“I am my monster,” she muttered, and decapitated another crawler.
Stinking, depraved, wicked minions of Skyll.
God, how she hated them.
How she feared them.
Blood hung in the air. Long strings of it flew like thin ropes to splatter against trees, the ground, the fighters. Crunching bones, screams, and slicing blades created an orchestra of horror she was accustomed to—but she was not herself, and that was different.
She was less.
She had a second to glance at Z, noting in that second the emptiness in his eyes, even as he fought like the devil.
Z…
He was no longer all there.
Part of him had been left behind on the snowy ground of Wormwood.
She sobbed as she fended off the crawlers, thinking maybe it was worse for both of them that she’d come to Skyll.
Yes, it was worse.
“Remember,” he shouted, suddenly, his voice rising over the cacophony of death and destruction. “Do what you have to do.”
A crawler lunged and drove a claw through Z’s shoulder, leaving his left arm hanging limp and useless.
A one-armed, damaged man and a rotting monster.
Yeah. We’ve got this.
She might have laughed, then, but wasn’t sure. The sound and the feeling were the same as her sobs.
Agony. Oh, agony, my friend. You never leave me for long.
He fell to his knees, her Z, then struggled to his feet as she managed to fight the crawlers away.
“Z,” she screamed.
He wiped blood from his eyes with the back of his hand, still holding his blade. He said nothing, but she saw his grin flash.
And they were overwhelmed.
The vicious crawlers were too many.
“Shhh,” one of them hissed, laughing. “Shhhh.”
She sent him to hell.
She was the fucking princess. The one foretold to destroy the witch. She was stronger than her rot. Else what the fuck was her purpose?
She was not powerless.
Was not.
Once more she gathered herself and fought, protecting herself, protecting Z. She was meant for that, and she’d only fail if she allowed herself to fail.
She was a monster.
The monster.
No matter what.
But even monsters needed help, and in that world, help was hers for the taking.
If they expected her to defeat the evil that ruled them, they’d better fucking be prepared to help her do it.
She wasn’t too proud to ask.
To demand.
She fought on with mindless habit as she gathered up the splinters of untried power inside her—gathered them up, forced them into powerful spheres of unrelenting commands, and flung them out into the world of Skyll.
When they left her, it was not just a spiritual call for help—it was a physical endeavor.
She had no choice but to fight on even as the call ripped its way bloody and vicious from the old stake wounds in her chest. It tore them open, causing her such pain her body had to fight from habit and muscle memory even as her mind attempted to find a safe, dark place in which to hide.
It was as though obsidian had become trapped in her heart and an enormous external magnet pulled, forced, sucked it from the quicksand of her flesh.
She screamed as it gouged raw, tender flesh with talons as sharp as needles, as it ripped and chopped at her insides with what were surely sharp hooks and lethal sickles.
And even the crawlers stopped in puzzled curiosity to watch it happen. Perhaps they, too, would feel the call, her call.
Perhaps they would find it stronger than fear’s call.
Perhaps they would not.
Either way, if they refused to run, Rune would kill them all.
At last, the crawlers backed away, a few of them trampling others in their hurry, as something broke free of Rune’s chest.
Z stumbled backward as well, his eyes finally showing emotion—not of fear, but of wonder. He fell to his knees, not to bow before her, but simply because his legs had given out.
Rune screamed again, then grabbed whatever it was birthing its way from her chest and jerked it free. She flung in to the ground and stepped back in horror.
It was a crow.
A wet, bloody crow, black as evil and bright as hope.
It opened its beak, a sharp, wicked beak, and gave a call so harsh, so loud, that no one there was able to stand against it.
No one but Rune.
For she was its master.
Z and the crawlers covered their ears and screamed in agony, and then the crawlers fled as though fire licked at their backs.
“Fly,” she whispered. “Fly, little crow. Bring me my fucking army.”
It lurched and staggered drunkenly until at last it fluttered its sticky wings and shot into