“Oh, it matters a great deal, Malice.” His eyes gleam. “If your precious mate hadn’t destroyed my fucking castle, I likely wouldn’t have used every last one of my resources to track you lot down. Not right away, at least. You would have had more time and likely could have beaten me.” His lip juts out in a mock pout as he crouches in front of me, his misty eyes swirling with amusement. “Poor, poor Malice. You were so close. So close,” he whispers, his smile threatening to split his face in two. “But you were just a little too slow. A little too distracted. And now, the object of your affection has become your death sentence.”

Slaine stands, staring down his hooked nose with a sneer. “I knew you couldn’t resist the opportunity to play white knight and save the girl.” He gestures toward Dagny with a cold laugh. “And I knew, eventually, you would lead me right to Abaddon’s heart, and I could end all of you once and for all—no contingencies this time.”

Slaine turns his back on me and walks over to Zairn. Pleasure rolls off his shoulders in heated waves as Zairn places Dagny into his arms, and he wastes no time pulling her limp body into his chest, burying his face in her neck and taking a deep inhale of her scent. The demon king stands there for several excruciating minutes, admiring the gentle twitch of her eyelids and the luminous energy coursing just beneath the surface of her skin. “So much power,” he whispers, his voice shuddering with awe. “I never expected her to be so useful. What she did to my castle was impressive in and of itself, but then the arachnyx horde… how she was able to control them… I’ve never witnessed such strength.” He lifts his head, his eyes finding mine across the distance. “She’ll make a great little soldier for me—when she’s not lying on her back.”

Rage flares in my chest, so violent and powerful that it threatens to shatter my rib cage, to tear open my skin and cleave the ground beneath my knees. But it’s not my power that surges through the air—it’s hers.

The ice quakes, rumbling and splitting underfoot as it crumbles beneath the raw, swirling magic flooding from Dagny’s veins. The blow causes Slaine to teeter off balance, and he’s so focused on keeping himself upright, he doesn’t notice Dagny’s eyes flying open, beaming with an ethereal silver light.