Page 203 of The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King

How many times, back then, had I imagined what it would be like to kill Neculai?

Countless. Seventy years. Twenty-five thousand days to lie there in bed and close my eyes and think about what he might sound like with blood filling his lungs, think about what it might look like to peel his skin back inch by inch, think about whether he’d piss himself in his final moments.

I’d thought about it so many times.

I wasn’t the one who had gotten that satisfaction in the end. That had gone to another cruel king. I’d told myself I was alright with that. Let them tear each other apart.

I had been lying to myself.

I had wanted to be the one to do it.

And now, this seemed almost as good.

The first time I struck skin, opening a river of red-black across his arm, I actually fucking laughed—loud and crazed.

That one drop of blood awakened something in me. My next blow was harder, faster, blade seeking out his flesh like a starving animal. When he managed to get in a return strike, I barely felt it, instead using the force of his hit against him.

I was so lost in my own frenzy that it took me far too long to notice exactly what was so off about him. To notice that Simon didn’t seem concerned at all, even though I’d wounded him. Not even when I struck him again, sending him staggering back.

I pushed him against the wall, licks of night rolling from my sword, the smell of his blood thick in my nostrils.

This was it.

I wanted to look into his eyes when he died. Wanted that satisfaction.

I wanted to see the fear on his face when he realized that the slave he had abused two hundred years ago was going to be the one to kill him.

But when I met Simon’s eyes, I didn’t see fear. I didn’t see much of anything, actually. They were vacant and bloodshot, glazed over, like he was lookingthroughme instead of at me, at something a million miles past the horizon.

A sour drone thrummed in the air, nagging at my magic, burrowing deep into my veins.

I hesitated. And finally, I heard the voice in my head—the one that insisted,This isn’t right.

My eyes flicked up for a moment, catching movement through the glass window over Simon’s muscled, armored shoulder.

Septimus stood in the middle of the empty ballroom, enjoying the view through those floor-to-ceiling windows, utterly calm. He smiled at me, a lazy trail of cigarillo smoke rising between his teeth.

This isn’t right.

Simon wasn’t moving, even though I had him pinned. The pulse in the air grew thicker, louder. The unnatural ripples that called to my magic seemed to pull tighter, like lungs inflating in an inhale, drawing me closer.

I actually took in Simon’s appearance for the first time since I saw him, my head clearing.

He wore old, classic Rishan battle leathers. Finely made stuff. But oddly enough, he’d left the top unbuttoned down to his chest, revealing a long triangle of skin.

Skin marked with black, pulsing veins.

And all those veins led to a chunk of silver and ivory, buried right into the flesh of his chest.

It was so grotesque, so unnervinglywrong, that at first, I couldn’t make sense of what I was looking at.

And then I recognized it:

The silver was Vincent’s pendant, smashed and melted and warped, smeared with Simon’s blood.

And the ivory was...

Teeth.

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