death, she will bring. The hunger laughs. so much delicious death.

Malachite shakes his head, that tch sound ringing in disbelief.

“What would you have me do, Luc?” Varia snarls down at him. “What do you plan to do? Take the throne and mete out menial tasks until you die? Will helping the poor of Vetris really save them from dying in another war? The ministers, the nobles, that damnable deep-seated Eye of Kavar and its priests—all of them want war. They push us to the brink of it, again and again, and they will never stop.”

a wheel that turns eTERNALLY, the hunger insists. I can feel my claws beginning to press through the skin of my fingertips as the dread presses into my brain. Is Varia loosening the hunger inside me?

“Holding the world’s greatest power in the palm of your hand isn’t the solution!” Lucien bellows back.

“But it is, Luc!” she insists. “The valkerax did just that! Because of them, Old Vetris was formed! Human and witch, come together at last, working together in ways never seen before. You know the songs—we made Vetris in three days with our combined power. We made this Tree, for the gods’ sake! I will make Old Vetris again—I will force the witches and humans to work together once more!”

The bones of the branches clack together placidly. As she speaks, the hunger in me has been growing steadily louder. It reaches a fever pitch now, and I struggle against it with all I have in me. I won’t fight Malachite, Lucien, Fione. Not them.

Not them.

ENEMY! the hunger screams. TRAITORS. YOUR ORGANS WILL MELT THE ICE—

Of the silence. Of the silence! I beg with myself, closing my eyes and sinking into the hollowness of my chest. I’ve had practice, so much more practice now, but the hunger sparks an inconsolable oil fire that rages through my mind. It’s stronger than anything I’ve felt before—stronger than it was even in the clearing. This urge to make blood run, to consume hot flesh and tight sinew, to rip and tear and leave the chaos of death in my wake—it’s not just a cloud of frenzy that surrounds me as it was the night of the Hunt. It’s an arrow, aimed right at me and struck true.

My teeth grow long, my breath puffing out as ragged white air.

The Laughing Daughter is urging me to kill. And Lucien is watching it happen. He’s watching me become the monster all over again. Not him. Not them. Fourteen men but not them, too, not again, not again, NOT AGAIN—

I crouch—please, don’t crouch, don’t move an inch—my muscles tightening as Malachite’s hand on his sword tightens.

KILL. The hunger becomes my thoughts, my very breath. ONE BY ONE, THEIR THROATS WILL BE OURS—