The next, there was a hiss of rushing air, the sound of a whip crack, and the jagged point of what looked like a spear tip carved from bone erupted from Invidia’s chest, just below her breast, to the left of her sternum. The spear transfixed the burned woman and the creature clutching her body in a single blow, and she arched her back in agony, her eyes flying open wide, her mouth stretching into a breathless scream.

A hand gripping a stone knife emerged from a fraying windcrafted veil, swept around Invidia’s body, and with a swift, sure motion, cut her throat from ear to ear.

Invidia Aquitaine fell to the croach, her blood pouring out like a fountain, her eyes wide with shock and terror and rage and pain. She turned her head to stare, bewildered, at the woman who had killed her.

Countess Calderonus Amara stood over her with the bloodied stone knife in hand, and whispered, “Thus are you served in Alera, traitor.”

Invidia’s eyes rolled back into her head, and her breath rattled in her throat. She sank very slowly to the ground, the legs of the beast upon her breast quivering madly, uselessly. Her own legs twitched and kicked several times, as if she believed herself to be running away from something.

Then her bloodless face fell to one side, staring sightlessly, and she went still.

Isana stared at Amara in shock. The Cursor had been in the hive all along. She must have entered when Antillus and Phrygia did, concealing her presence with a veil—doubtless intending to strike down the vord Queen. But the Queen was surrounded by a wall of blade-beasts, and Invidia had been a perfect target, fully focused upon her own self-conflict and pain.

Amara bent and wrenched the bone spear from the body, bracing one boot against the dead woman’s shoulder blades. It was a short weapon, no more than three or three and a half feet long, and thicker than her wrist, decorated with Marat-style carvings. A bone spear, Isana thought, and a stone knife—neither of which would have been sensed by Invidia’s metalcrafting. Amara took the primitive weapons in hand and turned to face the Queen, her stance casually arrogant.

The Queen narrowed her black, glittering eyes, and Isana felt a surge of deep, hot anger pulse from her in a single wave, then vanish again. As it happened, the blade-beasts parted, rippling smoothly out of the space between the Queen and Countess Amara.

“That,” said the Queen, her diction precise, “was inconvenient.”

“In what way?” Amara asked, her tone flippant.