Abolisher

The paper crumpled in Azryle’s fist.

His head, his chest pounded.

Vendrik. Vendrik—

Dungeons.

Tormented.

Ghostly burns gnawed at his back as images dug their talons in his mind. One by one.

A head. Rotting away—

Whips. Blood. Crumpled flesh—

Dark. Utter dark swelling—

Shackles. Dresteen—

Needles. Touches of foreign mejest. Electricity. Experiments—

Azryle’s feet were moving before his mind registered.

Out of his room.

Down the hall.

Ferouzeh’s door—

His hand halted before it could touch the knob as voices floated over to him.

“Old lovers? Didn’t expect that.” Fairdust.

“Shut it.” Not Ferouzeh. He couldn’t place the scent, but the familiar voice gave it away. Faolin Wisflave. His jaw clenched. “Is anyone else with her?”

“Yeah, the ripper— Ow! Are you unbinding these or tightening them?”

“Azryle Wintershade?”

“Is there any other ripper you happen to know?”

A pause.

“Do you?”

“No,” Wisflave snapped. “Can’t keep your mouth shut, can you?”

“You wouldn’t either if you had a voice like mine.”

Longer pause.

“What are you going to do with her? I’m guessing you’re not leaving her here—”

Fairdust began choking.

“Listen.” Wisflave’s voice was a lethal calm. “I don’t give a shit if you once helped me. One more word and I’ll gut you right here. Understand?”

“Oh it’s killing you.” Fairdust sounded amused, teasing, but Azryle felt Wisflave’s stillness. “The thing inside you. It’s growing every passing day, isn’t it, feeding on your irritation—”

A strike. A grunt.

Then Fairdust was giggling like a madwoman.

All Azryle had gathered was Ferouzeh was inside. Possibly knocked out. What he didn’t know was whether he would be able to stand a sorceress that powerful and a shapeshifter at once.

Vendrik.

His name came as an alarm, and Azryle stopped thinking whether he would be able to stand them, all he knew was he had to. He had to move fast.

He opened the door.

Both their gazes snapped to him, alert.

Blood ran down Fairdust’s mouth; Wisflave’s hand was fisted and poised inches from Fairdust’s jaw for another punch. The shapeshifter was still roped to the chair. And the sorceress … her confinement required no ropes. Azryle could scent it—the helplessness, and utter despair, so fierce that it seemed to gnaw at him.

His gaze went to Ferouzeh’s supple form unconscious on the floor behind them, blood ran down her temple. Azryle’s blood thrummed with rage.

“Am I interrupting something?” he greeted, his face neutral, unfeeling.

Wisflave straightened off Fairdust—her lilac eyes stunned Azryle more than he would like to admit. Before, they’d held a promise of death; a quick end. There, and then not. Now, they held a promise of destruction. Obliteration before a violent end. Ruination. Dark fury rippled around her—the air seemed to shift with her breaths, careful not to offend her.

Long gone was softness from her face, the hint of humor—all that had remained of Faolin Wisflave was a dark cruelty not many would survive. That hair didn’t help—the sides were shaven to scalp.

Azryle crossed the room to Ferouzeh. “You can take that one,” he said to Wisflave as he went. “But I doubt she would go.”

He knew Fairdust wouldn’t—not when he still held that stone of hers.

“Why have you stopped untying,” Fairdust hissed.

“What are you doing here?” Wisflave asked Azryle, ignoring the shapeshifter. “In this city—I mean.”

Azryle scented her suspicions, felt as alarm took over her. And he guessed her hand was almost certainly going for her weapons as he crouched beside Ferouzeh.

“Why are you not with your queen?”

A hideous wave of ire went through him at the mention of Felset. The crumpled paper in his hand seemed to grow sharp edges, piercing in his skin.

“I’m trying—and failing—to see how that’s any of your business.” He lifted the healer in his arms and led her to the bed.

Azryle’s ears picked a faint whine of steel as the sorceress unsheathed a dagger and he gently set the healer on the bed. Strange. Why didn’t she simply go for her mejest? She ought to know better than to use steel against him. Had it not been for the circumstances, Azryle might even have been offended.

“It is my business if you’re sent behind one person I’m sworn to protect.”

Azryle paused. Turned to face her.

But the sorceress had already charged.

The dagger came straight for his forehead, but he managed to duck just in time. It thudded in the wooden wall behind him—hilt trembling.

