The first time she’d done this—cleaved someone and held on—she’d fallen over. The second time, she’d been smart enough to lean against a tree. The third time, she’d had the staff.

Soon, her three Cleaved had burned to empty, blistered husks, framed by the tarry oil that their blood had become. Surrounding them were the brutalized bodies of their fellows.

Steam coiled in the air.

Slowly, her head still throbbing with power, but her fingers finally empty, she approached the only man left alive. He was pinned to the mud, his own gold-hilted blade stabbed deep into his stomach. It had been shoved there by one of her Cleaved.

He would die slowly from that wound, and contrary to what Hell-Bards wanted the world to believe, they were not truly dead men. There was still a final precipice from which they could never return.

She came to a stop before him and gazed down. She would take that blade once he was dead; it was too fine to leave behind.

“Nommie bitch,” he said.

“That’s not polite.” She knew what she must look like, towering over him with no expression and a teardrop scar beside her eye. She knew because she had seen that face in her dreams—in their dreams. They would not let her forget, no matter how fast she ran.

She knelt on the mud beside the Hell-Bard. Terror wefted through what remained of his Threads. He tried to pull back, but there was nowhere for him to go. He was a dead man in more ways than one. “How?” he rasped. “Did you…” He didn’t finish, but she knew what he meant.

“You know what I am,” she told him. “You just didn’t want to believe it.”

“Yes,” he said on a sigh.

“I did try to warn you.” She unsheathed a rusted cleaver at her hip.

“Yes,” he repeated, and this time resignation swept over his Threads. A beautiful rose red to match his blood. Which was good. There was no sense in fighting the inevitable. She knew that better than anyone.

“May Moon Mother light your path,” she told him in Nomatsi, pressing the blade against his throat. “And may Trickster never find you.” She sliced into his flesh.

Blood burbled. His Threads faded. She did not sit and watch—not as she had done before, back when she’d still cared about respecting the dead. Instead, she pushed to her feet and tossed her rusted, bloodied cleaver into the forest. It vanished into the wintry underbrush. Then with one foot on the Hell-Bard’s chest, she wrapped her fingers around his sword hilt and yanked the blade free.

A fine weapon, even with all that blood. She would clean it as soon as she had the chance.