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“What kind of hellbeast is that?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. Even as I said the words, I knew they weren’t right.

“Those aren’t hellbeasts,” Luc said grimly.

Before he could elaborate, Estrella and Tristan appeared, cutting him off. If he even planned to explain at all. The shadowy forms of other warriors closed in around our fire, half the vampires summoned by the noise. Every eye flashed silver in the flickering light except Tristan and Jules’s.

“Your orders, Imperator?” Estrella broke the silence.

The lords didn’t glance at each other.

“Set a perimeter to guard the harvest,” Luc said with quiet authority. “There may be more, so keep an eye on the forest. We’ll handle this.”

She bowed. “As you wish, Imperator.”

Just as suddenly as they appeared, the vampires disappeared.

I rose to my feet. I couldn’t stay still, not when whatever was out there concerned two dozen Azarasians. “What’s happening?”

The lords both ignored me as if I hadn’t spoken.

“Had to show up just before dawn,” Jules muttered. “I swear those fuckers time this.”

“Perhaps for your benefit.” Luc pulled his axe from his holster. The handle was nearly as tall as me, the daemium head the size of my… well, head. Shadows wafted off it, thick and restless, visible even in the dark. Tiny runes covered the entire weapon, but they were too small to read from a distance.

“How? Are you going to leave me some?”

Luc’s lips twisted into a chilling smirk. “No.”

“C’mon, Lucey, please. Just one?”

“Focus on our volunteer.”

Jules twisted toward me, like he’d forgotten I existed. Those golden eyes pinned me in place. “Hmm, you’re right. That is preferable.”

“What the fuck is happening?”

Jules suddenly stood in front of me, so close that all I could see was his grinning, perfect mouth. I started to step back, but he dropped his bejeweled hands on my shoulder.

“Is that any way to speak to friends, lovely?”

I forced my eyes to meet his, all the gold nearly swallowed by darkness. The thin line shone brightly between pupil and rim. “You aren’t my friend.”

“Oh, you wound me.” With one hand still on my skin, Jules circled me slowly and came to stand at my side. “Is that any way to speak to casual acquaintances you want to fuck?”

My mouth dried.

A single beat of silence.

Then another.

But the bastard was waiting for a reply. “Yes, actually, I think so.”

Jules leaned closer, his breath ghosting against my ear. “Then I look forward to making you curse so hard your stepmother would faint.”

I hated the way my breath caught. If only I could pretend Jules meant cursing in anger. I scowled, looking anywhere but at him. This was ridiculous. Some nightmare thing was about to crawl shrieking out of the dark, and I was standing here flirting with a vampire.

Or being flirted with.

No. Being toyed with.

“Focus, Julien.” Luc had stepped forward, stopping near the edge of the treeline.

“Why? Is one of them going to get past you?”

Luc sent his soulbound a glare. “Of course not—”

Something shot out of the forest. It was human-sized and crawling on all fours, but I couldn’t see much more because it was made of shadow. Not like the dark mist that seeped from daemium and starcraters.

This was thicker, clinging, suffocating.

Wrong.

It leaped for the Lord of Dusk with an unholy shriek—

Luc chopped it in half with a single swing.

The two pieces of monster flopped in different directions.

I exhaled. That wasn’t so bad? Luc had killed it in one strike. Whatever it was hardly seemed worth a dozen vampires.

Then the top half of the creature twitched. Jerked upright. Split its entire face into a gaping, jagged maw.

And wailed directly at me.

I screamed.

The not-dead monster scrambled forward on its arms, terrifyingly quick.

I tried to scurry away. Jules’s hand on my shoulder tightened, his arm pressing across my back. Holding me in place beside him. The monster closed the distance—

Luc stomped its head in.

Shadow spattered across the ground like blood, splattering the log between me and the corpse.

No, not a corpse. It hasn’t stopped twitching.

But Luc hasn’t stopped stomping.

His boot came down again. And again. The wet crunch of breaking bone and ruptured flesh filled the air. He pulverized its back, moving down its spine until it was the texture of rotting fruit. Mush leaked into the grass.

