The Ivory Tomb

Book 3: Rooks and Ruin

by Melissa Caruso

Genres: Dragons & Mythical Creatures

Synopsis

The Dark Days have returned. The Demon of Carnage mercilessly cuts through villagers and armies. The Demon of Corruption poisons/rots the land. The Serene Empire and the Witch Lords race towards war. And in the middle of it all stands Rxyander, the Warden of Gloamingard.

Burdened by conflicting loyalties and guilt, Ryx searches desperately for a way to defeat the demons before the world she loves is completely destroyed. To find answers, she’ll have to return to where it all started … the black tower at the heart of Gloamingard.

By blood the Door was opened, and only by blood will the Dark Days end.

Release date: December 6, 2022

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 480

Sample

I still didn’t know her name.

Her bright eyes caught the light of the summer sky in each dark, liquid iris. The mountain wind teased a loose wisp of rippling brown hair across her mouth—so serious now, when usually it dimpled with mischief.

“The question,” she said, “isn’t what you are. It’s what you will do.”

Her face was achingly familiar, striking deep into my heart. I drowned in the memory of her, my own place and time faded and nearly forgotten. If I could only remember who she was…

No. I ground my teeth, bracing against the inexorable pull of those soul-piercing eyes. I didn’t know this woman. I’d only met her in snippets of memory that Madness had loosed in my mind. The yearning that hollowed my chest wasn’t mine; it belonged to the demon I’d been.

The demon I must not become again.

Sweat beaded my temples. I struggled to stay grounded in the present, to focus on the morning light in the Rookery sitting room, the coarse threads of the tapestry rug digging into my palms—when had I fallen to my knees?

Curse it, this was a terrible and dangerous idea, and it wasn’t even working. I’d been braced to remember something dark and bloody, tragic and awful, fraught with storms and fire—and I’d gotten a peaceful conversation on a pretty mountaintop with an undeniably human woman. Which was fascinating, and raised many questions, but wasn’t the tactical knowledge we needed right now.

“Can you remember anything?” Foxglove’s urgent words seemed to come from far away.

“I’m trying,” I said through my teeth. “It’s not that simple.”

I strove to dredge up something useful from the lake of ancient memory that lay deep and murky beneath the ice crust of my consciousness. Some practical tidbit that could tell us how to confront the demons newly loosed on the world—what to expect, weaknesses, weapons, anything. We didn’t have much time.

Instead I got the bright-eyed girl again, waiting for my answer in the cloud-dappled sunshine of a millennium long past.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked her. I gestured around the mountain meadow where we sat together with a third woman on my great gray rock, open to the breezes that chased each other among the scattering of late-spring flowers. “I’m up here for a reason, you know. Your kind are safest if I stay away.”

My voice wasn’t my own. Deeper, with a roughness of passion to it. The hand I waved was browner.

The third person leaned forward, her gaze intent. A mage mark golden as candle flames ringed her pupils, and a tight braid bound her hair against her skull.

“We’re dying,” she said urgently. “They’re killing us, and you have the power to fight them. It’s past time for you to use it.”

Far below us, a thin, faint sound rose from the valley on a gust of wind. Screams.

“The village,” the braided woman whispered, horror dawning on her face. “She’s here!”

Someone shook my shoulder, scattering the memory to pieces. A sick dread remained in my stomach.

“Ryx. Hey, are you all right? You don’t have to do this, you know.”

Kessa crouched before me, frowning. The pale light of dawn through the windows set soft lights in her hair. My mind pivoted around itself, time folding and settling into place; I was in Castle Ilseine, not on a mountaintop, and no one was screaming in the distance.

Yet.

“I agreed to this.” I tried a loose approximation of a smile, but it wouldn’t stick to my face. “We desperately need intelligence on the demons.”

“No doubt of that. But we can explore other options before we shake your brain upside down to see what loose change falls out. Especially if you think those memories might…” She grimaced. “You know, rub off.”

That was the fear that weighed in my gut. So far I still felt like myself. But would I know if I didn’t? If every time I dragged up new memories, bits and pieces of my old demonic self came with them, would I even be able to tell?

“We don’t have other sources.” I tried to sound unconcerned. “If I start acting differently, or smoke comes out of my ears or something, let me know.”

“Did you get anything we can use?” Foxglove asked, pausing in his relentless pacing. He was going to wear a groove in front of the hearth at this rate; his cane thunked fiercely with each step, channeling whatever fury of suppressed emotion he managed to keep from his face.

