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I grew lightheaded, making all the shouting and hollering seem faraway, disconnected. I stared down from my platform at Peltos’ sneering face, his jumbled jaw, and realized attendees were starting to look at me.

Next to me, Skar’s voice vaguely drifted. “. . . That is the rule, yes. Your freedom is earned, Diplomat . . .”

Acolytes were already dragging Culiar’s bloody corpse away.

I wanted to yell for them to stop but I couldn’t get the words out of my lungs.

My chest squeezed, and it was less than a minute before the vile ripping and tearing of Culiar’s flesh filled the ballroom from a table next to Koylen’s carcass.

I couldn’t look over there. My eyes found Rirth, restrained by Antones. His face was a snarl, teeth bared as he demanded Ant let him go so he could get at Peltos.

Then his dewy gaze found mine, and while I arched my brows helplessly in an unvoiced apology . . . I only saw rage and reprisal in his. This . . . this is all my fault.

I had chosen Rirth and Culiar for this shadowgala because I knew they wouldn’t lose. Their opponents were inferior. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

As Rirth snapped his head away from my gaze, staring down at the pit where Peltos was beginning to walk away, a red curtain fell over my eyes. I blinked and took a step down the stairs of the dais.

“Halt!”

Peltos stiffened. The audience quieted. For every step I took to reach level ground from the stage, Skar was a foot behind me, never leaving my side but also staying silent.

I ripped my mask off and flung it onto the marble floor, where it shattered. The shock on Peltos’ face would have been satifying in any other situation.

“It’s you,” he choked out. “The Hellwhore.”

I vaguely heard Vallan growl and stand from his chair as I passed him, his presence looming like an ogre to my left, while Skar took my right.

“I-I won! Fair and square!” Peltos stammered as I neared him. His eyes flicked over to the slatted floor where his sword lay just beyond reach.

A shame he’d disposed of it so soon after the battle.

“You will be allowed to leave as Lord Ashfen has decreed. But first”—my gaze moved to the latticed floor under my feet, where jail cells sat underneath—“I would return something that belongs to you, as a parting gift. Garroway!”

A wave of hushed concern and amusement passed through the revelers at our sides, every vampire interested and satiated on Culiar’s and Koylen’s blood.

Rustling sounded beneath us. The clanking of chains. The pulse of my heart became a low thrum, a constant needling in my ears that made my skin itch. Waiting was the most agonizing part.

Eventually, gasps filled the room from the back. Vampires parted as slow, lumbering, wet steps thudded through the chamber.

Dimmon Plank staggered forward with the gait of a mindless zombie.

Trails of blood marked his every barefoot step.

His bright pink and red muscles shone, with patches of skin formed on various parts of his naked frame.

His cock was gone. The fat lard from his round belly, opened and exposed, dribbled onto the floor in disgusting blotches of yellow pus and guts.

And then there was the pure stench of his rotted, dead body—never quite killed, never quite healed. Perpetual torment.

Behind the unfortunate thrall, Garro led Dimmon forward like a dog, chained leash around his neck.

Peltos blanched. “By all that’s True! B-Boss?!”

Dimmon’s red pupils found Peltos, his head slanting curiously.

He did not seem to recognize Peltos, or anyone for that matter .

. . with the exception of me. “Mistress?” he asked in a mottled, rasping voice.

The veins of his neck moved as he attempted to speak, drooling black and red fluids down his exposed throat and slack lips.

“Noblebloods of Marquin,” I announced, lifting my arms high to gesture at Dimmon. “ This is what happens to those who work against us. This is how our enemies end up, because death is too pure an end for those who would oppose us.”

The hushed voices of the court raised an octave, voicing fury, gall, and surprised shouts. I had no idea if they agreed with me or hated me—my attention was zeroed on Dimmon and Peltos. I could not see past the red, pulsating tunnel in my gaze.

“What have you done to him, you mad bitch?!” Peltos squealed.

“Oh? Do you not want your chieftain back, Peltos?” I asked. “Is he not to your liking?”

“ Fuck this.” Peltos made to move past Dimmon.

“Attack,” I muttered.

Dimmon lunged at Peltos, blood spraying from his exposed, skinned body. He let out a grating sound and clamped his fangs on Peltos’ shoulder—

But he was weak and Peltos was spry and healthy. He managed to spin and shrug Dimmon off before getting bitten.

“What’s wrong, Peltos? Will you not fight for your freedom?” I called out.

The young man sidestepped left and right, avoiding Dimmon’s lumbering charges. “Boss, it’s me! Snap out of it!” Tears were in his eyes now.

“Seems you’ll have to kill him if you want to get out of this manor,” I said, shrugging.

I heard a crash behind me, the splintering of wood, and then turned as Vallan handed me a jagged table leg.

I tossed the stake onto the ground as Peltos’ feet. “Better move fast.”

Peltos wailed and picked up the stake. He tried to move defensively to get out of the pit, but the vampires standing at the edges of the circle wouldn’t let him leave.

His angling and cowardice was what signaled his downfall. Because rather than stake his boss through the heart, Peltos tried to spin around the vampiric husk—

And Dimmon managed to grab his arm and bite into his wrist.

Peltos yelped in pain as he dropped the table leg. He punched into Dimmon’s face and hooked his fingers into his boss’ eyes, popping one of them like a grape.