I swallowed hard. What the fuck kind of creature could still move after being hacked in half? And why did a vampire as powerful as Luc feel the need to grind it into pulp?

Just to be sure it stayed dead?

A putrid stench hit me a second later. I clasped a hand over my mouth and tried not to gag. I had never smelled a days-old dead body left to rot in the sun, but I imagined it smelled something like that.

My stomach rolled. Acid burned the back of my tongue as my meager breakfast crawled my throat.

“No puking.” Jules traced a finger across my arm. Settle . My nausea vanished. “If I have to hold your hair back, I might miss a wraith trying to eat our faces.”

“What the fuck is a wraith?”

Jules pointed. “That.”

Luc held the mush-wraith down with a flaring rune of twisting, intricate lines. Burn. Smoke rose from the creature as it curled in on itself under the heat of his magic. Once the last line of his next rune was complete, he flicked his hand.

Erupt .

The wraith exploded.

Bits of it rained down in shredded pieces. It took nearly thirty seconds for them to stop twitching.

Fuck me. The Azarasians’ response made a lot more sense now.

I’d thought hellbeasts were the worst thing out here. I was wrong.

“Yeah, but what are they?”

Before Jules answered, more wails echoed from the forest, rising in a chorus of hunger. Two more wraiths ran out from the dark, slowly taking shape—

Luc threw his axe. It split through one wraith, slamming it back to the treeline with enough force to pin the creature to a trunk. Daemium sank into bark. The foliage instantly withered, but the wraith only screamed in annoyance, writhing against the blade.

“Witches.”

I frowned over at Jules. Witches? What did he—

“That’s a witch ?” I gaped as the second wraith skittered forward, closing the distance to the Lord of Dusk.

“That was a witch.”

“How?”

The wraith lunged at Luc. In a blink, his fingers extended into wickedly sharp claws of shadow. It wasn’t just his nails this time. The black curled up to his knuckles, almost like armored scales. He buried his new talons into the wraith and ripped it in half.

Stars save me.

“It’s quite a long story,” Jules said, completely unbothered by the attack. “But in short, witches can’t consume lifeforce, so they have to use their own to fuel their magic. It makes them mortal and they hate that. The everlife runespell is their latest attempt at immortality.”

The bisected wraith twitched. It clawed at Luc’s arm, blackened fingers reaching to sink into his flesh. Runes flared from within his leathers. Shield . The creature’s attack bounced off the glowing symbol, repelled like oil hitting water.

Luc didn’t give it another chance. Erupt . With the flash of a rune, the halves exploded in opposite directions.

Egh. “I don’t think their runespell worked.”

“It technically did, if you ignore how terribly it back-fired,” Jules continued. “They can’t be killed unless you throw a lot of magic at them. But they’re also ravenous monsters that need to feast on the living to maintain their life.”

“Don’t vampires and demons feast on the living to maintain their life?”

Jules curled his lip. “Well… yes.” He waved a hand, as if that wasn’t the point. “But we feed on lifeforce through blood and soul, both of which regenerate with time and rest. Wraiths eat flesh. There’s no way to make that pleasant, and the damage is rather permanent. Even for a vampire.”

A chill crawled down my spine. “Even for a vampire ?”

Jules nodded. “Bastards move faster than most of our kind can heal and always go straight for the heart. Consume that, and a vampire’s dead.”

“So you’re letting your soulbound fight them alone ?”

Jules shrugged. “It’s not dawn yet.”

Not dawn yet.

I gaped at Jules, maddeningly unfazed, then snapped my attention back to his counterpart. The axe-skewered wraith had wiggled halfway free of Luc’s blade, widening the wound in its gut to escape. Its body twisted unnaturally, desperate, like a trapped insect gnawing off its own limb.

Luc grabbed the handle of his weapon and tore it free.

The wraith didn’t even need a second to recover. But the Lord of Dusk had known that. Another rune flared hot in his other hand. Annihilate . Magic ripped the shadow from its bones in a single pulse.

The wraith collapsed in an instant, the unnatural force holding it together obliterated. The monster was nothing but a black-stained skeleton now. Humanoid but monstrous. Its gaping jaw was locked in a final, warped scream.

