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‘You have warriors here? Guardians from Thezmarr stationed nearby?’ Thea pressed, still unable to understand how a group of fishermen had fended off the significant attack.

The woman shook her head. ‘He came from the forest.’

‘Who did?’

‘The man. Some said he was a Warsword.’

Thea’s stomach bottomed out and she felt her friends tense beside her. ‘What Warsword?’

‘He slayed the cursed men, protected our village… We would have perished, met the same fate as them if he hadn’t.’

Thea wasn’t sure she was breathing; wasn’t sure she could move. ‘Where is he now?’

‘It took him. That… thing.’ The woman was still pointing a shaking finger towards the lake.

Thea took in the sight of the red blood mixed with the black, so stark against the pristine white of the snow. Something sharp clawed inside her, constricting her airway, clouding her thoughts. She didn’t even realise she was walking to the lake until she stood at its frozen edge. There, she crouched in the blood-stained snow, tasting the ash from the pyre on her tongue.

It took him.

Thea turned her gaze upon the vast lake. There was not a single crack in its surface, no sign of a breach but for the mess at its shore. She grasped a fistful of snow, letting the cold seep through her glove as a sense of disbelief settled over her like a heavy mist. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. She hadn’t scoured the midrealms for a year to capture Wilder Hawthorne, only for him to be snatched up by a monster beneath a frozen lake.

Every breath felt heavy, threatening to pull her under.

‘Thea?’ Kipp asked, coming to her side with Cal.

‘It can’t be him.’ She stared at the snow melting between her fingers. Beside her, she sensed rather than saw Cal and Kipp exchanging another one of their looks. Thea’s vision blurred, her muscles suddenly going weak. ‘He was mine to capture. Mine to —’

A scream pierced the air like an arrow.

Thea shot to her feet, turning in time to see a tentacle of darkness shoot from beneath the lake’s surface, shattering the ice and wrapping around the closest villager.

With a shout and no regard for her own safety, Thea surged towards it, brandishing her sword as she tore across the ice. Fighting to keep herself upright as the surface grew slick beneath her boots, she made for the monster and its victim.

A young woman dangled in its grasp, her mouth open in a silent scream as black poison dripped from its suckers, eating at her skin.

‘Hold on!’ Thea shouted, swinging her blade as she reached the limb protruding from the ice and slicing through its rubbery flesh with a sickening wet sound.

At the contact, something rumbled beneath the surface, the ice creaking loudly. Thea thrust her blade in deep this time, blood spurting from the creature’s wound, but it didn’t let go – the girl was still flailing in its grasp overhead. She screamed in agony as its poison seeped into her.

‘Thea, watch out!’ Cal shouted, just as something broke through the ice beneath her and grabbed her ankle. A pale hand, webbed with darkness, a blackened nail at the tip of each clawing finger.

Thea cried out in surprise and severed it at the wrist, sending it skidding across the frozen surface of the lake with a smear of black blood.

‘What the fuck…’ she panted, starting back towards the festering tentacle. There was no time to think, to feel, only to act. As she ran, another hand, and another, shot up through the ice, sending shards flying like glass, grasping for her feet, her ankles, trying to trip her up, to pull her down. Thea dodged their attempts and palmed her dagger of Naarvian steel as she eyed a second tentacle tearing through the ice, reaching for the poor girl’s kicking legs, as though it meant to tear her in half.

With all her might, Thea thrust her dagger into the base of the monster’s limb, twisting viciously before bracing her feet on the ice as best she could and swinging her sword overhead, hacking through the skin and muscle, hot blood gushing across her.

A shriek sounded as the young woman held hostage by the creature fell to the snowy banks of the shore. Villagers rushed forward to pull her to her feet. Dazed, Thea watched for a moment; the girl could walk, could move her body fully. She would be battered and bruised, no doubt, but she was mostly unharmed.

Just as a distant sense of relief blossomed in Thea’s chest, ice shattered by her boots and another black-veined hand broke through the surface. With a swipe of her blade, she severed its fingers. She kicked it back beneath the ice just before a cry from the lakeside snatched her attention back to her friends.

She inhaled sharply, the cold hitting her lungs anew.

At some point during her battle with the tentacled creature, several cursed men had broken through the ice and breached the shore. There, Cal and Kipp, along with a handful of fishermen, fought them back.

Adjusting her grip on her blades, Thea made for the fray, ready to spill blood, ready to carve the enemy into tiny pieces and add them to the pyre. She would choose violence, foreverything she had gained and lost, for everything that had hurt her, for —

Thea became lighter than air, more fluid than water. She felt the world shift around her, felt the kiss of a blade before it struck, saw the decision in a man’s eyes before he made it. This,thiswas what she lived for now: the song of steel, the splatter of blood, the final breath a host of darkness stole before she took its life.