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The trip to the portal station was tense and silent, and Axel used the time to get his mind wrapped around the pain in his shoulder. Theon and Luka would help him with it when he got back. Hopefully he could make it there.

He peeled off his suit coat, hissing at the movement of his shoulder. Kat eyed him worriedly, but she didn’t reach for him. It took more effort than it should have, but he managed to roll back his sleeves and remove his tie before unbuttoning his top buttons.

Adrenaline was flooding his veins as Pavil drove around to the back of the terminal. Of course the Arius portal was shoved to the back of the building. His father always griped about it. Just another way Arius Kingdom was disrespected. Axel had never really given a fuck. His father rarely let them travel by portal anyway, but in this moment, he found himself grateful.

Fewer chances of witnesses.

Pavil and Metias glanced back at him nervously as Metias said, “We’re here.”

“You must assume I’m blind too,” Axel drawled.

“No,” Pavil said quickly. “Do you…want to come in with us or…?”

“Get the fuck out of the car,” Axel said tightly, reaching for the door handle. He waited until they were out before he turned to Kat and said, “Call him. Ask him to meet us somewhere discreet.”

Before she could reply, he was out of the car, and his shadows were swirling around him.

“Now,Heir St. Orcas,” Metias said snidely, his phone raised and thumb hovering over the call button. “It only takes one press of my finger.”

Axel smiled, walking towards him.

“Axel,” Metias snapped.

“We’re following orders,” Pavil said.

Gods, was that the only thing he knew how to say?

He saw Metias’s thumb twitch, but he was too late. There was a burst of shadows next to him, and Axel was there, reaching into the depths of that darkness and pulling out a nightstone dagger. One move had the dagger slicing clean through Metia’s wrist, the hand holding the phone dropping to the pavement with a satisfying thud.

The male started to scream, but Axel already had his shadows winding down his throat. Crushing the phone beneath his shoe, he sank the nightstone dagger into Metias’s chest, twisting it sharply before withdrawing it and slicing it across his throat from ear to ear.

See? The blood red tie would have been a good choice if he’d still been wearing it.

That was what he thought as he stood to face Pavil.

And then he went preternaturally still when he found him with Katya, a hand clamped over her mouth.

“I haven’t done anything yet, but I will,” the Legacy warned.

“Here I thought you were just a pathetic lackey,” Axel said, taking in every single part of Pavil that was touching her. “But I did warn you not to touch her.”

The male’s eyes went wide as Axel’s shadows struck. With brutal force, they pried him away from her, and she darted away.

He didn’t have the ability to shatter bone with his shadows like Theon could. He couldn’t send his shadows in to retrieve organs like Theon’s darkness could either. But that only made him more hands on, and today? He didn’t mind that so much.

Not as his shadows held Pavil down, ropes of nothing but dark mist holding him to the ground and silencing his wails as he methodically cut off fingers and sliced off flesh. Any part of him that had touched her landed in a pile beside the male’s bleeding and mutilated body. He had to work quickly, which annoyed him. He would have liked to take his time with this. This was one of those times he’d told Kat about when heenjoyedthekilling.

It wasn’t until he was satisfied that any part of the male that had touched her had been cut from his body that he sank the dagger into his heart and finally ended his pitiful existence.

Standing, he ran his arm along his sweaty brow, lowering it to find it smeared in red. The pain of his shoulder slammed back into him in full force, and he sent the dagger away with his magic before turning back to Kat.

Gods, he needed blood.

“Did you call him?” he asked.

Wide golden eyes bounced from him to the dead Legacy.

With a few long strides, he was in front of her. Cupping her jaw, he forced her to look at him. “Did you call Blackheart, Kat?”