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“Yes, Raincarver,” he sneered. “And his blood runs in your veins. You’re his filthy little prodigy, and the stars dared to gift you the power of the Void, the one thing that could possibly stay my hand in killing you.

” He scraped a hand through his dark hair, his muscles flexing, power emanating from him and promising me retribution for my father’s sins.

“I didn’t know,” I said uselessly because what good would it do me? Father had done the unthinkable. He had hunted civilians; he’d murdered innocents. And I was his flesh and blood.

“Perhaps destroying the Void is as good as wielding it,” Kaiser said darkly, his head cocking down, his face shadowed with the wings of death. “Then none can have it and you will lay dead in payment for your father’s bloodshed.”

His eyes were wild, anger not even close to describing the pits of fury tearing open inside them.

If there was one true thing to fear in this world, it wasn’t memories that lived in the past, not really able to touch me, it was this man when his soul was split open. When his inner demons were awakened.

“My father despises me,” I said hurriedly. “He wouldn’t care if you wrang my neck. He’d probably thank you for it.”

“ Lies ,” he barked, the loudness of his voice setting my heart thundering.

“It’s true,” I insisted, but he stalked toward me with violent intentions, casting me in his shadow.

I glanced around for a weapon, unable to cast magic with the cuffs on my wrists and knowing I needed to act fast. I could shift. Fight him in my Leopard form, but as I prepared to do just that, Kaiser grabbed me with force.

He dragged me to my feet and released a growl of utter rage as he prowled over to a tall window.

“Wait,” I gasped. “Look in my head again. See my fears of him. They’ll show you the truth. My father hates me.” Despite the terror of the situation, it still stung to admit those words. “I’m a runt. My death won’t be revenge because I’m nothing to him!”

Kaiser kicked the window open so it swung out on its hinges and I screamed as he shoved me through it, his fingers knotted in my shirt the only thing keeping me from falling.

The cold air whipped around me as I dangled over the deadly precipice, the thin material of the shirt threatening to rip as my weight hung from it. I yelled in fear as my feet kicked wildly in thin air, and I grabbed his arm, digging my nails in to try and hold on.

My death was painted in Kaiser’s eyes by the stars and his possession latched onto my soul again, refusing to let me fight back. Somehow, both of our powers were awake, my Void pushing against his possession, crumbling pieces of it but not nearly enough.

“You are more trouble than you are worth,” he hissed as I scrambled to hold onto his arm to pull myself back from the drop. Below me, a stone courtyard waited hundreds of feet away, beckoning me into its yawning mouth.

“Fuck the prophecy, I will rid the world of you instead and there will be no victor in the four lands,” Kaiser snarled.

“Coward!” I cried. “If you want my death, at least let me fight like a fucking warrior, not a chained animal.”

“You are so determined for this fight,” he sneered, yanking me close so I was nose to nose with him, and the tips of my toes managed to scrape against the outer wall.

“Come then, see if you can lay a mark on me while you are my Fearsire. See what resistance you can put up against the Nightfire. Place one scratch on me, silka la vin, and I will let you live, but if not, I will hurl you to your death and be done with you.”

The Void began to sleep again. It was ebbing away, leaving me to the fate of the Fury who had just declared my death.

His eyes cooled as the dulling of my Void left him numb once more.

He dragged me inside, pushing me past him so I stumbled back into the room, working to slow my rapid breathing.

“Lay on the floor like the rat you are and do not move,” he commanded, his possession forcing me to obey.

I lowered to the flagstones, pressing myself against them and hearing my pulse hammer in my ears.

Kaiser crouched down and his three dark red hounds shimmered into existence around him. He watched me with a cruel detachment, his mouth a harsh slash across his face and his gaze barren of life.

One of his hounds nuzzled him and he brushed his fingers over its brow.

“A Fury’s Banes will always take the form of their deepest torment,” he told me, making my throat thicken as I realised what he meant.

“Mine take the form of those wretched dogs that your father cast from ice and commanded to tear the ones I loved to pieces.”

Horror trickled through me as I fought to get up, to move at all. But his possession was a writhing serpent in my veins, keeping me still.

Kaiser’s head cocked to one side, watching me with a cold, detached curiosity.

“All these years, I had nothing but a face to haunt me in my dreams. What are the chances that face would glare back at me from the mind of my Fearsire? Older, more scarred, but him all the same. The stars have brought us together, silka la vin. They gifted me your mother’s death in penance, and all along they have been offering me yours too. ”

The stars were truly wicked for this and I resented them for entwining my fate with this Fury’s. Perhaps this damning hatred between us had been born the moment my father had mercilessly killed Kaiser’s family. But my mother hadn’t deserved to pay with her life.

The power of Kaiser’s Order form dripped over me and poured into my mind, forcing me to re-live the moment my mama had died.

I screamed, trapped in a snare of the Fury’s making as she burned in the Basilisk venom, protecting me with her final moments of life.

The scent of burning flesh and the tang of blood made bile rise in my throat.

I was helpless, unable to rewrite the past and instead forced to witness its cruelty over and over again.

Never rest, Everest.

My muscles trembled as I called on the Void, begged it, then commanded it to come to me. And this time, it answered.

It shuddered through me, fighting away Kaiser’s power just enough to let me drag myself toward him.

I wasn’t going to die here on my enemy’s floor. This wasn’t the death the stars had in mind for me. I hadn’t fought my way through hardship and misfortune to die here as a nobody.

I pulled myself along, my limbs half numb, leaden under the weight of Kaiser’s power, but my Void was fighting it, scorching through it.

“I am Everest Arcadia,” I panted, the exertion it took to move exhausting me. “I am vengeance.”

I dragged myself another few inches.

“I am retribution.”

A few inches more.

“And-” I took a heavy breath, glancing up at him where he crouched, his hounds growling at me as I lay a trembling hand on his arm and drove my nails into it, marking him with a bloody scratch. “-I choose my own death.”

Kaiser regarded me, emotionless still, and I was thankful for that, because logic should lead him to keeping me alive. His avarice would not.

“You will live then. For now,” he decided, and a heavy relief washed through me.

“But Mirelle wishes for you to be locked up and guarded, so there is only one place in Cinder Vale that will ensure that.” He guided me to my feet with his possession and urged me to follow him from the room, grabbing a heavy black coat as he went and shrugging it on.

We took a back staircase down past narrow windows, winding ever lower until we arrived at a doorway where flames flickered to bar the way forward. Talons stood either side of it, nodding to Kaiser as he parted the fire with a movement of his hand.

He led me into the room and I steeled my nerve as I prepared to find a dank prison with rusted cells beyond. But instead, I found a single, large cage waiting for me in an opulent chamber.

Kaiser opened the cage door, directing me inside it and shutting it in my face with a loud clang.

“You will remain here until I require you again,” he said, casting magic over the lock to secure me.

“So you’re going to leave me here half naked?” I hissed.

He shed his coat, thrusting it through the bars at me and I snatched the damn thing.

He turned, leaving me there as I wrapped myself in it, though it did little to thaw out my icy toes.

I huffed, moving to the single cot at the back of the cage and dropping down onto it, but a body was concealed there under a blanket, shifting at once.

A hand grabbed my hair and yanked. My fist came up, swinging for the face before me, but I stopped it dead as I came eye to eye with the most beautiful woman I had ever met.

A woman who should have been dead. And who couldn’t possibly be in Pyros in this cell with me.

But here she was all the same. The fucking Sky Witch.