needed for grass to grow and flowers to bloom. His earth magic sensed no insects, no animals, not even a single defiant weed. But his death magic was more successful. It sank into that lifeless ground and speared into the bodies piled up belowground.

Where he stood on the deck of the ship, darkness began to spill from Azrail’s pores, rising like smoke from within his skin.

“Can you feel them?” Samlyn asked eagerly. “Can you sense the potential in their bones?”

Az ground his teeth and refused to reply. Half of him was here on the ship, but the other half was miles away in a barren forest, raking through the ground into corpse after corpse after corpse. They didn’t return to life, but his power didn’t need them to. With the magic of the saint of the dead, their bones fused into something less brittle, and grey flesh wrapped around the skeletons that punched their way out of the ground, staggering into a crawl and then a shambling walk. They were dead but whole, dead but walking as the living walked.

He didn’t need another command from Samlyn to tell him where to guide the hundreds of reanimated bodies, and his magic already knew the way to Kraeva. Az swallowed and tasted ashes, decay. The dead didn’t move fast, but slowly, surely, they trekked across the forest of the Dead Lands and out into the hills behind the fortress town. Az’s stomach roiled, acid coating his tongue, but he held tight to the memory of Maia. He’d failed her once, had hurt her because he was terrified of what it meant to have a mate, to allow someone past all his shields and defences. He wouldn’t fail her this time, even if it meant death reigned in this small corner of Jakahr.

By the time the undead horde reached the town, their shambling bodies flowed all the way from the Dead Lands to Kraeva. Thousands.Tensof thousands. Az began to shake. Whathad he done? Using his power to animate this many corpses… Kraeva didn’t stand a chance. Even when alarm bells howled through the night, when a wall of shouts and panic rose from within the crenelated walls, they didn’t stand a chance. It was mass slaughter, and Az couldn’t bear it.

He turned away like a coward, put his back to Kraeva as the shouts became screams and wails, as steel rang in the air, as cannons blast and ammunition fired. It wouldn’t be enough. A part of his magic was in every single corpse. Saint power, endless power. It wouldn’t be enough. The dead wouldn’t be killed; when they fell, he sensed them rise again and resume their attack.

“Good job, forsaken one,” Samlyn said hours later, when the sky began to lighten around them, when the wailing cries were fewer, quieter. “That was very well done.”

Azrail’s upper lip curled. “Karma will find you one day and crush your bones to ash. It will splatter your blood on the ground, and that will be the only thing left of you.”

“I look forward to it.” Samlyn patted Az’s shoulder, ignoring his flinch. “Now, the real fun begins.”

Azrail didn’t want to look, but he couldn’t bear it. He looked at Kraeva for the first time in hours and recoiled at the sight of the shattered city. Smoke rose from houses that had burned to the ground unnaturally quick, the rooftops caved in or crumbled entirely. He couldn’t see the bloodstains from here but he knew they were there. The people of Kraeva had tried to defend themselves, but their fire and magic and weapons had destroyed their own city. What was left, the dead had ruined.

They stood on the beach now, stretched out so far that he couldn’t see where they began and ended, squashed like sardines beneath the dawn. Skin hung slack over bones that had been in the ground only hours ago, their appearance more grotesque than anything Azrail had ever seen. And they just stood there. Waiting.

“I don’t need you for the next part, forsaken one,” Samlyn said, patting Az again, even laughing when he tore himself away, gripping the rail in white-knuckled hands.

He didn’t know what the next part was, didn’t know why Samlyn was in such high spirits until he felt thecrack.It snapped through his blood. No, through his magic. It lashed like a whip through the atmosphere, through the sky and the remnants of dark clouds, through the sea and beyond. He’d bet they felt it in Sainsa. Maybe even as far as Vassal and the Aether kingdoms. A shudder made him even colder, and when he realised the crack had come from the top of that hill, from the saints' circle, he couldn’t stop shaking.

Another had opened. First in Venhaus. And now here, in Jakahr.

A different sort of darkness spread from the cracks in the stone, not like the smoke and shadows of Azrail’s power. Like the black of venom, of sickness and rot. It oozed from the stones and over the fortress town. It flowed over the dead lined up in crammed rows on the beach and slipped into the sea until the water turned to ink.

A sudden thud of noise from below deck made Az jump, a ragged whimper staining the silence that hung over the sea. The thud came again, rhythmic and repetitive.

“What was that?” he whispered, surprised to find he could speak.

Samlyn’s smile warmed several degrees as he turned away from the ruined town. Az realised with a rush of primal fear that the rhythmic drumming from below were feet trudging up the stairs. His back slammed into the railing when the first of them appeared at the top of the stairs, foul-smelling, empty-eyed, and rotten. The thing of nightmares.

The stench he’d smelled since he awoke on the ship… corpses stored below deck, waiting for the dark poison that had flowedfrom the saints’ realm. But Azrail hadn’t reanimated these bodies like he did the bodies he walked out of the Dead Lands…

“I can see your confusion, forsaken one. The bodies from the Dead Lands are good enough vessels for my army, but my loyal generals deserve much stronger bodies.”

Az pressed himself to the railing and debated jumping into the sea. But the poison from the saints' circle had polluted the water. His breathing turned choppy, and he didn’t even think to fight, to attack.

“They’ve been waiting every bit as long as we have, after all,” Samlyn mused. “Since we were all cast into that prison.”

How many had broken through this circle? Azrail counted the people who flowed onto the deck. Twenty-two, three, four. Twenty-four generals of the dark saint’s army. He couldn’t fucking breathe.

The fear was so severe that it took his mind too long to sort through Samlyn’s words, to find sense in them.