I’d guess fear, mostly. We were all afraid. Seasons witness, I wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t.

“Nothing concrete.” Beneath the clear and overwhelming image of that inexplicably important face, incoherent flashes and shreds of memory cluttered the back of my mind. I sorted through them, forcing myself not to cringe away. “Feelings, impressions. I think… I’m most worried about Carnage, out of the three new demons Hunger freed.” A shiver of dread snaked up from my belly.

Kessa’s brows pinched together. “I’m guessing they weren’t happy and comforting feelings and impressions, given the look on your face.”

“No.” My skin prickled with a fever-sick sense of what was coming—both to that poor doomed village in the ancient past and in the bleak reality we inhabited now.

A red sword cutting a deadly arc through the air; a vicious grin. The fallen strewn among the flowers, humps and huddles barely rising above the sweet nodding grasses. Rage rising in my core, hot and wild with grief.

The anger stayed with me, burning in my bones. Hunger had released the remaining demons out of spite: Carnage, Corruption, and Despair. Now the horrors of the Dark Days were about to be unleashed on Eruvia—could be happening right now—all because he’d wanted a bit of petty vengeance.

“It was bad,” I rasped. “Carnage left a wake of death behind her. Sorry, I know that’s not helpful; I can try again.”

The door banged open, and Severin strode through. My eyes leaped with instinctive concern to the wrist Nightmare had broken, splinted with a sort of filigreed bracer of gleaming dark wood and held protectively close to his chest as he glared at Foxglove.

“You should do no such thing. Don’t let him bully you into this, Ryx.”

“It was my idea.” I rose, brushing off clinging shreds of memory like cobwebs. “I’m perfectly capable of making my own choices, thank you.”

“Your own exceedingly poor choices,” Severin retorted. “There’s no point torturing you if all you’ve got for us is the shocking news that the Dark Days were bad and the Demon of Carnage likes killing people.”

I had no desire to delve any deeper into a past that could unmake me. But after a frenzy of messages, waking the world’s leaders in the night with our dire news of more demons on the loose, it had become clear that the one thing Eruvia needed most was information. And that was also the one thing I had to offer, if I was willing to pay the price.

I rubbed the heels of my hands into eyes gritty from a sleepless night. “I’ve got to get some use out of this cursed situation. Maybe if you ask me specific questions, it’ll help trigger something.”

Severin had the look of a man with acid words ready on his tongue, but Bastian spoke first, his pencil poised over his leatherbound notebook.

“Let’s try looking at this practically. We know Hunger let them through the gate yesterday, but what happened after that? Could they even get out of the Black Tower?”

That was easy, squarely within my sphere as the Warden of Gloamingard. “Hunger had to open three seals to bring them through. First the door to the Black Tower, which Whisper told me he opened with blood—probably mine. I left enough of it around the Summer Palace.”

“Bet you it was Aurelio who got it,” Ashe put in from where she crouched gargoyle-like in a deep stone windowsill. “It’d be his style to pocket some bloody scrap just in case he ever wanted to open a portal to the Hells someday.”

“The second seal was the circle around the obelisk,” I went on. “He probably drained that one of power to bypass it. And the last one is the obelisk itself, the seal on the tear between this world and the Hells.”

“Do you think he drained that, too?” Bastian asked, worry puckering his brows.

“I… I don’t think so. I doubt he could.” I shuddered at the memory of my palm flat against the white fire of the Hells, my mortal body in agony from the vast power ripping through it. “I unravel magic, destroying its structure; he just drains the power out. I think there’s too much power there for him to drain. The door to the Hells was designed to be opened and closed, though. My grandmother clearly did it, or I wouldn’t be here.” Those words lay bitter on my tongue. I couldn’t believe she’d broken the Gloaming Lore all those years ago, to save a life she’d made into a lie.

Bastian’s pencil scratched across the page. “So once they were through, then what? Would they possess the people nearest to the gate, or—”

“No, thank the seasons.” That was the first thing I’d asked Whisper, terrified for Odan, alone in the castle with four demons. “My grandmother apparently did something to seal the lives in her domain against possession. That’s why Nightmare and Madness wound up in Loreice; they couldn’t take hosts in Morgrain.”

Foxglove stopped pacing. “If they couldn’t take hosts, what happens then? What is a demon without a human to contain it?”

