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Chapter One

The Broken Monster

Rythos

Time fractured around me.

The ballroom, the screams, the grotesque clicking of monsters fighting my people—everything slowed to a cruel, silent crawl. Blurring into blood and shadow, every scream fading beneath the sound of my own soul splitting open as a gaping hole tore through my chest, twin to the one carved into the marble floor.

Helion vanished into that fucking abyss with my woman gathered against his chest, her tear-soaked skin pale as moonlight in his arms. For one unbearable second, she looked less like a goddess and more like something stolen from the altar of my own ruined heart.

“No!” I roared, and my shadows answered before I could leash them. They ripped from me in a violent burst, cracking marble, shattering glass, and devouring every flicker of light as if the darkness itself had learned how to grieve.

Every Skanthi stopped clicking at once. One by one, they decayed from the inside out, their bodies collapsing against the ballroom floor in wet, brittle heaps while my darkness slithered back toward me, obedient now that there was nothing left to kill.

It sank beneath my skin. Into my bones. Into the ruined hollow where my heart had been moments before.

But it was too late.

Lyra was gone.

And that look on her face—gods, that look.

I had seen her broken before. I had found her bleeding and hollowed out by men who abused her. But the way she looked at me as Helion carried her into the dark was worse.

As if whatever fragile piece of herself she had given me had shattered in her hands the moment she realised what I was.

The gaping fucking hole was already closing, and I knew it was Cerilla’s magic forcing it closed from somewhere below.

Fucking traitor.

I surged to my feet, dissolving into darkness and reforming at the mouth of the hole. It stitched itself back together unnaturally.

I would follow her to the pits of the seven hells and slaughter every fucking demon, monster, or God that dared to stand in my way.

But it was too late.

My fists clenched and I slammed them against the ground, now fused back together with nothing but a crack in the marble remaining.

I smashed my fist against the ground over and over again, until my blood splattered and dripped down my forearms.

A hand clamped down on my shoulder, pulling me away from my fit of rage. I spun and bared my teeth.

Solas’s auburn hair was loose, his button-down shirt torn and covered in gore as he regarded me, his rage simmering beneath a calm exterior. Unlike mine.

“He took her,” I rasped, the urge to kill overwhelming my senses. “Fuck!” I yelled, raking my hands through my hair and fisting it.

Solas said something, but I ignored him. I could not look away from the ground beneath my boots. It felt like a piece of my very soul had been taken. “He took her,” I whispered again, my voice cracking. I sucked in a sharp breath. No one knew how to get to the Seven Hells.

How the fuck was I meant to save her before I died?

I felt her push me out the moment she realised I was the monster who had hunted her all these lifetimes, saw her eyes turn cold and numb. I felt her heart break into a thousand pieces in my own chest as if the pain was mine. Fuck, maybe it was.

I needed to hold her. If she had finished reading my journal, she would have read that I could not physically tell her who I was. How had she not figured it out?

I had decided to let my shadows slowly consume me and die, all so I could be hers for the brief time I had left.

My shadows crawled along my skin, stinging as they dug in as punishment, torturing me for every thought I had of her.