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I heard myself cry out their names. Blades whistled through the mist, red flared, and my limbs were nowhere near understanding who to save, who to defend, who to blame, who to hurt. Creon – Creon was bleeding – but a cry of agony tore through the woods, and it was Tared whose sword tumbled into the mud with a blood-flecked hilt, Tared who stood pinned against a ghastly white tree with Creon’s dagger at his throat.

A blade.

At his throat.

Time stood still for one brief eternity as that image burned itself into my mind’s eye.

They had ended up almost nose to nose, lips curled and breath heavy. Creon stood motionless as a shadow, his gaze focused on the dagger between his fingers. Blood cascaded from the gaping wound at Tared’s shoulder, soaking his dark green shirt and running in thick rivulets over his wrist and hand – so much blood, pulsing from his veins to the rhythm of a rattling heart. His alf light flickered around him in anxious tendrils, straining away from Creon’s tall shape.

Blood welled at the tip of Creon’s knife, too, as he pressed it a hair’s breadth into the soft flesh of Tared’s throat.

‘Creon.’ My feet finally found their motions; I staggered half a step forward, not knowing where I was going or what I was about to do. I had to get through to him – how was I going to get through to him? ‘Creon, listen to me.Please.Let him go, or I … I—’

Fire roared across the clearing.

It missed Tared by mere inches, surging at Creon instead, a wall of heat so violent I could feel it even six feet away. Creon leapt back with inhuman speed. The flames lashed at him one last time, then sizzled out with a furious hiss, leaving behind a handful of scorch marks in his shirt and a whirling trail of smoke …

And Lyn.

She swept into the clearing in a flurry of sparks, tongues of fire twisting around her hands, her shoulders, the tips of her hair. Her wings burned bright behind her shoulders, shrouding her face in a glow of gold and crimson; sizzling ash and embers marked where she’d landed in the moss. Even hereyesflickered – truly flickered, flames dancing in what had been amber irises as long as I’d known her.

They weren’t even aimed at me, those eyes ablaze with the fury of hell itself, but I flinched nonetheless.

‘Howdareyou.’ She spat the words at Creon as she advanced towards him, violet sparks bursting from her small figure at every word, at every step forward. ‘How fuckingdareyou. Just because I didn’t kill you last time I could have …’ She scoffed, and a small puff of smoke twirled from her nostrils. ‘There are stilllimits, do you understand?’

Creon’s lips tightened into a sneer as he signed,At least I’m not provoking fights I can’t win.

Lyn flung a hand at him; fire crackled through the air like a whip, tearing through the linen of his shirt but leaving his skin unmarred. Bloodcurdling precision, and yet he didn’t take a single step back, didn’t lower his defiantly raised chin. She came to a halt two feet before him, breathing heavily, glowering up at him from roughly the height of his midriff. ‘Anything else to say for yourself?’

His jaw clenched, but he didn’t crack – a towering wall of furious arrogance, a male who’d rather suffer blistering hatred than the smallest defeat.

‘You fucking idiot.’ Her hands balled into little fists, flames licking between her freckled fingers. ‘Next time you want to complain about useless heroes, try to remember who’s playing the useless villain here,Hytherion.’

He stiffened, finally.

But Lyn had already snapped around, her wings blazing brighter as she marched to Tared’s bloodied shape slouched against the tree. ‘And what wereyouthinking, you—’

He grabbed her shoulder mid-sentence, almost toppling over with that movement. I blinked, and they were both gone, leaving behind blood-flecked moss, smoking footprints, and Tared’s sword.

Creon didn’t move.

Even the all-encompassing Underground silence had rarely been as strenuous as this moment of dazed deadlock, me staring at him and him staring at the forest, the hissing and crackling of Lyn’s phoenix fire echoing in my ears. My eyes slid to the bloodied knife in his scarred fingers. The smouldering scorch marks in his shirt. The hard set of his jaw – an unspoken, unbreakable shield.

Only then did I realise what the pounding of my heart was trying to tell me.

Rage. That was undilutedragesearing through my veins, the taste of it bitter and metallic on my tongue. Because as much as I loved that ever-present darkness that lived inside him, his ruthless brilliance, his power and devotion …

This had nothing to do with any of those things. This was nothing but destructive, impulsive stupidity.

‘What for fuck’s sake,’ I whispered, my voice hollow in the creeping dusk, ‘did you think you were doing, Creon?’

He made a brusque turn towards me, lips parting a fraction. A smudge of blood followed the sharp line of his cheekbone. Just above his wrist, a long, shallow cut crossed his inked scars – a painful wound, probably, but was that an excuse for that deep gash he’d carved into Tared’s shoulder?

Worse – was that an excuse to blow up my last hope of a peaceful alliance?

For one last moment, I clung to the desperate hope that he’d have an explanation, a justification – that maybe these five minutes of futile violence had all been part of some carefully created plan, just the Silent Death thinking five steps ahead of everyone else. But his hand remained down as he stared at me. A hollowness grew in the dark of his eyes, the realisation of what he’d done finally welling to the surface of his rational mind.

‘You could havekilledhim.’ My voice grew explosively louder as the disappointment set its vicious nails into my guts. ‘And don’t say he started it, because you were provoking him just as much, and—'