“But…” Lucien’s hawk profile intensifies, all the darkness on his face drawing together. “Your guards—”

“Like I said, brother.” Varia’s voice is clipped. “Sacrifices had to be made.”

The nobles’ whispers from weeks ago haunt me—parts of her were found on the road, and all her guards were dead. Torn apart ruthlessly, like a Heartless attack. That means she—she killed them, tore them to pieces to make it appear just so.

The prince looks more stunned than I feel, his face slack and his brows knit on Varia’s silhouette.

“They won’t be forgotten.” Varia speaks up again, a new strength in it. “There’s a lot I’ve missed, but if I’m to stop this looming war and save our people, I can’t miss anything ever again. Do you understand, Lucien?”

The glow on Gavik’s body begins to fade, his flesh I bit and tore apart mending in front of my eyes—shins fusing to knees and skin covering the gaping slit in his belly. Lucien’s still riveted to Varia, and then he nods slowly.

“Yes.”

Horror starts to dawn brighter than my despair—Gavik is healing. His heart in a bag, Varia as a witch—I clench my fists, looking around for my sword. I can’t find it in the blood-soaked grass. I killed him. He’ll want revenge as I wanted it against the bandits who murdered me. He’ll be flush with anger, with the monster’s strength.

He staggers to his feet, the glow mending his vertebrae one by one until his neck snaps back into place.

Then Gavik’s face swivels to me, long white hair whipping and his every tooth jagged. The monster claws through his skin, nocked straight at me like an arrow, his steps quick and heavy. I shield myself with my arms even though I know it’s futile; Gavik’s cruel eyes pitch-black from corner to corner and suffused with hate, bloated with bloodlust, his claws bursting through his fingertips and his limbs cracking as they elongate.

He’s hideous. He is terrifying.

He’s me as I was not seconds ago.

“Enough.” Varia’s voice rings out, but Gavik keeps stalking toward me. “I said, that’s enough.”

It’s just two words, and yet they’re pitched so low and so loud that they rumble in my chest. She’s a slim, shorter woman, and yet those two words are spoken with all the weight of the world turning. The pain I’m expecting never comes. Gavik is frozen above me, his monstrous, unnaturally tall body not moving a single inch, though his eyes burn and blink down at me. Varia steps up from behind him and smiles at me, a smile too bright for the carnage around us, for the blood-soaked monster just in front of her.

“I apologize about him. You know how Heartless get when they’re first turned.”