Page 131 of The Curse of Golden Blood
"You want to know about storms?" I snarled. Power built in my core like molten iron. "Let me show you one."
Raw electricity erupted from both hands. Not the controlled lightning I used in battle. This was primal fury. The essence of every storm that had ever torn mountains apart.
I poured it directly into the creature's borrowed form.
It tried to scream. Tried to dissolve back into shadow and escape. But storm magic held it together, forced it to endure every volt of destruction I fed into its writhing mass.
Its form began to collapse inward. Shadows compressed into impossible density. Reality twisted around the imploding thing like metal bending under pressure.
This is what happens when you take what's mine.
I pushed more power into the creature. The pressure differentials that birthed tornadoes. The temperature gradients that spawned lightning. The raw cosmic fury that turned peaceful skies into engines of destruction.
Its scream cut off abruptly. Its form was collapsing faster now, shadows eating themselves in an endless recursive loop. Reality seemed to hiccup around the dying thing, space stuttering like a heartbeat missing its rhythm.
The creature imploded.
Silence crashed back into the chamber like a physical weight. The acrid smell of burned magic filled the air, sharp and chemical. Ozone from the lightning. Something else underneath it, something that made my skin crawl. The lingering stench of deception. Of violation.
A shapeshifter. In my private chambers. Wearing her face, speaking with her voice, sitting where she should have been.
Gryven would never have let this happen.
The man who'd spent centuries learning every secret passage in this palace, every hidden entrance, every possible threat to my safety. Who'd made it his life's work to ensure that nothing dangerous ever reached these chambers.
Gone. Replaced by commanders who didn't know this palace's bones the way he did. Who hadn't spent decades memorizing which shadows moved wrong, which sounds didn't belong.
Fury ignited in my chest. The kind of anger that carved mountains into new shapes and redirected rivers to follow different paths.
Pure, caustic wrath with nowhere to go but outward.
I strode from the chamber, storm magic crackling around me like visible intent.
Guards in the hallway pressed themselves against the walls, recognizing the signs. When their warlord moved like this, all lethal grace and barely contained destruction, smart soldiers made themselves invisible. They'd seen what happened when that control finally snapped. Had heard the stories of battlefields left smoking and enemies reduced to ash.
"Where's Commander Velora?" My voice carried the rumble of distant thunder.
"The barracks, my lord. Evening briefing with the night—"
I was already moving. My boots struck stone with enough force to send hairline cracks through marble. Lightning danced between my fingers, eager for targets, ready to leap at the first sign of threat or defiance.
The new commander would learn exactly what happened when someone failed to protect what mattered most.
The barracks sat in the eastern wing, a fortress within a fortress. Velora's domain, where he drilled soldiers andplanned patrol routes and pretended he could fill the void Gryven's exile had left behind.
The doors stood open. Wrong. All wrong. Velora was paranoid about security, kept everything locked tight during briefings. Said it prevented eavesdropping, ensured operational secrets stayed contained.
I stepped through the doorway and stopped dead.
Carnage.
Bodies everywhere. Fae soldiers torn apart in their bunks, caught sleeping. Blood painted the walls in arterial sprays, the metallic stench thick enough to taste. Some had been killed so quickly they still lay in peaceful positions, as if death had taken them gently. Others showed signs of brief, futile struggle. Hands raised in defense. Mouths open in screams that never had time to sound.
No defensive wounds worth mentioning. No indication of a prolonged fight. They'd died without truly waking, throats opened by blades that moved faster than dreams or reflexes could respond.
Professional work. Efficient. Thorough.
In the center of the massacre, carved into the wooden floor with something sharp enough to slice through enchanted oak, was a message:
