Page 72 of The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King

I rubbed my fingertips together.

He thought right, as much as I hated to admit it. I craved death like an opiate addict craved their fix. And yet, a part of me was afraid.

Afraid to pierce another chest when the last one I had pierced was Raihn’s.

Afraid to hear my father’s voice in my ear.

Afraid of whatever I might not feel anymore.

The vampire crept closer.

“If you don’t move,” Raihn said, “then I will.”

But the words weren’t even out of his mouth before my decision was made.

I slipped through the ruins to circle around behind my target. I was out of practice. The terrain was unfamiliar. I wasn’t as silent as I usually was in my nighttime hunts in Sivrinaj. The vampire had turned to meet me by the time I reached him.

That was fine. I wanted more of a fight.

He came at me with his claws, but my blade was faster.

I nearly took his arm off when he swung at me. Blood dotted my face, iron-sweet when my tongue ran over it.

My target hissed and dove for me. I sidestepped, let him run himself into the wall. He wasn’t used to fighting, not really. Even compared to the laziest of Sivrinaj’s hunters, he was sluggish and unfocused. Starving. Untrained. Practically an animal.

Wings first,Vincent reminded me, and I tore two slashes through each one. Hiaj wings—so satisfyingly easy to pierce.

His claws opened a cut over my cheek. I didn’t even flinch. A strike to his leg, to make him stumble. His right shoulder, to take out his dominant arm. And then finally I had him, pinned.

He didn’t know my name or my title. He only smelled my human blood—the blood that made me unworthy of being anything other than food in his mind.

And now there was fear in his eyes.

For a brief moment, there it was. Power. Control.

Push hard to make it through the breastbone,Vincent whispered.

But I didn’t need my father’s advice anymore. My strike was quick and true, piercing cartilage, sliding right into his heart.

Too late, the memory hit me—of the way that this same blade had felt sliding into Raihn’s chest. That rust-red stare, urging me on.

End it, princess.

I snapped my eyes open, forced myself to replace Raihn’s face with this one. This person who deserved it. Uncomplicated. Easy.

I yanked my blade free. The vampire started to slide down the rock.

But I couldn’t stop myself before I stabbed again. Again.Again.

And finally, when the vampire’s chest was little more than pulp, I let the body slump to the ground.

I stared down at him, my shoulders heaving. His chest was a mess of broken flesh. For some reason, I thought of Evelaena’s scar, and how she might have looked lying on her bedroom floor, blood all over her chest, too.

“She got away.”

Raihn’s voice startled me. He’d flown up and perched atop the ruins. He nodded toward the lake. The human woman now wandered back down the path, bucket balanced against her hip, seemingly oblivious to how close she had just come to death.

I glanced down at the dead body. Another starving beast raised to see humans as nothing more than something to use. Another animal who was only a tool to those above him. On, and on, and on.

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