Shit. It really had once been a person.

A crack split the clearing. The tree behind the wraith hadn’t fared much better. Luc’s spell had destroyed a full chunk of the trunk, leaving behind a decaying husk. It splintered under the pressure of its heavy branches.

Fuck. Gravity gripped the tree and tore it down, the foliage right over my head. I braced—

The hit never came. I peeked through squished eyelids.

Luc held the remaining trunk up at an angle. Like it was nothing. Like it was weightless. His spare hand drew a shape. Incinerate . In a blink of shadows, the tree turned to ash.

It fell down on Jules and I like black snow. Above, the night sky had lightened, inky black softening to deep blue.

Jules grinned suddenly. He twisted his hair back into a loose knot, a few strands of silken gold brushing against his bare shoulders. “One minute to dawn, Lucey.”

The Lord of Dusk didn’t react. Between Luc’s last attack, the falling tree, and the brightening sky, four more wraiths had emerged from the trees.

“What happens at dawn?”

An unholy gleam entered his golden eyes. “It’s my turn.”

The Lord of Dusk trapped two wraiths within a swirl of dark magic, holding them still and out of the way. Imprison . Their forms twisted violently, writhing inside the rune as they fought to break free.

He poured the rest of his concentration into one struggling, shrieking bundle of deformed shadows at his feet. But the fourth wraith moved freely. It dashed from out of the treeline toward Luc’s exposed back.

Luc thrust back an elbow. As he moved, shadows surged from his skin, coalescing into a spike that burst from his bone. The same way fangs slid onto a vampire’s canines. My jaw dropped. I thought only demons could do that.

The spike speared through the wraith’s skull, impaling it mid-lunge.

The creature jerked violently, clawed at his back, but it couldn’t pierce Azarasian leathers any better than its predecessors.

Luc pulsed one last blast into the wraith at his feet. Then he spun, the shadow spike dissipating in an instant. His axe swung in a wide, effortless arc.

The wraith split clean in half under the force of that strike.

Light streaked across the sky.

I don’t know what I expected, but I expected something to happen. If it did, I didn’t see it. But Luc bit out a curse, Jules grinned like it was his birthday, and the swirling magic around the two trapped wraiths flickered.

…was that it?

“Aww, you left me three, Lucey,” Jules said, strolling forward. “You do care.”

He tossed a rune carelessly at the wraith still twitching near Luc’s boots. Rend. The strands of magic latched onto the wraith like wire sinking into flesh. A sharp pull in every direction—

The wraith burst into little pieces.

Luc glared at his soulbound. “That one was mine.”

“But it’s after dawn, so it was actually mine.”

“We’re both capable of killing a wraith at any time.” Luc sounded halfway to grumbling, but he holstered his axe all the same.

“But can you kill one wraith while holding two others still?” Jules raised his hands toward the two trapped wraiths and slowly curled his fingers into fists. The imprisonment rune tightened, squeezing down until the creatures twisted violently. Their shrieks warped into something almost human. “Probably, but you’re not, because these kills are mine .”

“It’s still four to three—”

Another wraith lurched into the clearing and screamed.

Luc narrowed his eyes at the creature. “Fuck.”

Jules clapped. “I always knew the godstars loved me.”

I flinched at the words.

The wraith dashed toward the vampire lords. Jules picked his pace up into a damned skip . He cut the creature off before it reached Luc.

The wraith lunged. Jules lunged faster.

With shadow-clawed hands, Jules shoved into the wraith’s gaping mouth. He grasped its top and bottom jaw. The creature clawed at his leathers, desperate to tear into his chest.

Jules twisted in opposite directions.

He tore the creature’s skull in two with a snap.

And then he laughed.

I just gaped. Luc had been lethal and efficient, a force too strong for the wraiths to resist.

Jules was just fucking insane.

Luc strode across the clearing to my side. I glanced up at the towering vampire. The tousle in his black curls was a bit wilder than normal, but he otherwise looked the same. He hadn’t even broken a sweat.

