Mari blasted through the door with a howling roar. The two nearest soldiers offered no defense, they were too stunned, too horrified by her arrival. She swiped her claws across the first’s face and neck, opening massive gashes that cut to the bone. The second soldier crumpled beneath her weight. Her wings knifed downward to punch their sharpened tips through his shoulders and into the stone street, pinning him in place. Mari’s claws raked his armor, and the metal crunched and folded like paper.

The final soldier fled, but Mari caught her in two quick leaps and closed her wings about her neck. Her armor separated with a shriek of metal matched in volume only by the soldier’s scream. The wings’ serrated edges sank in and then pulled, ripping apart the soft flesh of her throat in a tremendous spray of blood. Mari sank her teeth into that neck, tasting the crimson flow, drinking the manifest reward of her fury. The kills only heightened her need. She snapped the woman’s head off completely and then leaped to the nearby rooftop.

A flick of teeth and the decapitated head flew to the confused and fearful onlookers. Mari stretched out before them on the rooftop’s edge, flexing every inch of her muscular frame. Sunlight reflected off the bone plate armor. Blood dripped across her teeth and fur. None could doubt her divine inspiration, but Mari roared it out to them nonetheless. It was her promise to the city of Vallessau, to her people, and to her dying faithful.

So long as the Lioness hunted, Endarius lived. When the Uplifted Church attempted to execute the goddess Lycaena tomorrow, she would be there, and she would bring her fury.

CHAPTER 3

CYRUS

For two years, Cyrus lived as their obedient prisoner. He watched as a regent was assigned by the empire to rule Thanet in his stead. He listened for scattered bits of chatter about the resistance as Thanet’s various cities fell one by one and the four lords of Thanet either were killed or had bent the knee in surrender. All the while he held on to hope that his family would be avenged. That the resistance would succeed.

That fleeting hope withered the moment he heard of Lycaena’s capture. The empire’s paragons had scoured the island in a never-ending hunt, and at last they had brought her low. Without the goddess to aid them, the resistance was nothing. Today it would die completely, for Cyrus stood atop a gigantic wooden platform built in the western fields beyond Vallessau, forced to witness the goddess’s execution. Over ten thousand people gathered in attendance. Lines of soldiers blocked off the crowd from the platform, and smaller groups patrolled the edges, checking newcomers for weapons and turning away those they deemed troublemakers.