Annwyl swung the blade and took one demon’s head and then the leg of another.

She ran back to Lord Phalet and tackled him to the ground. She sat on him and buried her sword deep into his chest. But he wasn’t dead. The demons around here didn’t have their hearts in the same place humans did. Annwyl seemed to understand that now.

She kept him pinned to the ground with the sword and then pulled his dagger from his belt. She cut off his fine clothing and then began on his skin. Cutting, then tearing off whole sheets. Then she went for the muscle, ripping into that. First with the dagger, then her bare hands.

She dug and she dug, until she finally grabbed something and yanked it out.

Annwyl held Lord Phalet’s beating heart in her hand and got up.

Phalet was still alive, blindly staring up at her as she held the heart in front of him as if he could still see it.

And Annwyl was still screaming.

With that rage she’d had since she was a very little girl, Annwyl ripped Phalet’s heart apart until there was nothing but tiny pieces, littering the ground around her feet.

Then she leaned down, staring into Phalet’s face and screamed and screamed until he was gone.

Taking deep breaths, Annwyl stood straight, wiping her bloody hands on her chain mail leggings. When she faced the remaining dead who’d come for her . . . they ran.

None would face her again. Not now. Not ever again.

Even his idiot son ran. Pathetic boy that he always was.

He stood, however, and watched his daughter for a little longer. Their gazes locked and he saw the hatred he’d always seen in those eyes.

“Such a disappointment,” he told her one more time, before turning his back on her and walking away.

* * *

The baby demon animal came and stood next to Annwyl, brushing his snout against her.

The army was still behind her but no one said anything to her or tried to grab her. It seemed Lord Phalet’s plan was his and his alone. But unlike the dead she’d faced, the demons weren’t walking away.

They would take her back, she guessed. To that dungeon. Until whoever was replacing Phalet decided what to do with his live victim.

Still, seeing her father walking away from her . . .

Annwyl reached over and patted the baby’s side. “Hungry?” she asked him. “Would you like a chewy corpse?”

They looked at each other, and the baby’s sizable tongue swiped from one side of its massive mouth to the other.

Smiling, Annwyl coaxed, “Go on, baby. Go eat.”

He took off, running down her father, tearing into him with his giant baby fangs.

Annwyl turned around and faced Phalet’s army. They were still staring at her.

Letting out a breath, she asked, “So . . . what now?”