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She wasn’t dead; I couldfeelthat she existed.

She’d closed the window.

I realized it like a bolt of lightning in my core, that even in her moments of pure, absolute terror, Estrella was protectingme. I’d thought, in a small comfort, that I would at least be able to feel her through our bond. That I’d know she was okay, that she wasn’t in pain or suffering, but she’d taken even that from me, leaving me empty and hollow—broken.

I shouted my rage into the sky, hoping she could feel it even as she left the realm of the living. Reaching behind me with a single hand, I swiped the dagger from the thigh sheath of the male standing behind me. He gasped as I stabbed it into the side of his thigh, rotating on my knees in a move I’d seen my mate use more often than I could count. The grains of sand dug into my knees even through my trousers, the slight pain grounding me as I pulled the knife free and stabbed the male in the groin.

He screamed, his voice high-pitched and full of agony as he cupped himself with his hands, falling to his knees in front of me. I didn’t waste time with delivering him to death once he was out of my way, pushing to my feet quickly and going toward the next of Mab’s loyal followers who stood too close. My rage drove me into absolutedetermination, forcing me to take down as many of her people as possible.

She’d stripped everything from me. The right to complete my bond. The mate I loved more than anything.

“Bring her back!” I shouted, evading the blade Gunthard thrust for my gut with a sidestep. I dragged my stolen dagger across his throat, splitting the skin open and wasting only a moment of satisfaction to watch the way his blood poured over the hands he used to try to quell it. His eyes went glassy quickly as I moved on, his chest moving beneath his armor as Mab’s snake chewed its way out from his flesh, fighting for freedom from its no-longer-living host.

Mab’s dark eyes glimmered with morbid curiosity as she watched the display, her lack of care over those who served her dying in front of her apparent. It should have been enough to make those loyal to her hesitate, to prove to them that they would never be more than useful tools in her arsenal of weapons, ultimately disposable and replaceable.

Another came for me, a swift sweep of my shadows lashing out like a whip to cut him in two. It cut through the air in a tangible line, the darkness held within it shimmering with the faintest golden light—like pinpricks of stars in the sky. Even now, the blood she’d given me tainted my magic with hers, offering aid in what should have been a difficult fight. His torso slid down from his legs where I’d cut him at an angle, leaving him to topple over in a disgusting pile of wasted flesh where his entrails pooled on the sand.

The whip was stronger than it had ever been—the cut far cleaner like a precisely sharpened blade. Estrella would have been horrified by the show of violence, and the knowledge that her magic had made it all the more gruesome, her human notions standing in her way sometimes when death was as necessary as the very breaths of life. It saddened me to think what Tartarus might do to the innocence of my mate, stripping it from her far more quickly than was just.

Two of Mab’s personal guard stepped up, one throwing an axe at me. I sent a wave of awareness through my fingertips, imagining the way it would spread out from there until it reached the intact body of Gunthard where it lay before me. His awareness was gone, and it didn’t matter that the Fae who had once called that flesh home had belonged to Mab in life. His soul had left along with her snake, escaping the prison of his body to wander without me to deliver him into the Void, and his corpse that remained as an empty shell became mine to control. He rose on command, taking the axe intendedfor me to the chest with barely a flinch, and then turning on one of my attackers.

Once hers, now he was mine.

With him to distract those who would have killed me for her benefit, I took a step closer to the true target of my wrath, staring the Queen of Air and Darkness in the face.

Mab reached out with a shadow whip of her own, catching me around the arm that held my dagger. She wrapped that tendril tight, cutting circulation and forcing the skin to part beneath the pressure she exerted. Her injured hand reached out in front of her, a warning as I turned and took a single step toward her. “Not another step, Caldris,” she warned, squeezing her fingers tighter. Her voice lacked the power I was used to hearing in it, lacked the command and rage as she gave into her fear with the slightest of trembles.

My heart clenched in my chest, the snake there tightening in warning. I swallowed, taking another step through the suffocation that seemed to take the breath from my lungs with the stilling of my heart. She squeezed tighter, her eyes widening when I did not stop.

I took another step, roaring as I forced myself to move through the command she tried to instill in me. That vice around my heart came with the command, a silent word that I felt in every muscle of my body as it protested.

It wanted to give in, to do as it was told.

Fuck that.

I growled as I took another step, each one heavily weighted and leaving me vulnerable. I couldn’t stomach the thought of not getting vengeance for my mate, even as my body locked up and my knee buckled and made me stumble. I kept pushing, kept going through that grip on my heart. This was the closest I’d ever come to vengeance, to overpowering the very person who had made my life a living Hel.

I was only a few steps from Mab, close enough to see the utter terror in her eyes as I forced myself closer. She could kill me; she could shred my heart. But then nothing would keep Estrella bound, the deal between them would be null and void.

With my death, she would free Estrella from the bond she’d agreed to.

It was a sacrifice we both knew I would be willing to make, were it not for the vows Estrella and I had sworn in private. I was aware of the consequence of my death and what that would mean for Estrella, but Mab was not. That lack of knowledge on her part was a strength of mine, letting her believe that my death would set my mate free.

“Caldris, stop,” Mab begged, her voice quieter than normal and laced with a vulnerability I didn’t recognize. She didn’t want her followers to know just how desperately she’d lost control of me.

“Bring her back,” I growled, forcing another step even as my knee caved in on itself, and I knelt at her feet. The dagger was still held in my hand, her whip wrapped around my forearm and pulling me away. I forced all my fight into that arm, dragging it away from her grip that was determined to keep me from killing her.

“She’s beyond my reach now. Surely you know that,” Mab argued softly, and for a moment I wondered if a bit of humanity peeked through those sharp, dark eyes.

“Then you shouldn’t have fucking sent her,” I said, yanking on my arm. Her shadows pulled tighter, fighting to hold me still as she reached down and bent my wrist back. My frustrated roar felt like it came from my very soul as she pinned me down finally, holding me still as my lungs heaved with the effort to escape her bounds. I’d been so fucking close I could smell her death in the air, the bittersweet copper of her blood coating my hands when I ripped out her fucking heart and rid all of Alfheimr of her cruelty.

Stealing the dagger from my hand, she nodded to the males behind me. Four sets of hands hauled me to my feet, fighting to control me as Mab kept that hand squeezed and her snake clenched around my heart. “Take him to the dungeon. Make sure he’s locked tight,” she said. I didn’t miss the swallow of nerves or the glance of hesitation one of her men gave her.

She knew exactly what I knew.

I’d been so fucking close.

A laugh bubbled in my throat, chaotic and bitter, filled with the madness I felt at having freedom so close only for it to be ripped away all over again.