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I manage to rally a bit of stubbornness.

Not going to let him kill me.

I get one foot under me.

If I don’t defeat him, no one will.

I begin to rise. I’m coated in a sheen of my own sweat, my body trying to purge itself of the toxins that have entered my bloodstream.

He lifts an eyebrow. “Not done yet, are we?”

This is the man who forced my mother into his harem. Who demeaned her to my face, the man who murdered her.

My magic begins to build again.

He’s a poison more potent than iron, a scourge that needs to be swept from the land.

With a cry, I launch myself at him, sword bared. No longer am I cold and impassive. I’m not the dark, untouchable night, but the dying star within it. I’m heat and passion, red-hot anger, and I feel so much right now. Every transgression, every slight, every life cut too short by this man. The ruin he’s wrought. I’m swifter than I’ve ever been, my moves more precise and powerful.

His gloating smirk is wiped away as he parries the hits. He tries to disappear, but now I’m the Shadow King’s shadow, predicting each one of his moves. The two of us pop in and out of the night, forming long enough to strike out at each other before evanescing into the darkness.

We appear over the bones of one of his guards, Galleghar’s sword lifted overhead, ready to cut me down. But in his eagerness, Galleghar leaves his own chest exposed.

I move like the wind, wrapping one of my hands around his neck. And then, with the other, I drive my sword through his heart. It makes a wet, meaty sound as it enters him.

Galleghar’s body jolts at the intrusion. Weakly, his hands wrap around my blade.

No one warns you about this kind of death—the personal kind. How much power you need to put behind your strike to force a blade between ribs. How you can feel your weapon scrape against hard parts and cut cleanly through the softer flesh. How intimate it is when you stare a man in the eye as you take his life from him. It’s just as intimate as taking a lover, only different, more terrible desires drive death.

Decades I’ve plotted and planned and waited for this moment. Finally, that moment is mine.

The Night King begins to laugh.

I look at him, aghast. He took a sword to the heart. The last thing he should be doing is laughing.

“I knew this day would come,” he rasps. He sways on his feet before his legs crumble out from beneath him. He falls first to his knees, his hands sliding limply away from my blade. “I tried to prevent it, but you cannot outwit fate.”

Galleghar slumps onto his back. He’s bent and twisted in a way that only the dying take.

He laughs again, this time weaker as blood begins to coat his lips. “You think you’re better than me—I can see it on your face—but you aren’t. The need to conquer and kill is in our blood.”

I stare down at him, stonily. I can feel his words slipping under my skin, and I know they’ll eat away at me in the coming years.

Galleghar’s head rolls back and forth with his weak chuckles. “We shall see … what other things a soul can be.”

Enough.

I twist the sword in his chest. He chokes, his throat gurgling. He grabs my arm as I yank my blade out, his eyes wide, like he didn’t expect death after all. A torrent of blood slips from his wound. He squeezes my armor, those icy grey eyes locked on mine. Slowly the darkness leaves them until, eventually, there is no more Galleghar Nyx, just an empty shell.

After four centuries of tyranny, the Shadow King is dead.

Chapter 8

A Body to Curse

220 years ago

In the royalcrypt beneath my palace, I stare at my father’s body. He’s laid out on a white stone slab, his body cleaned and dressed. Down here the fae lights glow weakly, making the arched marble walls around us glitter in the low light.