In the next instant, I leap backward. Hadrix’s blades slice across the front of my chest, one after the other, but again, the wounds heal instantly. I don’t lose a single drop of blood.

“I know what you are… Berserker ,” I say to him, my voice impossibly serene despite the way he keeps trying to cut me—and I keep evading him.

As part of my power, I can discern the true nature of any being. Hadrix’s supernatural status was uncertain to me until right now. He had never accessed his power at the Academy before, to the point where the students had debated whether or not he was supernatural, like his wife, or purely human.

His pumped-up muscles and soulless eyes betray him.

From the hive mind of my sisters, I drag in as much information as I can, as fast as I can. Berserkers were a group of men who split off from the original Einherjar, a race of humans who revered the Valkyrie and sought glory in battle and death.

The Einherjar had honor, but Berserkers wanted only violence. To cause as much pain as they could before they killed their victims.

Veering to the left and levitating upward, I dart from side to side, avoiding every cut of Hadrix’s blades until I see an opening to dart forward instead.

My change of direction is so sudden that it appears to take him off-guard, his assault pausing for the seconds it takes me to declare, “Today, you will answer for your crimes and the crimes of your ancestors.”

He recovers quickly, swiping at me again with one of the axes.

This time, when the blade lodges in my side, I grab his arm, raking my claws across his forearm.

He roars in pain and attempts to leap back from me, but before he can get away, one of my snakes darts out, sinking her red fangs into his biceps.

One bite won’t be enough to kill him now that he’s accessing his full strength, but it will slow his movements.

Hadrix gives another shout, stumbling a little as my snake’s black poison slithers through his veins, spreading visibly beneath the surface of his skin.

Near the Academy’s front steps, the monsters watch on with blank faces, still under the thrall of the White Wand.

The gunmen follow my movements with their weapons, but they must have learned their lesson from taking shots at me before.

They won’t want to hit their master—especially with Vulture shaking with rage nearby.

She swings the White Wand back and forth, its tip following my movements.

The hellhound has, surprisingly, dragged himself along the ground, as if he’s trying to get to me. Maybe he wants to protect me. I’m not sure, but even as he moves in increments of mere inches, groaning with pain, his fiery gaze doesn’t leave me.

My attention was away from Hadrix for all of a single second, but I’m fully aware of his next stumbling step back from me, as my snake’s poison must be making him dizzy.

I don’t intend to squander his vulnerability.

Launching myself forward, I rip my claws across his shoulder before I pull them outward again. If I thought I could reach directly into his chest and rip out his heart, I would, but I have to tear through the thickness of his muscles first.

He screams, but like me, he won’t feel pain. Not in his berserker form. I’ve simply made him mad.

He throws his second axe at my neck, and this time, it sticks, the damn thing distracting me enough that I’m not able to follow through with my intention to rip off his arm.

I pull the axe from my neck instead and fling it off to the side.

At lightning speed, I dart forward again so that my second and third snakes can sink their fangs into Hadrix’s neck and chest, forcing him to his knees.

They withdraw their fangs, and he collapses to the ground.

I give him another moment of my attention, rapidly considering the way my snakes’ poison streams visibly through his pumped-up veins. The venom hasn’t killed him yet, but I can’t keep ignoring Vulture.

Quickly wrenching Hadrix’s first axe from my side, I pitch it into the ground before returning my attention to Vulture.

I assess the way the wand behaves in her hand.

That bone won’t want to be taken away from her unless it finds itself in the possession of someone more powerful: me or Striker.

As I advance on Vulture, she shrieks a spell that would flay the skin off me. Then, another that would tear each of my limbs from their sockets. Finally, a third spell that would explode the blood pumping through my heart.

Sweat rolls down her face while I study her eyes.

“You’ve lost two children,” I say, reading her emotions and her crimes as easily as I can see the sky. “You lost one to hate and the other to love.”

Her son, Raptor, caused so much pain. If he were still alive, I would punish him, too.

Her daughter, Kaitlyn, on the other hand, was manipulated by both Vulture and Hadrix into making decisions that hurt others, but she escaped her parents’ clutches and… I’m surprised to discover from Vulture’s thoughts… it was with Striker’s help.

“Your husband will die today,” I continue to Vulture. “Are you ready to face your fate?”

She snarls at me. “Go to hell, bitch.”

The Berserker’s shadow looms again, this time at full speed from behind me, as he knocks me to the ground.

Although metal can fly through me, it seems that living flesh can still have a significant impact.

I hit the grass on my side, and Hadrix promptly kicks me with his hard boot, knocking me onto my back and breaking my ribs at the same time.

“I’m going to cut you so fast you won’t heal,” he snarls, brandishing the axe he must have retrieved from the ground. “All while I wrap that whip around your neck and strangle you with it.”

My sisters warned me not to use my whip, and now their alarmed shrieks ring within my mind.

Don’t let him get your whip!

His axe is already cutting across my arm and through my hip, and, even though my body heals, I can’t get my hand around my whip in time.

Hadrix wrenches it away from my mangled hip. At the same moment, his other boot smashes down on my chest, pinning me to the ground while I thrash beneath him.

He grinds me into the dirt as I struggle to free myself, his boot stomping on my face next, then breaking my ribs and collarbone, his violent roars echoing around the clearing as he kicks me over and over.

And, just when he gives me a reprieve, and I try to dart upward, it seems I do exactly as he wanted.

My head is off the ground, my neck is exposed.

The whip is ready in his hands. By using his feet, he had time to prepare the whip like a garrote.

The moment my head rises, he wraps one of the three unbreakable tails of my whip around my neck and uses his forward momentum to wrench me up into the air, holding me aloft by strength alone.

My neck breaks with the force of his attack. And heals. Breaks. And heals.

Even as I draw on my ability to levitate, kicking with my legs, the whip tightens so rapidly that my vision blurs.

My hands are around the rope, my claws trying to tear at them so hard that I’m cutting my own throat. My snakes are snarling and striking out, but Hadrix is slashing at them with the axe he holds in his free hand.

They will only live as long as I do.

I’m about to lose consciousness and, for the first time since Striker created me, fear rises up within me.

My sisters’ voices are suddenly far away, and emptiness threatens to swallow me.