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I managed a smile despite how hard I clenched my teeth.

“My queen and I will conquer this world, and when we have our empire, we will fuck on a bed of your bones.”

Gesalac smirked and began to circle. “You may need a queen to rule your kingdom, but Isolde needs no king. You will make her into a monster.”

“You say that as if it is a bad thing.”

Gesalac’s blade came down hard on my own, but I was far quicker and struck him in the chest with my hand. The push sent him a few feet down the road. He landed on his back, his golden armor covered in mud.

I followed as he got to his feet, dark eyes gleaming. Once more, he circled.

“Do you recall this place?” Gesalac asked.

I did not answer, though I knew it well. It had been my home. This was the earth I had worked, the fields I had plowed, the roofs I had once repaired. It was the village that raised me, where the anger that fueled me had taken root.

I had always been a monster.

Yesenia’s death merely uncaged me.

He continued but stopped circling, and as he spoke, his gaze never left mine. “You are merely a farm boy whose father was a broken soldier and whose mother whored herself for alcohol.”

I imagined Gesalac was aware of the wound he probed—it was open and gaping, never cared for, never healed. I’d used it to go to dark places where I did violent things, but if he thought it made me weak, he was wrong.

My past gave me the strength to do what no one else had done—endure.

I managed a laugh.

“Merely a farm boy,” I said, eyes falling to the cold ground where snow had yet to gather, and in the quiet, my body burned. I only moved to attack when I could no longer stand the throbbing in my head and hands. As my blade met Gesalac’s midswing, the sound was like lightning crackling across the sky, a vibration that went to my bones.

It felt like life, like breathing once again.

“I was your beginning,” I said. “And I will be your end!”

Our blades clashed, the force behind each strike growing harder and faster until our swords locked, neither of us relenting in our determination to see the other fall. Finally, I moved, punching Gesalac in the side over and over until his armor bowed, cutting into his skin. He stumbled back and I followed, blade lifted over my head. But as I drew my weapon down upon him, he grabbed both of my wrists, his head knocking into mine.

The blow was dizzying, and this time I stumbled back.

Before me, Gesalac laughed.

“And to think you are supposed to be the most powerful among us.”

I laughed too.

“My greatest strength is that you do not even know what I am capable of.”

His smile faltered, and I shifted, invisible, reappearing behind the vampire. I shoved my blade into his back. It exploded through the middle of his chest and he screamed as I twisted it. Then I kicked him, and he flew across the small village, landing against a wooden fence that buckled beneath his weight. I followed, launching myself at him.

As I landed on the traitor, he twisted, using one of the fence poles as a weapon. Its sharpened end slammed into me, piercing my armor, sinking deep into my chest. My scream was more of a roar as my body seized, shaking from the shock of my injury. Gesalac threw me back and I struck the ground hard. But I was already working the wood free, and once the stake was out, I threw it aside, hands covered in my own blood.

I curled them into fists, my eyes locked with Gesalac’s. He had managed to get to his feet, hands clasped around the end of my blade, which protruded from his chest as he attempted, in vain, to pull it from his body.

“I’m finished here,” I said. “It is time for you to kneel.”

At my command, the traitor’s knees struck so hard, the ground shook. His eyes widened as I approached.

“H-how did you—”

“When I stand before them, I can control the mind of any vampire I’ve turned,” I said, gripping the hilt of my blade. “Pity you did not know.”