Page 5

“Vidar, it’s Halvar. What—gods—” I dodged again when Vidar made a furious rush for me. Bleeding hells, he wanted to tear me to pieces.

Stieg shoved into the house. At his back, dark figures stumbled about, hissing and swinging blades, lost in their minds. Vidar lunged for the warrior, but Stieg had the watch guard pinned to the ground, his dagger rammed through his shoulder in the next breath.

I used the back of my hand to wipe my mouth. Vidar writhed on the ground, spitting and lashing, desperate to be free of us.

“He’s lost his mind.”

Stieg wasn’t listening. His eyes were wide with horror as he looked over my shoulder. With time to focus, a ripe tang of blood curdled in my nose. My insides weren’t squeamish around blood. I’d seen enough torture and gore to stand steady through it all, but this . . . this drew me to place a fist in front of my lips to squelch the vomit.

Innards, limbs, bone, all of it painted the walls. Bodies of dockers were soaked in gore. Piss and bile had dried on days-dead corpses.

They’d been shredded in ways almost identical to the bloodlust of Valen when he was lost to a curse, in the days before we discovered that torturing him could keep him safe from others. Days where I’d watch my friend, my brother, shred folk with his axes.

This was too similar.

“He did this.” Stieg looked back to Vidar. “He devoured them.”

Vidar was a mindless beast. The same as the Blood Wraith. Calista was the only one capable of cursing in such away, and she wouldn’t do this.

“This was Valen.”

Stieg grunted when Vidar tried to kick his ribs. “What?”

“Not now, but this was what he was like, untamed and cursed.”

“All gods.” Stieg had witnessed Valen succumb to a curse in the East, but it wasn’t the same. Elise had power over her husband, some strange connection that kept him less monstrous.

The battle lord was behind the hatred of our kingdom. He was the reason curses were given at all. This was a sign, a warning. A mockery at our turns of pain and suffering.

Anguish gathered in my gut. We knew, we bleeding knew peace would not last forever. The moment that damn moon turned red, the whole of the kingdom went on edge.

I lifted my blade over Vidar’s chest. The poor sod thrashed and hissed like a caged wolf. I stabbed the point through his heart, holding it steady until his body twitched and went still, at long last.

“Farväl en älskade.” I yanked my blade free, storming out of the dock house and into a battle on the shore.

Archers flung arrows into a crowd of feral folk. Blades cut them down. All were Timoran, their pale features visible under the blood.

Our former enemies were turned against us once again. Dammit. They didn’t deserve this. They deserved peace as much as Night Folk.

“Sol, Tor!” I roared. A man lunged at me. My sword rammed through his throat. He spluttered on his own blood and fell when I wrenched the blade free. “Sol!”

The Sun Prince was on his horse. Both hands on the hilt of his blade, he stabbed it through the top of a skull. Once the cursed bastard was dead, the prince faced me.

“Burn it.” I swung at another dock man whose eyes had gone the blood red of the Blood Wraith. “Burn it all.”

Sol whistled. Tor was fifteen paces off, but turned his horse back. Together, they slid from their charges and strode toward the huddle of cursed dockers. Misty black coiled over Sol’s palms as blue fire ignited on Tor’s.

Hand in hand, their fury tangled into an explosive flame. Sol pressed his hands onto the sand, guiding the blight. Blue flames collided with the cursed souls. It devoured them whole, leaving behind nothing but ash.

A swift, bloody attack that ended in flames.

Silence swallowed the shoreline. A rank wind laden in hot refuse and blood burned into our leathers and fatigues.

After a few moments, a cry of anguish came from my men. Gods, no. Someone had been injured, or . . . someone had fallen.

My pulse throbbed in my neck. Not a warrior, a friend, a youth—numbness found my fingertips as I shoved through the crowd, pleading it wasn’t Aesir. Pleading it wasn’t Alek, or, gods, pleading it wasn’tanyone.

A cursed docker was sprawled out three paces away. Two arrows stuck out of his chest, two more in his face. Laila leaned over the rock ledge, a frozen look of stun on her gentle features.