But Azryle didn’t have the time to spare as she dashed for him; her snarl ripped the air. It was her speed that took him off guard—that, and that pure animal hunger for violence churning in her eyes. He was pinned against the wall the next moment—blackness came across his eyes as his skull brutally slammed against it.

The punch sent his jaw cracking; and Azryle tasted blood.

He hazily heard Fairdust whistling over the ringing in his ears—just when Wisflave took fistful of his hair and mercilessly smacked his head against the wall again. Another wave of blackness and nausea.

She wasn’t giving him any chance to strike back as she landed blow after another, knew her chances well enough.

Azryle smiled.

Last time he’d been dealt a compatible foe had been when Alpenstride had been cursed and trapped in an unearthly form.

This was going to be fun.

There was no point in holding back—no point in trapping his own unholy longing for violence. No point in denying he’d deeply missed the war rage that laid claim to him after years.

He’d known Faolin Wisflave was a dragon sheathed in a mouse’s form. Known she was one of the fiercest warriors to exist on Ianov, and yet he’d underestimated her. Failed to see the utter savagery. No more.

Before another punch could strike him, a vase from across the room dashed for her head. He took satisfaction in her widened eyes before she ducked—and the vase shattered against the wall. Azryle didn’t wait.

While she was still bent, his knee met her stomach.

Then his fist met her mouth.

She staggered a step back as blood touched her split lip. But—

She caught his next fist midway.

Faolin met Azryle’s gaze and bared her teeth in a vicious silent snarl. But his stillness wasn’t due to the pure malice in her eyes, but what tainted them. They were dark—not any moral dark. But literal Darkness layering atop the whiteness, as if smoke had been poured and trapped inside her eyes.

Veins pulsed inky black instead of pinkish red.

Just like Deisn Rainfang’s had.

She took his collar with another hand and hurled him across the room. The weak wooden armoire broke as he crashed in it.

He was brawling with Faolin Wisflave no more. But whatever lingered inside her.

Azryle was on his feet.

“She’s losing control—knock her unconscious!” Fairdust exclaimed, almost frantically.

How, he didn’t have time to ask because Wisflave was already before him.

Her hand came for his neck, but Azryle gripped it tight. Then bend her arm.

She yelped as another hand—

Her other hand was covered in black mist instead of lilac. He involuntarily sucked in a breath. That was why she hadn’t aimed for her mejest—

Azryle was still registering it when it came cracking his ribs with an unnatural strength. He bent double as pain shot through his entire torso, grunting, just before she roughly slammed her elbow into his back.

Azryle landed face-first on the floor.

Wisflave’s foot kicked his skull, his neck, his torso. Sickening crunches sounded here and there.

Stop fighting, said a voice. You’re not bound to Felset anymore, you have all the access to your power. You do not wait for her commands to reach for it anymore—you do not wait for her to tell you how to operate yourself. Stop restricting yourself—there’s no point. You think you can save Vendrik like this? Ferouzeh?

Syrene?

Yours, not hers.

Azryle stopped feeling the blinding pain for a moment.

Get up. She doesn’t get to still have this much control over you.

Get. Up.

The voice was his own, Azryle realized with a start. Not anyone else’s commanding him, not any leash urging him. His own voice. His own instructions.

A slave no more.

Felset had been in his mind for almost as long as he’d lived—constantly nagging him. He’d long since forgotten how to use his own mind, long since given up hopes and wishes.

But she wasn’t here anymore—then why …

Get up.

Azryle’s fist tightened around the paper still in his hand—a friend waiting for aid.

He slid away, flipped on his back, and caught Faolin Wisflave’s foot midway. Her eyes widened. “Enough,” he snarled low.

The world reddened around him as gruesome fury and desperation seized him entirely—until the pain vanished, and blood roared in his skull.

He twisted Wisflave’s foot before he sent her hurling across the room. She caught in drapes, and blind with anger, she took them down, trying to break free. One moment, Azryle lifted to his feet. And the next, he’d crossed the room—his hand on her throat.

Each pulse in him roared to snap it, rip her head off her shoulders. He knew the eternal satisfaction that would come with it, like drinking the wine brought straight from Haerven. Craved it. His fingers dug deeper in her neck.

But he didn’t—he wanted violence, he wanted chaos. Last thing he wanted was to give a quick death. And Wisflave wasn’t even in her senses—whatever had taken over her was anything but right. It prickled at his skin the way baeselk’s presence did.

Instead, he sent her slamming into the glass table midst the room.

It shattered—blood colored the shards and she groaned in pain.

Azryle stood over her.

And slammed his foot in her skull hard enough to put her out of consciousness.