“Not anymore he doesn’t,” she said. “He came after me and I killed him. Now he’s dead and it’s the kind of dead that you don’t come back from. I’ll kill you, too.”

“I am liking this confidence,” said Mauk. “You’re definitely making the butterflies flutter, I’m not gonna lie to you. But Shanks was nothing. Take his precious little key away from him, and what did he have to offer? Tell me if this is true – when you found him, was he stuck inside one of his own dollhouses? I’ve heard he was stuck inside one of his own dollhouses. That’s funny. How’d you kill him? You step on him? Hell, you’re heavy enough.”

“Oh, I wasn’t like this when I killed him,” said Amber.

“No?”

“No,” she said, and she shifted.

Her bones lengthened and realigned and she grew taller. Her excess weight spread throughout her body and she became slimmer. Her brown hair turned black and her flushed skin turned red and two ebony horns blossomed from her forehead and curled back.

“There you are,” breathed Mauk. “Oh, you are magnificent.”

Amber didn’t bother agreeing as she grabbed him. She knew she was magnificent. He swung the hammer, but she ripped it out of his hand and tossed it aside. She picked him up, her newly formed muscles not even straining with the effort, and hurled him across a table. She caught a glimpse of her reflection as she stalked after him, and her sudden beauty was almost enough to make her pause. She still wasn’t used to it. A slight reconfiguration of her features was all it took to turn her from ugly human to mesmerising demon.

Ugly. There was a word she’d never used about herself before. Plenty of others had, in their crueller moments, but never her. She didn’t stop to wonder what it meant, as she watched Mauk take a steak knife from a dead patron, and it didn’t bother her. Precious little did when she was a demon.

Incredibly, Mauk was smiling as he came forward. Her skin tightened and black scales formed, and the knife skimmed across her armour without drawing blood. He tried stabbing at her again, but she was much too fast. She gripped his wrist and twisted. The knife fell and she hit him twice and he wobbled, and she took hold of the back of his head and sent him sprawling across the floor.

“Told you you should have walked away,” she said, and her fingers grew to claws.

Mauk groaned, turned over, and looked at her. He was still smiling. She didn’t like that. She was used to people dismissing her when she was herself, when she was ordinary old human Amber, but not when she was like this. When she was like this, she demanded respect.