“I…” A wave of dizziness came over me, and I closed my eyes.

So cold. My energy bled everywhere as I fled in desperation into the dark, snowy forest. Trees glowed around me, pillars of life, but I scrabbled against them pointlessly, with no waiting mind to slide into. The warm souls of animals shone like candles in the night, bright with fear at my unseen presence, but I couldn’t get a grip on them, either; they were too simple, not deep enough, like trying to pour a full bucket into a thimble.

I tried to hurl myself away from the bright constellation of human lives in the town far behind me. But it drew me, sucking me down inexorably as a riptide. The forest slipped away, the trees receding; warmth and light rose around me and dragged me in until, with a sharp gasp of horror, I had lungs again, and eyes to blink open, and a human mind dying in terror within my own inhuman one. It sputtered out like a candle and was gone.

My gut twisted with revulsion. Severin’s hand fell on my shoulder. I opened my eyes to find him scanning my face, his own guarded and wary.

“What?” I snapped.

The muscles in his cheeks relaxed. “You looked strange for a moment there.” He hitched one shoulder in a shrug. “It’s nothing.”

“I’m not possessed, if that’s what you’re wondering.” The words came out sharper than I intended. “I’m the same person I’ve always been.”

“I know.” His voice dropped to a murmur, and he shifted to put his lips close to my ear. “Look, I grew up watching my father for the slightest change in mood. A pensive frown might mean he was doing math or that he was about to send vipers after me and my brother to see if we were strong enough to survive the venom. So sometimes I read a little too much into facial expressions. Sorry.”

His hand dropped from my shoulder. I stared at him, shreds of the past slipping away, my horror at his explanation grounding me in the present. His mouth twisted with bittersweet victory—Hells, he’d done it on purpose.

Foxglove and Bastian were still waiting for an answer. I tore my eyes away from Severin, struggling to salvage useful facts from the muddle of impressions and emotions.

“Demons without a host are just energy. Intangible, effectively invisible.” I ran my fingers down my braid to compose myself, the familiar bumps soothing. “After coming through the gate, they’d find a host who isn’t sealed against them, or be drawn into one. Either a visitor to Morgrain who’s not part of the domain, or someone beyond our borders.”

Ashe grunted. “Can’t imagine they’ll stay in Morgrain either way without your grandma’s permission.”

“So they take bodies and leave, in whichever order.” Foxglove started pacing again. “Together, or separately?”

“Separately?” The answer came instinctively. I tried to trace down why. “I think that not even the other demons like Carnage or Corruption.”

Severin’s brows rose. “Given how charming Nightmare and Hunger are, that’s hardly reassuring.”

“They’ll probably cross the border soon, if they haven’t already.” Bastian looked up from his notebook, frowning at the air as if a map hung before his eyes. “That means the domains of Gened, Kar, or Alevar.”

Severin swore softly as Bastian named his domain. I wished I had some comfort to offer him, but right now it was in short supply.

“There’s one more place they could go from Morgrain,” Foxglove said grimly.

It hit me, too, like a pit opening at my feet. “Here.”

In her windowsill, Ashe rose from her usual languid sprawl to a feral crouch with the fluid urgency of a cat confronted by a hawk beyond the glass.

“You’d better come see this.” Her voice had gone flat. “Someone’s coming up the road in a full-on murder walk.”

We crowded to the window. The question What do you mean, murder walk? died on my tongue; I only had to look down to see my answer.

This room was high enough in the Rookery keep to have a view past the outer bastions and down the low hill on which Castle Ilseine stood. A lone figure approached on the road that wound up the hill, and even from this distance there was no mistaking the sheer intensity and violent purpose in her stride.

I knew that walk. Knew it, in some old place where it tangled up with primal fear and an undying, ancient rage.

“It’s her.” My fingers dug into the window frame. “Carnage.”

A low mist clung in the folds of the hills. Across the border in Morgrain, a mantle of dark forest covered everything, evergreens interspersed with splashes of early autumn gold. On the imperial side, tidy farms climbed the hillsides, a patchwork of fields bordered by neat lines of trees to break the wind. The pale light of early morning gilded the countryside and warmed the castle walls. A hush lay over the world, the land only just awakening.

The woman who stormed up the road toward the castle promised to shatter that peace.

