Page 174

The man gave a sudden jerk, but the butler held him in place. Then he began to scream.

Taly didn’t know what Skye saw—what he pulled from the man’s mind.But his face…At first, it was just concentration, the focused intensity she’d seen a hundred times during their training sessions. But as the moments passed, that focus twisted, then sharpened, becoming… predatory.

Anger and aether built like a storm behind his eyes, turning them a terrifying, white-hot violet.

His fingers pressed deeper into the man’s skull. The tension in his arm locked tight. A beat passed. Then another. His grip should have eased, but it didn’t. He wasn’t letting go.

The air crackled. The spell’s hum fractured, twisting into a jagged, volatile hiss. The aether around him whipped and thrashed, like a living thing struggling to break free.

Something was wrong. This wasn’t just anger—this wasn’t him.

“Told you. Guilty as sin,” Kalahad drawled.

Excitement rippled through the crowd, more eager than alarmed. Taly caught glimpses—whispered wagers exchanged, hands tightening around wine glasses, heads angling for a better view. She didn’t understand. Had she missed something? The Weave felt heavier, charged—like a decision had just locked into place.

The man’s eyes were bulging. Blood leaked down his face in thick, wet trails released by Skye’s fingers.

The crowd held their breath. In the silence, there was a ripping sound.

And then Taly realized why they’d laid out tarps on the dais.

Chapter 33

The unraveling began at the man’s feet. Skin split like overripe fruit, blood spilling in thick, glistening ribbons. The rupture climbed—knees, thighs, hips—his body splitting apart in a wave of bloody devastation, the worst of it concealed beneath white robes that quickly turned red.

Skye gripped him by the hair, holding him up so that he could look into those wide, frightened eyes until the very last moment—as the skin of his neck pulled apart, and his jaw fell away. Until those eyes finally dropped from their sockets, and he released a fistful of hair with bloody roots that floated down to rest atop the puddle of guts and flesh at his feet.

A breathless pause. Then murmuring. Then delighted laughter and clapping—boisterous, thunderousapplause.

They were amused. They were enthralled.Encore! Encore!

Taly saw it all in slow motion. Each pair of hands clapped in rhythmic, delayed gesticulations, the sound echoing in layers. Faces in the crowd blurred, contorted. Jubilant expressions turned grotesque.

She sat motionless, mind reeling. Was this her doing? She couldn’t say for sure that it wasn’t. Couldn’t deny that the shock of watching the man she loveddissolvea prisoner in front of a room full of finely dressed strangers might have made her grip on her magic slip, if only for a moment.

People told stories, of course. Tales spun from threads of darkness and intrigue, whispered in hushed tones among the common folk. Beneath its dazzling façade, the Dawn Court was a cesspool of hedonistic excess and depravity. Taly had heard it all. Stories of blood rituals and torture chambers hidden behindgilded doors, where screams of agony mingled with the sounds of revelry. Of wild orgies and even, on occasion, human sacrifice.

She’d never given the wilder rumors any credence—after all, these were the same parties Skye was attending. But now… They were like harpies. All of them. Their sharp, gleeful clapping mirrored the clashing of talons, and their smiles twisted in beak-like sneers, eager for carrion.

Once a palatial hall, the room now seemed a rocky precipice, where monstrous beings feasted on misery.

As Skye descended the dais, yet another butler handed him a cloth to wipe his hands. People rushed up behind him to ogle the remains of the body.

Discussions and laughter began to unfold. Voices chimed in with inquiries and conjectures.

“...did you see? Unbelievable...” “...a lesson, well deserved...” “...flawless technique, wouldn’t you say...”

Skye was led away, presumably to clean up. If blood had splattered him, Taly couldn’t tell. It blended with the deep red of his suit. He glanced at her only once. His face was a mask, his eyes cold and unreachable. The man she knew wasn’t there.

Even the bond was silent, as though he was shutting her out.

“To Justice!” Kalahad’s voice sliced through the haze of her thoughts. Her sense of time recalibrated as the room erupted into a chorus of voices rising in unison over the clinking of glass. And with the echo of that final toast fading, the room became alive once more with the buzz of chatter.

The savagery of the moment passed without a single person batting an eye.

“Oh, Lady Jurah. Come. You must.” With a passing nod at Taly—her part in this performance was now done—Kalahad made his way to the dais, ready to show off the corpse, or what was left of it, like it was his own work.

“It’s the curse of the long-lived, I’m afraid.” Taly looked up, and Ivain said, “To those that may never experience death, it becomes endlessly fascinating.”