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“Where are you off to? You’re going down,” she whispered to him, voice deadly. “You two as well.” She gestured to the other two traffickers.

They made an odd squeak but jumped down, as together we descended into the dim, disgusting bunker. And that’s when I saw them.

Cages.

Rows of them.

A goblin boy, face bruised and knees tucked to his chest. Next to him was a selkie child with her pelt locked in a glass case above her cage. A dryad girl with bark-skin cracking at the edges cried when she saw us, shirking away. An incubus no older than fifteen stared mournfully at us, chained in iron.

Magickal creatures. Children.

Rage pulsed in my throat, and for the first time I wished I was a vampyre like Envy or G, so I could have fangs to rip out the mens’ throats.

No, my incubus heritage would have to be enough.

I shot the incubus boy a look, receiving a small nod in return: a promise.

Wrath didn’t scream. Her body vibrated as she looked each child in the eye, the human already on the ground and begging for his life. She ignored him and raised her hand—and the locks dissolved, one by one, in synchronized bursts of molten light.

“Out,” she said softly. “All of you. You’re free.”

The kelpie bolted, smashing the case with her pelt and shooting up the trapdoor. The incubus hesitated, like he couldn’t quite believe it. The goblin boy looked at her like she was made of starlight.

The trafficker whimpered behind us. “We—we were just selling them to collectors—nobles need mana-blooded servants, it’s the market?—”

He didn’t get to finish.

Wrath turned.

Her eyes were twin furnaces, her hair lifting in invisible wind. The trafficker staggered back, sobbing now.

“No one owns them,” she said. “Not anymore.”

And sheburnedhim.

Not fire—something older. His body dissolved into red ash before he could scream, the air tasting of copper and stormlight. The other two traffickers scrambled, weeping, begging.

She left them alive.

Barely.

“I want them to remember,” she muttered.

The bunker shuddered as her power rippled outward. The two left alive were slammed into one of the cages just vacated, the door slamming shut. Wrath reached out with her hand and bent the metal, twisting it so it would be impossible for them to escape.

“We’re leaving.”

I placed a hand on the wall to steady myself.

I blinked and suddenly we were in the clearing outside. The children were surprisingly huddled together, wide-eyed and shaking but free.

The dryad girl was helping the selkie roll her pelt up into her arms. The incubus flinched from my gaze at first, until I crouched beside him.

“You’re safe now, little flame. I swear it. I will return you to your clan.”

Wrath stood at the center of it all—silent, blazing, alive. She didn’t need a crown. The night bent around her.

I walked up beside her, slow, deliberate. I didn’t speak. Not until she breathed out, like a long-held scream had finally left her lungs. Silently my brothers came up behind her, slowly surrounding her with support.