We crowded at the parapet on one of the bastions overlooking the main gate, giving plenty of space to the teams of soldiers poised at the cannons or standing ready with artifice devices and muskets aimed toward the approaching figure. Training and discipline kept them silent and ready, but white showed at the edges of their eyes.

No one wanted this to be a fight. No one wanted this to be a demon.

“Are you sure it’s her?” Kessa whispered.

“No.” I stared down at the figure striding tirelessly up the road. She looked like a Loreician farm girl: perhaps fifteen, with a loose fall of wind-tousled brown hair, a freckled face, and a simple bodice over aproned skirts. But she moved like the inevitability of death. “She could just be a regular Loreician villager with a… very strong sense of self-confidence.”

Ashe snorted. “She’s marching up here to pick a fight with an entire castle. That’s some confidence.”

Her hand lay on Answer’s hilt, every line of her ready for violence. Ashe knew her monsters and her killers—and so did I, well enough. I wasn’t fooling myself, let alone anyone else.

A short distance along the wall, a young soldier drew in a sharp breath and let it out shakily. Someone muttered a prayer.

The girl came close enough to see the light gleaming in her eyes. She strode straight up to the gate without so much as a glance at the cannons aimed at her from the bastions. If she were truly Carnage, she wouldn’t know what they were; they hadn’t been invented four thousand years ago.

She stopped before the gate, looking it up and down as if assessing a foe. I didn’t breathe.

When she raised a fist and banged on the heavy oak door, it shook as if she’d pounded it with a battering ram.

“Knocking seems like a good sign,” Kessa said uncertainly. “Maybe she wants to talk.”

I shook my head, apprehension clawing its way up my throat.

A small steel plate in the door swung open. “What do you want?” a soldier called through it, stern and wary.

“Give me a sword.” The girl’s voice was well-oiled steel.

“Oh, Hells.” My knees had gone weak with a sudden surge of horrified recognition. Bodies strewn everywhere, dead and dying, maimed and bleeding. One woman standing among them with a red-streaked sword, lifting her head with slow, satisfied menace to meet my eyes.

I whirled to Foxglove. “We can’t fight her. Tell them not to fight her.”

“What do we do, then?” he demanded.

I shook my head in frustration. “I don’t know.”

Down at the gate, the soldier barked, “We don’t just hand swords out to random strangers. Who are you?”

Everyone along the parapet tensed, waiting for her answer.

A terrible grin spread across the girl’s face. “Give me a sword, and I’ll show you.”

“I told you—”

The girl’s hand shot through the tiny window, lightning fast. A choked cry came up from below. The girl drew her hand back, two fingers dripping red, still grinning.

“I don’t need a sword,” she said, “but I prefer one. It’s cleaner. Last chance.”

From the far bastion, a shot rang out, then another and another. On ours, an officer snapped, “Hold your fire!”

The girl jerked and staggered back, red blooming on the soft blue bodice, staining its lovingly stitched embroidery. She touched a wound in wonder, then stared up at the parapet where the shots had come from, her eyes narrowing. A wet cough sent blood trickling down her chin; she licked her lips.

I spun toward the officer who’d given the call to hold fire. “Don’t try to kill her! She’ll just take another body. Incapacitate or trap, but don’t kill!”

The officer gave a sharp nod, grim understanding in his eyes.

The girl didn’t wait to see if they’d shoot her again, or to figure out how she’d been hurt when her attackers were so far away. She turned dismissively from the bastion, as if musket balls were no more relevant than mosquitoes, even as blood continued to spread on her chest.

Carnage rolled her neck and shrugged her shoulders.

Oh pox. “Get everyone away from the gate!” I shouted, well aware it was too late.

The outer doors were meant to take cannon fire, reinforced with iron and runes—but the air rippled with magic around the wounded farm girl’s fist, and her punch exploded them into kindling. The impact rattled the stone beneath my feet.

Cries of pain and alarm rose up from below. The soldiers on the parapet swore, their discipline wavering as some of them stepped back in horror. Carnage bared bloody teeth in a wide smile and stepped through the shattered remnants of the gate.

Ashe eased Answer an inch from its sheath and then snapped it home, weight on her toes, looking ready to launch herself off the parapet after her. “She’s in the kill tunnel,” she muttered. “Poxy lot of good that does us when we don’t want to kill her.”

Bastian shifted nervously from foot to foot. “They’ve got the portcullis down, and it’s iron and quite heavily enchanted, so we can hope it’ll hold a bit longer.”

