The brands of the Loj on their necks looked almost like staves.

An attacker approached Arjun from behind and he leaped from the ground and drove a knife through the man’s throat.

“To the death!” Arjun yelled.

The Kin screamed in unison, echoing his cries with swords and magic raised high in the air.

Karam pulled someone’s head back by their hair and plunged her knife into their heart.

She ran across the shores, sand splashing up to her thighs, and launched herself into the air until her legs were wrapped around a man’s throat and he tried to hit and punch at her calves.

This would be their mourning.

Killing these people would be their solace. It didn’t matter if they were outnumbered two to one. These Crafters were already dead.

Karam squeezed tighter, angled her body to the right, and felt the snap of the man’s neck.

The beach was alight with magic. It filled the air, so thick that Karam could taste it, almost choke on it. She coughed it up like it was sand. Bright gold swirls of fire and the roll of thunder. Bodies were dropping everywhere.

There was blood all over her and Karam didn’t know what was hers and what had been their enemy’s.

It didn’t matter.

She didn’t feel pain, just thirst.

The unholy need to destroy each and every one of these monsters.

The Kingpin knew they would come for Wesley.

His people had been waiting, hidden like hunters in the forest.

Nolan.

Karam would be damned if she died on this beach without making it back to Saxony. She made her way through the army in blood and death.

These infected soldiers could not be saved, the Loj was too far in their veins, and even if they could, Karam would not give them that chance.

Now that Asees was dead, Karam would make each of them pay for it with their souls.

If they still even had souls.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out one of Tavia’s trick bags. She threw it at a nearby Crafter and he froze in place, turned to ice on the balmy shores.

Karam threw a knife at him and he shattered into the sand.

These people were not warriors.

They were just the dead waiting to find graves.

She reached for another charm.

Tavia had been trying to teach her how to read them—to know what they could do and to let their magic flow through her like a melody—but Karam could sense nothing but her own rage and so she just threw the charm high above her and watched it flutter back down like a bird.

And then explode.

Four Crafters flew into the air, crashing through the glass headstones until finally landing back on the shores with a bone-crunching thud.

Dead. Gone.