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She doesn’t get any more time than that. Before she or I can do anything, Des manifests in front of her, sword in hand. In one clean motion, he skewers her.

Her eyes widen as he removes his bloody blade from her stomach, and a moment later, her knees give out. The soldier’s glassy eyes stare up at the ceiling, and her mouth opens and closes until the last of her life drains out.

The Bargainer kneels down and takes my blade from her hand. A moment later he vanishes, only to wink into existence right in front of me.

He hands me my blade. “You did good, cherub,” he says, his eyes shining as he takes me in.

I wet my mouth, my eyes moving to the soldier. Being good at killing is no compliment. My siren preens at it anyway.

Des grabs my jaw and gives me a quick kiss, and my siren—she sings at the taste of my mate on my tongue and the scent of blood in the air.

Once the Bargainer releases my jaw, his gaze lingers on my face a moment longer. Reluctantly, he turns away, stalking through the palace once more, heading for the sounds of screaming.

Taking a deep breath, I follow after him.

We pass several more fallen fairies as we make our way through the castle, their deaths gruesome, violent. My warring natures can’t decide what to make of it. Part of me feels nauseous and horrified, and part of me is filled with vindictive bloodlust.

Make them suffer. Make them pay,my siren whispers.

The next sleeping soldier we come across lingers in a dim hallway, crouched over a body. I squint at her form; almost all the sconces are snuffed out in this corridor, like the light can’t bear to witness this horror.

The soldier’s head snaps up, her eyes glinting like a cat’s. Her face is splattered with blood, and the knife she wields is doused in blood, the crimson liquid coating the blade, the hilt, and most of her hand.

There’s no way the fairy beneath her is alive.

The Bargainer is on the soldier in a second, sword in hand. In one clean, swift stroke, he lops off her head.

The thing hits the ground with a sickening thud, the soldier’s body joining it a moment later. A pool of dark blood spills from both.

I stare at the head. Its eyes are still blinking. Oh my sweet Lord—why are its eyes still blinking? And holy hell—its mouth is opening and closing like a fish gasping for breath.

I can feel my siren, pressing upon me, growing ever more excited at the sight and smell of blood.

I want it all,she whispers.Their pain, their power, their very lives. Mine to savor, mine to take.

A part of me wants to wrap my siren’s viciousness around me like armor, but a larger part of me is just as disturbed by her as I am at all the carnage. I don’t want any part of me to thrive on these violent deaths.

So I do what I’ve always done—I keep her leashed as best I can.

Forcing myself to move, I head over to the civilian sprawled across the ground and kneel at her side. Her eyes are closed, her face is slack, and her neck is a mess of bloody tissue—and then there’s all the bloodoutsideher body. No human could survive that much blood loss. But then, this isn’t a human.

I see her chest rise and fall and hear her take a laborious breath, the sound broken and ragged.

Des kneels down next to me, and he places two fingers against the woman’s forehead. I can taste a hint of his magic in the air as it settles around the injured woman.

Her eyes flutter, and she shudders out a breath.

“What did you do?” I ask.

The Bargainer stands. “I took away her pain. The rest her magic will have to fix on its own. I am no healer.”

I remember the last soldier I fought, the way her wound began to close only to stop healing. If the soldier’s magic couldn’t heal that wound, can this woman’s magic heal hers?

Unlikely.

The thought filters in from a new part of me, the part that drank the lilac wine, the part that’s now a little fae. I can sense the fairy’s magic slipping outside her body. It lingers in her spilled blood, and it’s evanescing into the air. That magic seeps into the walls and the ceiling, and then it’s no longer this woman’s magic, it’s the castle’s.

What had Des said?