He gave a slight shake of his head at my disbelieving stare. “You’re only encouraging him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jules fights for an audience.” Luc drew a small rune against his own skin. Clean . The splatters of wraith blood faded from his skin and leathers. “Sometimes that audience is the person he’s killing, but wraiths are mindless beasts. He doesn’t bother for them.”

Jules chose that moment to rip off the wraith’s arms and toss them away. Was he humming ? I couldn’t hear it over the inhuman wailing, but his lips were pressed together as he bobbed his head to a tune only he heard. It merged with the wet cracks of bone, creating a gruesome symphony.

I looked away, focusing on the broad stretch of Luc’s shoulders. Better that than Jules’s dissection.

If this performance was for me, I wanted out of the theater. But I couldn’t leave. I had to watch Jules dive into its rib cage next, snapping the bones one at a time. Stars, why wouldn’t it die?

“That’s not worth any amount of immortality.”

Luc linked his hands behind his back and watched Jules root through the wraith’s torso. “Most witches would agree.”

“Then why use the runespell?”

“A fourth of Isaura’s population cast it on themselves before they understood the consequences.” His expression darkened, silver eyes hardening to steel. “And once they did, their Exalted Mother used it as a weapon, using a harvest she gifted to us. As she made it bloodborne, the spell activated the moment we fed. It was a massacre.”

A chill slid down my spine. I couldn’t even imagine a massacre of vampires. But the thought unsettled me less than the implication buried beneath Luc’s words. The witches sent a harvest? In Karra’s time, Isaura was a neighboring nation of witches, ruled by a demon with the same name. While the Azarasians hadn’t been friendly with them, the Isaurans were demonblooded, too. More human than demon, but still.

In the centuries since, they hadn’t just fallen in one of the Conqueror’s campaigns—they’d been degraded to meal.

But that didn’t matter now.

“You didn’t seem to have that hard a time killing them.” I peeked at Jules. He had finally reached the wraith’s hips. With a hand on each hip bone, he tore. The wraith crumpled at his feet. He frowned down at it, clearly disappointed. “Jules, either.”

“A single wraith is no threat to a powerful vampire, but most of our citizens can’t fight one without help.”

I nodded. None of this had been in any textbook I’d read on the Impire. Why redact this information? It wasn’t like we could use it. Humans couldn’t cast runes.

Were they that concerned about us knowing something could kill them?

Jules tossed a rune down at the last wraith. Annihilate . The twitching pieces shattered into ever smaller bits. He glanced around the clearing, but every other monster was dead.

“We’re tied, four for four,” Jules muttered with a pout. “That won’t do.”

Without another word, the Lord of Dawn spun on his heels and strutted into the forest.

Luc sighed. When my brow furrowed, he said, “Jules likes to win.”

“Win what?”

Luc’s gaze slid to me. “We haven’t decided yet.”

My skin tingled under the intensity of his gaze. Flushing, I faced the trees, the Lord of Dusk in my periphery. “So, uh… is the Imperium’s solution to your wraith problem why your magic is stronger at night and Jules’s during the day?”

“It is.”

I waited. Nothing. “Is it a secret or something? Will the Conqueror have your head for telling me?”

The corner of Luc’s lip twitched, gone in a second. “You’re quite the little curiosity, aren’t you?”

I flushed. Nosy, my stepmother had called it. “So it is a secret.”

“It’s not. But it is advanced magic.”

“Ah.” I ducked my head. Of course. I had spent the last decade reading my pain away, but the Impire held back so much information. I probably knew a fraction of what Luc did. The Lord of Dusk might speak to me, but I wasn’t his intellectual equal. “So I’m not smart enough to understand.”

Luc’s gaze traced across my skin, leaving tingles in its path. Considering me. Studying me. Judging me.

“Very well,” he said after a moment. “Heartmates share magic through their bond. That shared strength made even the weakest among us able to kill a wraith. But companions and beloveds don’t have the ability and account for most of our population. Out of our entire convoy, Estrella and Tristan are the only heartmates.”

I nodded, following along so far. So that was why Tristan was the only Dawn vampire to report to our fire earlier. He was the only one strong enough to fight a wraith after dusk. Jules might’ve too, if he and Luc hadn’t been competing for the kills.

