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“You are not worth the dirt beneath my father’s boots,” I said through gritted teeth. Anger was a molten thing, souring in my stomach, and grief swept up with it. “Your queen is not worthy to speak his name.”

Crimson dripped down his cheek, one eye swelling shut. “He died screaming like they all do.”

I whipped my dagger to his throat, gripping his hair to expose his neck. He laughed again, the vibration angling him against the blade so a bead of blood appeared.

“What do you know?” I growled, leaning over him. I tried to shut out every thought of my father, every ache his death wrought within me, and focus on what this warrior implied between his words.

His taunts felt aimless, rambling but pointed. Had she told them of my blood? I doubted there was a warrior alive she trusted enough to share that information with. But how much did the queen herself know?

He continued to cackle, spit gathering in the corners of his mouth, dripping across the blood.

My grip tightened on the dagger handle. Flipping it around, I pointed the end directly at the corner of his mouth and dragged slowly outward, a shallow line that had maroon rolling like raindrops.

“If you don’t want me to slice true, I suggest you talk.”

He barely flinched.

“Tell us what your mission was, or I get a sliver of revenge for the lives taken in my city.”

His fingers drummed the arms of the chair. The incessant beat drilled into my mind and became the cataclysmic booms of buildings toppling in Damenal. I gripped his jaw, tugging it down.

“If you’re not going to speak, you won’t need your tongue.”

But he was too far gone. There was nothing left behind his eyes for me to interrogate. Exactly as Lyria had said happened with her prisoners, this Mindshaper’s magic had turned internal, eating away at him.

My hand shook, straining to carve him up for his taunts—for the lives he may have taken.

But I thought of my father.

Not of the way he’d died. But of how he’d lived.

Of how he’d raised me to handle leadership—to retain a level of both fairness and firmness. I tried to picture what he would tell me to do now. If this was a different prisoner beneath me, one not lost to a power he did not ask for, my father’s advice might be different. Now, though, I knew what he’d say. What instincts he’d tell me to taper.

My heart ached for the warriors across the continent enthralled by Kakias’s power. For the families who lost them. Behind him, Zaina’s face was unreadable, but her hands clenched into fists at her side, within reach of a jagged-edged dagger.

“You won’t win,” the prisoner sang. “Her power is eternal. The winged gods flourish within her.”

I gritted my teeth, my dagger shaking at his jaw.

“Magic lives,” he drawled. “It sings and dances.”

“Breath of lungs and threads of heart,” Vale echoed again, and at her voice something snapped within the prisoner.

“The sp—” His words cut off, eyes widening. He searched my face, seeming more alert for a brief moment, then looked wildly around the room.

Jezebel stepped from the shadows, a harsh, narrowed stare on the prisoner. They locked eyes, silently communicating, and Jez softened.

Then, my sister nodded at me, remorse swirling behind her gaze.

And I dragged my dagger across his throat, stepping aside quickly so as not to get his blood on me.

Vale snapped from the shallow depths of her reading. She swayed for a moment, but waved off Santorina’s assistance. She took in the dagger in my hand and blood pooling on the floor but shook her head. A frustrated sigh deflated her frame as she left the room—nothing concrete in her session.

“He asked for it,” Jezebel said to Rina and me as we walked back down the tunnel. Zaina said her team would clean up. Jez kept her voice low and slowed our steps enough that Ricordan wouldn’t hear. “At the end. When Vale said…whatever she said, and I tried to wrangle his spirit at the same time, he returned to himself, and he did not want to live.”

That leash had somehow snapped within him, and the warrior reclaimed his mind.

“That does not mean he deserved to die,” I said. No one forced into this war deserved to meet their end. Spirits, my hands still shook over the anger from his taunts about Daminius, but I wasn’t sure those had truly been him.