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If the years have strengthened my fighting skills, they’ve also weakened my morals.

I didtryto do right in the beginning. My entire first year of marriage, I was committed to protecting and aiding Sarmatian warriors. But those battles all ended the same way: with mekilling our enemies, with blades or spells, until it no longer made sense to even attempt to stay my hand.

Quickly, I pass the cluster of mounted riders. I withdraw another arrow from my gorytos and twist my body on my steed. Sighting the retreating form of another enemy fighter, I release the projectile.

It whizzes across the distance andthwonksinto the enemy’s back, toppling the man off his horse.

Memnon whoops from where he’s already circling back around to the front lines of the fighting.

Excellent shot, Roxi.

My gaze moves to his just as he pulls back his own bow and releases an arrow. It cuts through the air and lodges itself in a warrior’s throat.

Well done, yourself.

Neither of us can say more than that. Not while the enemy, an Alani tribe pressing in from the east, swarms around us. I shoot again and again, most of my arrows finding their mark.

Once I’ve emptied my gorytos, I swing myself off my horse, letting it gallop away. Magic leaks from my palms as I step forward.

Across the field, I see Katiari ducking under her opponent’s blade before bringing her own sword up. Ferox charges in from the grasslands around us, pouncing on the enemy fighter before she can finish him off, the panther ripping out the man’s throat.

The wards I’ve placed on myself and Memnon, Ferox, and Katiari are likely weakening, which means Memnon and I need to either end the battle soon or reinforce the wards.

It doesn’t particularly matter which option we choose. Either way, we’ll win.

We always do.

I reach a hand out, my magic pooling in the air around it. Instead of forming it into a spell, I draw on the spilled blood thatwets the grassy knoll we fight on. There’s so much of it splattered across the battlefield. I can sense the earth swallowing it up.

I call on that power, coaxing it to me.

Across the battlefield, blood bubbles and hisses as it evaporates. The magic that remains twists through the ground, moving toward me.

“Empressss…”

Goose bumps break out along my arms, and I suppress a shudder as the voices speak to me as one.

“Seamstress…orphan…warrior…”

I grit my teeth as I continue to call on that blood-borne magic.

Sometimes I hear the voices out here; sometimes I don’t. I refuse to ask who they are or what they want. I don’t acknowledge them at all, though that doesn’t stop them from whispering to me.

“Thief…friend…”

Memnon’s eyes meet mine as the dark magic enters through the bottoms of my boots, then the soles of my feet.

“Witch…wife…queen…”

The power burgeons as it hits my bloodstream, making my head arch back. Distantly, I’m aware that Ferox has moved to my side, but magic is overpowering my other senses. It amasses in my veins, so thick it presses against the underside of my skin, the pressure of it mounting, mounting?—

“Murderer.”

All at once, my power explodes out of me, rushing at our enemies. My magic latches onto them, slipping down their throats and sinking into their veins. Seizing their lungs and stopping their hearts. I tell myself that their deaths are so sudden, they don’t feel it.

But I’m not entirely sure that’s the case.

The enemy fighters fall, their legs folding as their bodies hit the earth. A wave of terrified screams goes up from the few, mostly wounded, Alani warriors I missed. They glance around frantically, looking for the source of their comrades’ deaths.