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Sadie didn’t need to see it, though. To her, it was all the same. She broke down, falling to her knees in the underground once more. “Don’t!” she said. “Please don't kill him. He was just trying to protect himself! He didn’t mean to get anyone in trouble!” Her words came out in a jumbled mess, drunk with emotion.

Malachi didn’t care, though. I didn’t expect him to.

Sadie took a long, shaking breath and looked Malachi directly in the face. “Please,” she whispered. “Show him mercy.”

“You want mercy?” he repeated. I stayed still where I stood, not daring to move an inch.

Not wanting to stop the scene before me.

Those dark shadows deep within me whispered formore.

“There is only one mercy for a man like Isaiah. For a traitor. For a man who tried to kill mywife.”

My heart pounded in my chest. I knew what was coming.

Malachi was the King of Shadows.

Death would be a gift to Isaiah.

As if he read my thoughts, Malachi grabbed Isaiah’s head with both hands and, in the blink of an eye, snapped his neck.

Sadie screamed.

Isaiah’s chains kept him from falling sideways to the ground.

I stood there, not able to look away. A numbness I recognized all too well spread through my chest, across my entire body.

Isaiah was dead. Isaiah betrayed me, he betrayed Malachi, and now he was dead.

Malachi killed him.

I looked at Malachi, who was already staring at me.

Waiting for my reaction.

Did he want me to hate him? Did he want me to run away? Or did he think I would sink to the floor like Sadie, screaming my lungs out at the horror?

I did none of those things. I wasn’t afraid of Malachi. I wasn’t afraid of the things he did.

To be honest, I hated that I wasn’t disgusted by him. No, I was the furthest thing from disgusted.

I saw something in him that I recognized deeply within myself. The horror. The shame. The guilt. The power.

I wanted it all.

“Let her go,” I demanded. “She’s gone through enough.”

Malachi swallowed once. “Fine,” he said. “Now she knows what will happen if she crosses us in the future. Run into the woods and find your way back to Fearford. You are not welcome back here, Sadie. Let this be a reminder to you of what will happen if you betray Jade.”

My stomach twisted at the way Sadie scraped herself off the floor and stumbled to Isaiah, checking to make sure he was really dead.

He was.

“Go, Sadie,” I said. I kept my eyes on Malachi. I couldn’t look at her. Not now. Not after this. “Go before he changes his mind.”

Sadie was sobbing hysterically, but she understood. She knew this was her only chance.

She pushed past Malachi and I, sobbing with every weak step, and she was gone.