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Fucking Kyorgos .

I launch the skull-faced fuck vertical.

Away from Iris.

Shadows disappear his ass before he hits deep space. Between two thumps of my wife’s keyed-up heart, Kyorgos blasts back out like a rag-doll from a fucking rail-gun.

Shoom!

Trailing hellfire, he smashes into town.

His body-slam shakes the earth for miles.

I chase his mushroom cloud. My wings pop, and jet-engine flames shoot from my claws.

Acid hellfire burns hottest in my throat.

Kyorgos touched her .

He fucking used her.

The skin cracks around my horn. My veins boil.

Everything melts to rage and fucking steam.

Pain is nothing.

I was all pain until Iris.

Then my cool, blue baby whisper-soothed the flames.

Mine .

My only.

Azrid cheats and winks to the crater first.

I meteor-streak behind, cursing and casting off embers, shooting fireballs ahead to keep Kyorgos warm.

His creepy-ass magic pulses and clashes with the shadows that snuck ahead of me.

Azrid’s clammy bullshit ribbons are a fucking delight compared to what Kyorgos is packing.

I dart toward the undead flames that aren’t flames.

Fucking ugly color.

Blue should be blue , pure and sweet.

His shade looks and feels like shit, streaked with green and brown and gray worms. All decay. Just swooping into his range drills cavities in my silks.

Azrid has the undead, soon-to-be real dead bastard roped in shadows and pinned to a pile of collapsed bricks.

“He’s mine,” I snarl, angling toward the ground. Hold him for me.

Oh. Finally caught up? Azrid asks.

Would’ve taken first blood, I snap as I touch down in the rubble.

Azrid makes a dumb fucking flourish, sweeping out an arm. When he sweeps back, his shadows retract. “Enjoy your turn.”

Suddenly freed from his ropes, Kyorgos stumbles. He catches himself in a lunge.

“Unbelievable.” Haughty as fuck, he straightens and snaps his lapels. Brick dust puffs off his uniform.

Kyorgos flexes his power.

I don’t stop him. Yet .

His aura hits like coffin breath—chilled and nasty.

Nothing to fear but the stench.

Scraping to the bottom of his bloodline, Kyorgos whips out his lich.

The transformation shrink-wraps his skin to his skull. Eerie nether-fire replaces his eyeballs, and his muscles waste. That pasty noble face warps to bone.

Less man, more skeleton glued together with turkey jerky.

I’m waiting to be impressed by some kind of lich-craft but his power stops there.

That’s fucking it?

When Azrid goes full pointy-eared master of blood and shadow, he can make me sweat one or two beads.

Even when the sad, old bat forgets his name and his toolbox is missing a few screws, my instincts pick up on his threat.

At full blast, the lich’s power can’t even stir my hair.

Thinking he’s top man on the pyramid, Kyorgos lifts his bony chin. “There’s no reason for dukes of our level to?—”

With a flame-wrapped fist, I blast him in the fucking teeth.

His jaw snaps, his aura shatters, and he lands ass-to-brick with half the buttons popped off his shirt.

My boots crunch rubble as I step to where he dropped. “You’re not on my level.”

Fucking lava eats through my veins. My shaking claws spit out curls of flame.

I snag the front of his jacket and lift. I’m shedding so much hellfire that his boot soles drip rubber. “You know what pisses me off?”

Kyorgos doesn’t answer.

He reflects my volcanic glare with glazed, human eyeballs.

A shadow streaks to peel open his eyelid. The lich’s pupils are blown.

“Concussion,” Azrid offers. “You cracked his skull. And his right bicuspid.”

I drop Kyorgos and whip my glare to the bat. “You stuck your shadow in his mouth?”

I can only rage at him while Kyorgos heals.

We aren’t done.

Azrid ignores me and drops to a crouch. While Kyorgos is clocked out, he runs a finger under the bastard’s collar. “Pity. Liches have very little blood.”

I gag. “If this is like the time I caught you drinking that dead centaur…”

Azrid was so fucking out of it, he thought I was trying to steal his hooves. We fought for days.

We always do.

Racing to the edge of that last rampage.

We’re too strong to die easy.

“That never happened,” Remy says absently. He’s still fucking with the lich’s collar.

“Really? Lucky you.” Wish I could forget the bad shit.

Iris keeps fucking power-washing my soul. I can breathe, I can think, but some shit is better left buried.

I kick Kyorgos onto his back. My claws hover, dripping with flames. No matter how much I want to crush and burn his all-skull face, Iris said no killing .

I wouldn’t disobey her.

I also can’t disobey her, but it’s all the same.

I want to be her good boy.

“Finish your monologue,” Azrid says, tugging at the lich’s thinned-out hair.

“What?” I never know what the fuck to do with the bat when I’m mostly sober and he’s still on his weird shit.

