Now, he tossed the broken creature into a heap of similar ones. Golden blood limned his lips, so he licked them clean. How many of their hearts had he eaten so far? Twelve? A baker’s dozen? And yet, if anything, the additional power gleaned from each new kill was less than the previous. But why? He was adding more enhanced godsblood to his stores, wasn’t he? Or was there something he was missing? He hadn’t even had another golden leaf appear on his face in days.

Though his predecessor’s memories were broken into disparate, jagged shards, like a pane of glass that had been shattered by a stone, he could still piece together enough of them to know:

This was as far as they had made it too.

Frustration burned in his chest at the realization, so hot he could feel it in his bones, in his heart. Those flames tore through him, elongating, multiplying, until they pushed into his scaled arms, obscuring the golden rivers of light that lived between each section, before pouring over his hands, and then out through his fingers in a dark blast. They hit the mass of dead wings and broken bodies, immediately lighting them like a torch doused in oil.

The dead bats burned into a pile of ash in mere seconds, the heat and intensity of the fire unnatural, born of a power beyond what any normal human could hope to conjure with flint and stone.

A power so strong he could burn this entire forest—no, this entire kingdom—to the ground. Unlike flying, his Ability to conjure and manipulate fire had come easy to him. The temptation was there, to simply let the fire he’d just started do what every fire was meant to do: consume. Already, its tongues of black flame were tasting the arms of foliage adjacent to where he’d discarded the dead bats. Left unchecked, it would travel like wildfire, devouring everything in its path. Spreading to the point where even he wouldn’t be able to stop it.

Then they would all know what it was to hurt.

The words of the woman he’d killed outside the throne room door came back to him, unbidden. Razim noth recorum. They were spoken in a foreign tongue unknown to him, and yet he’d understood them as clearly as if they’d been delivered in the common tongue. They were harsh, fearless—an accusation.

He could still feel the rage simmering inside him that those words had ignited. He hadn’t even planned to kill her—just scare her and any bystanders enough that word of the event would travel. It was only meant to be a warning to the man he despised more than anyone else—the king himself. And the guards, they were far more collateral damage than he’d counted on.

A sob caught him by surprise at the memory.

“I did that. I killed them. Me. It was me. I…hurt them. I burned them alive. Because I am—I am—I am—”