“I’ll kill them.”

Ganmark. She saw his soft, tired face. Flinched as his sword punched through Benna’s body. That’s that. Prince Ario, lounging in his chair, wine glass dangling. His knife cut Benna’s neck open, blood bubbling between his fingers. She made herself see each detail, remember each word said. Foscar, too. I’ll have no part of this. But that changed nothing.

“I’ll kill them all.”

And Orso, last. Orso, who she’d fought for, struggled for, killed for. Grand Duke Orso, Lord of Talins, who’d turned on them over a rumour. Murdered her brother, left her broken for nothing. For a fear they’d steal his place. Her jaw ached, her teeth were clenched so hard. She felt his fatherly hand on her shoulder and her shivering flesh crawled. She saw his smile, heard his voice echoing in her pounding skull.

What would I do without you?

Seven men.

She dragged herself up, chewing at her sore lip, and lurched off through the dark trees, water trickling from her sodden hair and down her face. The pain gnawed through her legs, her sides, her hand, her skull, but she bit down hard and forced herself on.

“I’ll kill them… I’ll kill them… I’ll kill them…”

It hardly needed to be said. She was done with crying.

The old track was grown over, almost past recognition. Branches thrashed at Monza’s aching body. Brambles snatched at her burning legs. She crept through a gap in the overgrown hedgerow and frowned down at the place where she’d been born. She wished she’d been able to make the stubborn soil bear a crop as well as it bloomed thorn and nettle now. The upper field was a patch of dead scrub. The lower was a mass of briar. The remains of the mean farmhouse peered sadly over from the edge of the woods, and she peered sadly back.

It seemed that time had given both of them a kicking.

She squatted, gritting her teeth as her withered muscles stretched around her crooked bones, listening to a few birds cawing at the sinking sun, watching the wind twitch the wild grass and snatch at the nettles. Until she was sure the place was every bit as abandoned as it looked. Then she gently worked the life back into her battered legs and limped for the buildings. The house where her father died was a tumbled-down shell and a rotted beam or two, its outline so small it was hard to believe she could ever have lived there. She, and her father, and Benna too. She turned her head and spat into the dry dirt. She hadn’t come here for bitter-sweet remembrances.

She’d come for revenge.

The shovel was where she’d left it two winters ago, blade still bright under some rubbish in the corner of the roofless barn. Thirty strides into the trees. Hard to imagine how easily she’d taken those long, smooth, laughing steps as she waddled through the weeds, spade dragging behind her. Into the quiet woods, wincing at every footfall, broken patterns of sunlight dancing across the fallen leaves as the evening wore down.