“What pisses you off?” He plucks a hair from Kyorgos’ scalp, flicks it to the ground, then pinches off another strand. “I’d like to know. For absolutely benign purposes.”

I snort so hard that steam comes out. “Nobles. That’s the whole list. House Azrid near the tippy fucking top.”

Nothing can shake Trezzoran from most-hated in my heart, but Kyorgos is coming so fucking close . “This grub-sack thinks he deserves her.”

“None of us could,” Azrid says darkly. “Different bloodlines. Same monster.”

Fuck.

“I’m not like him.” My claws drive into my clenched palms. “I’m not like you .”

They obeyed .

Both good little Sentinels, following in their daddies’ boot-steps to serve the empire.

“You would’ve been.” Azrid tsks . “If you’d had a choice.”

I fireball his face.

Azrid deflects. My hellfire booms against his shield.

Before I can take a second shot, Kyorgos stirs.

The lich’s eyes are finally refocusing.

“He’s healed enough,” Azrid says, then switches to his inside voice. Lower your power if you want to play another round before Iris calls. You’ve killed enough dukes.

Suppressing the fire burns worse than letting it flame out.

“What’s one more?” I mutter as Kyorgos scrapes himself off the ground.

He spits a mouthful of blood. It disappears into the earth like it’s being sucked through a straw.

The lich’s aura cranks again. This time, he keeps his magic close to his skin—shielding instead of lashing out. “There’s no need to fight.”

“There’s a need. You just don’t know how.”

Chickenshit lich can’t battle without his horde.

That’s what pisses me off, churning hellfire through my veins.

Every Trezzoran venoms their own army of mindless thralls.

If I’d been born like every other inbred asshole rotting off the family tree?

I would’ve ended up so much like this fucking lich.

Iris might’ve been engaged to me.

I sneer. “She deserves better.”

The lich huffs. “She put you up to this? Why bother when Iris can’t?—”

A shadow whips between his teeth.

“Silence,” Azrid spits. Silver melts from his scalp, bleaching his hair. His veins flush black, and his nails morph into bat talons.

No more talk. I don’t want my wife’s name in that pasty mouth.

Hellfire pools from the ground, melting what’s left of the town.

I can’t kill him now.

But Sentinels heal fast enough to have some fun.

The flames rise.

His boot soles smoke.

Kyorgos shoots a bolt of shitty power and tries to leap into the air.

I ash his magic. Azrid drags him down.

That same old pain smokes through my meridians.

I’ll need Iris soon.

I’ll always need her.

But for now?

I lean into the pain, letting those sweet, hot toxins tangle in my blood.

A fire-cloud blooms above the town. It rolls sideways, stretching the limits of Azrid’s shield.

The temperature spikes. Lightning crackles.

So does the fire in my veins.

I snap to start the rain.

A hail of hellfire screams down from the sky.

I grin as Kyorgos disappears under the flames.

We’ll burn together.

* * *

REMY

Little Kevan Kyorgos fights my shadows. He sputters through his gag, shaking beneath the pink sky.

Pitiful, I sneer on his mental frequency, making sure the sound of his sizzling flesh doesn’t block out my disdain. Can’t mount a counter-attack. Is this how today’s Sentinels are trained?

Azrid Supreme trained his heirs to kill at all costs.

When you drop your sword, pick up a rock.

When you drop your rock, use your bare hands.

If you can’t win, sacrifice yourself.

Anything to stop the hordes.

Anything to save a human life.

Sentinels have become spoiled.

They don’t remember the hopelessness of a world without Guides.

My passion for the war shattered with my sanity, but there’s one soul left that I’d shred myself to protect.

“Battle ready,” I murmur to the shadows, reminding them not to kill. We can use this skeleton as Iris’s shield . “Keep him battle ready.”

I’m certain to forget.

As I sharpen the shadows into thin, invisible blades, the darkness narrows my view.

Let me teach you the old way, I whisper between his burning screams.

My shadows weave between waves of meteors.

With slices as shallow as paper-cuts, I carve arrays beneath his clothes.

They’re the same arrays Azrid Supreme carved into me so may times. All hidden where Iris will never know.

The pattern is pure evil, designed to speed failing Azrids to their next rebirth. To keep us fresh for the next battle.

The array corrupts the bloodline.

Toxins gather faster.

Rampage knocks sooner and takes a deeper hold.

It’s a death sentence.

Unless you find a compatible Guide.

Or… happen to imprint?

I carve my little gift for the Guide who smirked at Iris.

Beyond my shield, the sniveling sack continues to run his mouth.

He’ll waste away, trying to balance the drag of the array.

Will he sacrifice himself to save his partner?

Or will Kyorgos forsake their bond and drain his little lover as his sanity frays?

What a treat for us all.

I draw blood circles and keep my ear cocked, waiting for Iris to call me home.

We’ll watch the show together.