I scooped up the table leg, moving forward.

“Sephania!” Skar hissed.

Dimmon hovered over Peltos to clamp his jaws on the younger man’s throat—

I jammed the table leg through the back of Dimmon’s neck, the squishy part, when he was close to Peltos’ face. The leg impaled the skinless monster and jutted out between his open jaw, inches from Peltos’ scared face. Dimmon let out a ghastly wheeze.

I reeled back with a squelching of blood then shoved the stake through his back, lung, and into his heart. His lung burst like a melon, his heart caved in.

Dimmon rasped, dropping dead for the final time in a pile of organs, blood, and ruined muscle.

Peltos was left ragged and bleeding from his wrist, bitten by the vampire. He stared at me with a blanched, slack face as I threw the gory table leg onto the floor.

“What are you doing, my queen?” Skar asked behind me, more bemused than angry.

“I changed my mind,” I said matter-of-factly. “This man does not deserve to meet his end from the likes of Dimmon Plank.”

Peltos’ brow furrowed. “. . . Thank you?”

“There is another more deserving,” I finished, scanning the room until I found my target. “Ah! There she is.” My fingers curled, motioning just past the edge of the pit where a large vampiress had been watching everything play out with rapt attention in her crimson eyes. “My old friend Helget.”

My former Grimson sister, the victim of Peltos’ rape when I’d first arrived at Lukain’s Firehold as a broken girl of thirteen summers, smiled devilishly and bared her fangs. “You offer me an honor, sister.”

It was rare for broodstock to be turned—they typically stayed human to pump out half-born dhampir babies. This transformation with Helget showed how much her lovers enjoyed her. Her two tall vampire mates released her arms, and Helget hopped into the arena, her hip-hugging emerald gown fluttering.

Peltos’ eyes couldn’t get any wider as recognition dawned in them. “Oh. Fuck. ”

He tried to turn and run.

“Vallan?” I quipped.

The towering vampire grunted and barred Peltos’ path, arms crossed over his oak-tree chest.

Peltos spun the other way, trying to find an exit, all while Helget sashayed toward him.

Skartovius blocked his next path, kicking the discarded table leg away when Peltos moved for it.

Garroway moved to intersect his last option.

Peltos was crying now, begging for mercy from anyone who would hear it. He stumbled over Dimmon’s corpse, spinning to face Helg before she could get to him.

Garroway slid behind Peltos and wrapped Dimmon’s neck chain—dangling in his hand—around Peltos’ throat. He squeezed and Peltos writhed, his face turning purple from the pressure. He couldn’t move from Garroway’s iron grip, his forearm barring his throat.

Helget wore her nails long. We had been taught in the Firehold not to have long nails because they would hurt like the devil if they bent backward during a fight.

But the girls hadn’t been taught that lesson. They didn’t fight in the Firehold. Helget bucked standards and had inch-long daggers on her hands. Ten of them.

She used those nails to rake down Peltos’ tunic. He whimpered as his shirt ripped to shreds like a knife through warm butter. Garroway loosened his chokehold so Peltos wouldn’t pass out before his just deserts.

Helget smiled, so different than when she’d been a flush-faced human girl seeking exhilaration. Now she was vile like the rest of the vampires. It showed in her eyes. She leaned forward and planted a kiss on Peltos’ cheek. “Thank you for making me the woman I am, dear Peltos.”

Her hand became a spear and she thrust that spear nails-first into Peltos’ chest. A ragged sound of ripping flesh rang out, then the squishing, squelching of her hand digging around in his chest cavity.

Peltos gawked and seized. A second later, Helget’s hand came out holding Peltos’ still-beating heart. It pumped a slow rhythm, spurting blood. The vampiress clutched her free hand behind Peltos’ neck and tilted his wobbling head forward, forcing him to look at his heart in her palm.

When she crushed the bloody organ into a pulp, Peltos dropped to his knees and collapsed.

Helget bit into the dead man’s heart, tossing the remnants onto the floor with a wet plop and walking away without a backward glance.

Vampire noblebloods on the fringes licked their lips and charged into the fray to rip into Peltos—the perfume and sweet nectar of fresh human blood too juicy and aromatic to ignore.

I watched Helget’s two taller escorts guide her out of the ballroom, her arms looped into theirs. Then I spun away, looking past Skartovius’ wicked smirk—

Finding Rirth and Antones.

“Rirth,” I breathed, as the sound of licking lips and chewing flesh filled the space. “I’m so sorry for Cul—”

Rirth gazed at me in horror, like a stranger—a phantom banshee of nightmares. “How does it feel to play goddess, Sephania?” he snarled, even as Antones tried to pull him back.

Ant said, “Rirth, that’s enough, lad. We’d best be off before Lord Ashfen rescinds his—”

“Get the fuck off me, old man,” Rirth growled at Ant, shoving him. Sheer hatred shone in his eyes as he thrust a finger toward me. “You toyed with our lives to meet your goals. How does it feel? Answer me!”

I could not.

Vall, Skar, and Garro were directly behind me, imposing and brooding, but Rirth—the shortest fighter I’d ever known—was not scared of them.

“You’re no better than the monsters at your side,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “No,” he scoffed, turning at Antones’ urging. “You’re worse , Sephania . . . because you chose to become this villainess.”