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I’d thought his voice was trembling before. But those last two syllables barely made it past his lips.

Veyka stilled. Only for a moment; she wasn’t willing to let the human see any more than that. She picked at the edge of her bodice, fitted tight against her breasts with one of those enticing gold brassieres she liked to torture me with.

But the glance she shot me, with a quick flick of her eyes, was enough.

We’d met something Other in that ravine.

A human, but not.

Not in the human realm, but in Annwyn.

I could tell she was dissatisfied. He was giving plenty of information, yes. But too easily. She’dwantedto torture him. I could hardly blame her, though I could also be glad it wasn’t necessary. She might think her soul stained black already; but her world was infinitesimally small. She had no idea what three centuries of killing could do to one’s soul.

“Why did you come to Annwyn?” Veyka asked, her voice passing for bored. I knew better, and I suspected the human was canty enough by now to realize it as well. But he answered.

“I was sent by my village—Eldermist. It is just on the other side, tucked between the peaks, through the mountain rift. We came to beg help. To beg the kingdoms of the fae to summon back their darkness. To make whatever offering you require to stop foisting this plague upon us—"

“What mountain rift?” Veyka hissed.

There was no pretense of indifference now. Every muscle in her body was taut, ready to spring or implode or sunder the world apart.

“Between the—”

A flash of bright light filled the cupboard, so fierce and brutal it forced my eyes shut. I felt the whoosh of air, of wings in flight. I willed my eyes to open, axe already warm in my hand, ready to kill.

But there was nothing left to kill. No one.

The human was still on his knees, staring up at us. But where his eyes had once been was nothing but black. Not like the dark of my eyes, still swimming in that sea of white and reflecting back color. No, true black. Black that reached the corners of his eyelids. Black that swallowed the light around us, sucking it away into nothingness.

Then the black spilled out. Rivulets of thick black fluid that should have been blood but smelled like nothing of this world as it ran down his cheeks and splattered to the floor.

Veyka lunged with her dagger but I yanked her back, flat against the wall.

The man’s body seized up, his mouth wrenching open in an empty scream, that black venom filling his throat and bubbling out through his nostrils. I waited for the sounds of pain, waited for him to lunge for us like the human terror in the mountains.

But there was only eerie silence.

“End it,” Veyka whispered, her voice shaking.

I was all too ready. But as I stepped forward, the tension fell from his body. He collapsed to the floor, writhing, rolling in the black viscous substance until it coated his wretched form. Every orifice leaked, that noxious darkness filling the space with its fetid scent.

Veyka dragged in a breath.

Shallow. Too shallow.

I stepped forward into that darkness, feeling it reach out for me. The same terrifying cold I’d now felt thrice, trying to get inside of me. I spun for Veyka’s cured blades. She already had them up, ready, realizing at the same time I did that whatever this was, it would not be felled by my axe.

Still, the human did not attack. No, this was not quite the same as the assassin or the thing in the ravine. The human was being attacked from within, destroying itself rather than us. But I couldn’t take the chance on that instinct.

I darted forward, crossing the daggers over each other, and in a single, brutally efficient swipe, parted the man’s head from his body.

The writhing stopped.

We watched in silence, our breathing heavy with shock and adrenaline but raggedly muted as we tried to avoid breathing in the horrid stench of that darkness.

Finally, the flooding of black stopped as well. The waves of cold eased, retreating and hovering within the closet. Though I doubted closing the door would truly contain it.

Veyka held out her hands.