“While we couldn’t mimic a heartmate’s open connection, we managed to transfer magic back and forth twice a day within a soulbond.”

“Doesn’t that leave you with no magic for half the day?” I asked.

Luc shook his head. “If I had no magic right now, I’d be dead. Most Azarasians have enough to survive and defend their own blood. The stronger among us can do more with what they have left.”

“And if a wraith catches a Dusk vampire alone after dawn?”

“It was a risk we had to take,” he said, uncharacteristically soft. “They’d have overrun us centuries ago otherwise.”

A crack of underbrush split the air. Jules emerged from the forest a second later. His golden-white hair shone even under the dim light, a loose strand trailing against his cheek as he sighed dramatically. No blood on him. No dirt. Like he hadn’t just fought four monsters and shoved his arms into their torsos.

“Find any?” Luc asked.

Jules sighed, forlorn. “No. We’re still tied.”

Luc nodded, then his gaze dropped to me. “In that case, you can cast the winning vote.”

“What?” I nearly squawked. “Why me?”

Luc glanced back at Jules. The lords stared at each other for a second, an unspoken decision passing between them. When they turned their attention back to me, I knew they had reached a unanimous conclusion.

Luc smirked, that rare, arrogant half-smile that made me either want to slap him or fuck him. It was truly fifty-fifty. “It’s only fair you decide, little curiosity. You’re the prize, after all.”

I had to stop my jaw from dropping. I was the prize. That was less shocking somehow than what he called me. Little curiosity? Because I asked questions or because I was an oddity? Perhaps both. Whatever the meaning, it stirred something inside me.

Part of me didn’t mind the idea of being a prize at all.

I gave it a shake. Focus, idiot . “And what does that mean?”

“Pick, Nessa.”

“I—I—” My tongue felt clumsy in my mouth, a useless lump of muscle that couldn’t form an answer. Pick? The word sent panic lashing through me.

How did I pick ?

Jules, with his golden smirks and teasing words, irresistible in his reckless charm. He made danger feel like a game, one I might even want to play.

Luc was entirely different. Steady. Calculated. An impenetrable wall of power and purpose. Where Jules teased, Luc studied. Where Jules taunted, Luc challenged.

And that challenge thrilled me just as much as it scared me.

A choice between fire and steel. Between playful destruction and something unshakable and overwhelming. My stomach tightened. They were vampires. I was a thrall. A human, collected as food like all the others in the harvest.

It didn’t matter that Jules made me laugh or that Luc made my blood thrum with a single glance.

They were the predators.

I was the prey.

I couldn’t pick.

I shouldn’t pick.

And yet, something inside me ached to step closer. To let myself get caught between them. To feel what it would be like to be someone’s prize.

A cold, round weight pressed into my palm. The sensation lured me from my panic and brought me back to a world of luminous eyes. Both lords watched me, but it was Luc who pressed something into my hand.

“Flip the coin.”

I tossed it in the air, entranced by their gazes. If he had told me to eat the coin, I probably would’ve done that without hesitation, too. I didn’t even bother trying to catch it. Luc told me to flip it. I flipped it. What happened to it after that wasn’t my concern.

Jules flashed out a hand and caught the coin.

He held it up to the rising light. “Ha! I win. Told you the godstars love me.”

He showed it to Luc, who sighed. Jules clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t cry, Lucey, you know I always share. Besides, you could have won if you spent less time flexing your big, sexy muscles—”

Luc wrapped a hand around Jules’s throat. His arm flexed as he tightened his grip. “Like this?”

My jaw dropped. I resisted shuddering at Luc’s deep growl. Jules didn’t bother. Heat flared in his bright eyes. There was a delighted curve to his lips that paired too well with the Lord of Dusk’s dark smolder.

Were they going to kiss again?

Did I want them to kiss again?

I swallowed. “Well, I’m going to go find my wagon.”

“No,” they said together. I went still, my pulse skittering.

Luc reluctantly let go of Jules’s throat. The Lord of Dawn gave a small pout, but then turned on me and winked. I think my heart stopped.

Luc rolled his eyes. “There will be more wraiths the closer we get to Montaurère. You’re riding with us until we reach the capital.”