Muffled shouts and clamor came from the kill tunnel; the stones shuddered beneath us again. In the open courtyard beyond the portcullis, ranks of soldiers lined up in a defensive arc, wheeling cannons into place to aim at the entrance. Falcons in scarlet uniforms hurriedly laid out warding chains on the ground.

The dread only grew in my stomach. Flickers of memory teased my mind: A castle of golden stone in ruins, smoke rising from a massive hole in its walls, a great cloud of crows circling above it. A shining army bristling with pikes and gleaming with ring mail, and one figure carving through their careful formations like a knife through layer cake. The woman with the tight braid and golden mage mark who’d asked me to join the fight fallen to her knees in a village square strewn with bloodstained bodies, a scream of rage tearing from her throat.

Carnage hadn’t faced much artifice before, though. Maybe its delicate intricacies of power would confound her, with her reliance on blunt force. Still, if I was going to risk losing myself to these unnerving scraps of memory, I’d better at least heed their warnings.

“I’m going down there. I can’t do anything to stop her from up here.”

“Can you stop her?” Foxglove didn’t sound hopeful.

A terrible scream, rising up to split the sky itself. The primal thunder of the land breaking, so loud I felt it in my soul. The great bass roar of the ocean, as if a monster vast as the world itself had come alive in anger.

The bright eyes I loved staring at me with the deepest sorrow. The lips that had refused to call me a monster parting in horror. “What have you done?”

My mind shuddered away from remembering more. “Probably not. But maybe I can get her talking. I don’t think we were friends, but even an argument might keep her occupied.”

“At this point, I’d try dancing with her if I thought it had the remotest chance of working.” Kessa started across the bastion toward the stairs down to the courtyard. “Come on.”

Foreboding growing like a cancer in my heart, I followed.

I’d gotten used to troops assembling for drills in the wide, dusty courtyard of Castle Ilseine, but this had none of the feel of a drill. Everyone stared toward the portcullis, tension raw in the air. Silence had fallen in the tunnel, the soldiers who hadn’t gotten out in time lying in broken and huddled bundles on the ground among the blasted timbers.

Beyond the rune-scribed grating of the portcullis, Carnage stood laughing, blood drenching her apron and spattered across her face. She had a sword now. It hung gory in her hand; she gave it a sharp snap to shake the worst off.

“Don’t you use shields anymore?” she called, scanning the hundreds of troops arrayed before her with contempt. “Or are you too fond of your little rock throwers?”

Even from some distance behind the ranks of imperial soldiers, I could feel her presence. Unlike Nightmare’s, it didn’t spill out beyond her human form, but rather occupied it precisely, with a concentrated intensity that made her seem somehow more real than everything else around her. Bloodlust lit her face in a calculating sort of rapture.

“Why is she here?” Ashe muttered, shifting onto her toes and back again. “If we don’t know what she wants, we don’t have a tactical goal. Math isn’t my strong point, but I can tell you that no tactical goal plus an unkillable opponent equals an unwinnable fight.”

Ancient memories moved in the back of my mind. “I think…” My mouth went dry. “I think she just likes killing.”

“That’s not better.”

Carnage laid an experimental hand on the portcullis. Sparks flew up, and she snatched it back with a thoughtful sort of grunt.

Foxglove muttered a curse, glancing around the courtyard with the feverish swiftness of a man desperately searching for something precious he might have lost. His eyes flicked up and fixed on the roof of the Rookery keep; the tension didn’t so much go out of his shoulders as settle into different parts of them.

“Lia,” he exhaled. “And Teodor’s inside. Thank the Graces.”

Right. For me, facing Carnage was alarming enough, but Foxglove had family here. This castle was the Rookery’s home. If someone had just blasted down the gates to Gloamingard, I’d be in a frenzy. Somehow, I had to help them protect this place.

Carnage seemed to decide that the iron-carved enchantments of the portcullis would be too much to punch through. She stepped back, eyeing it a moment longer, then turned away.

“She’s not leaving?” Kessa asked hopefully.

“I think it’s a safe bet that we’re not that lucky,” Severin said.

Carnage rolled her neck and shrugged her shoulders again.

Exploding into motion, she unleashed a series of quick, vicious slashes on the arching stone wall of the tunnel. With sharp cracks like gunshots, great chunks of masonry sheared off, and the wall began to crumble.

“It’s coming down,” I breathed in horror.

