Page 143 of The Last Valkyrie

His next strike allowed me to pivot, giving my front foot more leverage, and I drilled the tall Hersir with a bone-jarring strike that seemed to dizzy him as he parried.

“Salos is dead,” I answered. “Your traitorous compromise is finished, Ingvus.”

He scoffed. “Nice try. I don’t listen to animals.”

Memories of him talking me down, wishing for me to be caged—doing everything in his power to make my life Hel—swirled through me.

My berserk rage burst free, and finally I became undone. I saw the shift in his eyes. The determination and anger switching to fear and uncertainty. Red clouded my vision. I swung unnaturally fast, forcing him back, back, back, until he was against the stone wall of the academy.

He met my blade, circled his wrist, and got the upper-hand with his sword over mine. Our blades locked, his eyes glanced down my naked front. “Problem with having a big cock, barbarian?” He grinned wickedly. “Big target.”

He slashed down with pinpoint accuracy and forced me to curve my body inward, neglecting any chance at a parry so I could protect my manhood.

His sword dug into my thigh, dangerously close to my femoral artery. Blood spurt, I dropped my sword and fell to a knee as the rage swelled inside me.

Ingvus brought his arm back to try and behead me—

But my hand caught his wrist like a stone wall, the extended sword inches from my neck.

The Steward gasped.

I snarled like the animal he claimed I was and snapped his wrist with an easytwist.

His gasp became a shriek.

Then I launched to my feet and clamped my jaws around his supple, skinny throat. My burning red eyes told the entire story as I chewed into his neck with my teeth, a gout of blood bubbling up from the wound around my lips.

Ingvus’ voice became a garbled mess, a gurgle.

I pulled back viciously with my teeth, bringing veins and stringy tendons steaming out of the cavernous wound. My hand latched around the slippery remains of his neck and I slammed the back of his skull into the stone wall behind him.

With a sickeningcrunch, a splatter of red inked the wall, and his eyes rolled. I slammed his head a second time, creating a bigger circle of blood, mixing it with fragments of bone.

Releasing my hand around his throat, Ingvus dropped bonelessly to the ground in a heap.

I stared down at the jailer, the supposed “steward” of this place, and spit his flesh out of my mouth onto his corpse.

My berserk rage, fueled by his hate, thinned from a boil into a simmer. But it wasn’t because of Ingvus’ death that my rage was quelled—it was never easy to turn off the berserk trance once it began.

No, it was because I noticed a shape in the purple sky through the crisscrossed, airy ceiling of the watchtower, silhouetted against the moon. The figure flew above the academy high in the clouds, shaped like a dragon or a maiden on a winged steed.

My heart soared, my anger died, replaced by hope.

Ravinica!

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