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She wouldn’t allow it. Thea wielded sword and dagger against every vicious attack of power, pausing only to hold her dagger between her teeth as she flung the throwing stars from her boot right at the monster’s heart.

The small blades weren’t big enough to do serious damage, but they created a window of opportunity, of distraction, so that Thea could duck and weave through the ribbons of darkness and leap upon the wraith with all her might.

For a brief moment, she wondered abstractly what it might be like to have the Furies-given strength of a Warsword behind her blows. But that was neither here nor there – not yet, anyway.

Thea thrust her sword through the tender flesh between the creature’s shoulder and clavicle. The force of her strike was enough to send the monster staggering back with a scream. The sound set Thea’s teeth on edge, but she wasn’t done, not by a long shot.

The wraith landed on its back in the ruins and Thea pinned it to the ground, tearing her sword free from its leathery skin, black blood spurting. She speared her blade through its wings next. It hissed and clawed at her, but she swiped her sword across its flesh again and, with a boot to the monster’s throat, palmed her dagger.

Thea didn’t hesitate as she carved through its chest with her blade of Naarvian steel. Skin, muscle, tissue and bone all caved beneath its sharp edge.

All the while, the wraith screamed, the sound echoing around the ruins of Delmira.

It seemed fitting to gut it here, amid the graveyard of what had once been the land of her kin. How many screams had its ilk dragged from her people? The thought came to her distantly, like a question from another person, another time.

As the shadow wraith’s chest opened up beneath her, Thea didn’t hesitate to carve her blade through the rest of its insides, and cut out its heart.

With a cry of triumph, she tore the hot mass from its chest cavity, its warm, thick blood pouring down her arm as she turned to Wilder, an unstoppable grin on her face.

But Wilder’s attention wasn’t on her or the wraith heart in her grasp.

It was fixed on the ledge of a nearby stone wall.

On therheguld reaperwatching them.

CHAPTER TWENTY

WILDER

Wilder had been so focused on Thea that he’d nearly missed it: the prickle at the back of his neck, the quiet tendrils of darkness testing the air around him.

But then he’d seen it, and without thinking, with terror in his heart for his apprentice, he’d sent one of his blades hurtling for therheguld reapersurveying them from the wall.

With shadows of its own, the reaper had simply batted the flying sword away, as though it were nothing but an inconvenience, as though it didn’t have the Furies-given strength of a Warsword behind it, or Naarvian magic imbued in its steel.

It had stared at Wilder, a challenge, a dare.

And then the reaper hadn’t moved.

It watched from the top of the wall, drinking in the sight of Thea battling the wraith with its clouded blue eyes, sniffing the blood-drenched air as she carved out its dark heart.

Wilder didn’t take his eyes off the reaper, trying to anticipate its next move. He felt it when Thea turned to him, felt it when she saw what he saw.

And he heard the thud of the wraith’s heart hitting the ground as she stalked back across the rubble to stand at his side.

‘What’s it doing?’ she murmured.

Wilder flexed his fingers around his remaining sword. ‘Spying.’

The reaper blinked at them, which was more unnerving than a swipe of its claws or a lash of its power. Wilder had never seen oneblinkbefore. It was almost reptilian, a slimy lid swiping slowly across the eye.

Its ominous gaze was trained not on him, but on Thea, full of hunger, as though it could taste her from where it stood atop the wall. Wilder didn’t make the conscious decision to step in front of her, but he did it anyway, trying to block the monster’s path to her.

But Thea pushed him aside and faced the reaper with her shoulders squared. ‘What do you want?’ she said, her voice cold and sharp.

The creature tilted its head in interest, a strange noise escaping it. At first, Wilder thought it was a feral hiss, the same racket its rancid species made, but it wasn’t a single sound; it was many… A language he didn’t understand.

In challenge, Thea lifted her chin, still covered in the wraith’s blood.