“It can’t be,” Kessa objected. But her dark stricken eyes knew the truth.

The ground shook. The soldiers on the ramparts streamed away from the tunnel, fleeing the unstable wall. In the courtyard, the defensive formations held; an officer with flaming-red hair lifted her sword and shouted, “Wards ready!”

The entire massive stone-sheathed earthwork from which the tunnel emerged fell into rubble on one side, dust rising in a great cloud. The portcullis slumped off-kilter with an ear-scraping squeal and clang. The lines of soldiers wavered, some stepping back with a clamor of frightened curses.

Carnage stepped through the gap into the bright morning sun, blood-soaked and grinning.

First row, wards up!” the redheaded officer roared.

Several people shouted keywords, and the first ring of warding chains that formed a half circle around the entrance flared to life. I had to admire their impeccable planning and coordination, even if they’d developed these defenses and tactics to fight my own people; the precision and power on display was impressive.

Carnage frowned at the wards with the mild annoyance of a traveler finding a fallen log across their path.

“Those won’t last long,” Foxglove muttered. “All this is doing is delaying her. We need a better strategy.”

“My turn, then.” The idea of approaching her set a sharp, unpleasant tingle racing along my nerves, but I had to try.

“Ryx…” Foxglove shook his head. “Graces go with you.” He winced slightly at the irony as the words left his mouth, but he didn’t retract them.

I took a deep breath and walked between the rows of soldiers standing ready with their muskets and cannons, pikes and devices, swords sheathed at their hips and uniforms crisp and unsullied. Fear showed in the stiffness of their shoulders, the sweat on their temples, the whites of their eyes. The Empire had been at peace for decades; many of them had probably never seen battle. I doubted any of them had imagined their first fight would be against one of the Nine Demons.

How many of them knew that another demon walked among them? Surely they’d flinch from my passing if they did, but their eyes stayed fixed on Carnage, and their muttered prayers to the Graces didn’t name me. My secret hadn’t leaked yet.

It was about to.

I strode up to the outer ring of warding chains, trying to project a confidence I didn’t feel. Across fifteen feet, Carnage’s eyes met mine.

They hit me with the focused cold malice of a sword thrust. Unspeakable age, unchecked violence, and a soul that reveled in destruction gazed out of the dead girl’s face. Fury surged up in response, my senses fogging at the edges with the force of it, but I pushed it back. Without knowing what history lay between us, I needed to stay sharp to bluff my way through this.

“Carnage,” I greeted her.

Her eyes narrowed. “Do I know you?”

“It’s complicated.” I swallowed to wet my throat. “Things have changed since the Dark Days. Have you talked to any of the others?”

She let out a laugh like a cascade of knucklebones. “The other demons? Why would I? They have nothing to say that could interest me.”

The glowing runes on the first circle of ward chains flickered and began to fade. Behind me, the officer barked, “Second row, wards up!”

“Then you should try talking to the humans,” I challenged. Contempt twisted her face; before she could reply, I pushed on. Speak her language. “You like to fight? Well, they’ve been doing it for millennia while you were out of action beyond the gate. They have new weapons, new techniques, new tactics. You could learn a lot from them, if you stopped killing them long enough to let them teach you.”

She flicked her sword tip negligently in front of her; the failing first ward sputtered and died on contact. She stepped over the inert chain, walking straight up to the second ward, narrowing the distance between us.

“Killing them is how they teach me.” Drying blood painted her chin, turning her smile to a thing of horror. “My school is the battlefield, and I am its most devoted student.”

This was what she did, I knew suddenly—this was all she did. Took a body, found a sword, and started killing. Sought out those best equipped to fight her, to make it a challenge, and fought her way from one end of the continent to the other and back again—day and night, without stopping. She rode each body into the ground until someone finally defeated her, and then she took their body so that some of their combat knowledge might adhere to her, crumbs left behind as their ousted soul perished. Unlike other demons, no fear of merging with a human held her back from taking one vessel after another; she welcomed the occasional merge, since the only human souls who wouldn’t utterly reject hers were those who shared her bloodlust.

I couldn’t reason with her. No one could. Like me, her nature was destructive; unlike me, she’d embraced it utterly.

“You could fight without killing them, you know,” I said, knowing it wouldn’t work, an old argument rising hot and ready to my lips. “If you leave them alive, you can fight them again and again, and—”

“Enough.”