“THERE’S A HATE so pure it’s blinding. There’s a rage so complete it’s all-consuming. It takes you, and it breaks you, and the thing you’ve been is forever destroyed. Burned to ashes and then reborn. And that was all I knew as I rose up and drew Ashdrinker from her sheath, the sword an extension of my arm, my arm an extension of my will, my will a summation of that hate, that rage, that desire to unmake. Not kill. Not destroy. To annihilate. Ashdrinker screamed with me as she sliced through the space between us, too red for me to look at. A blow that might’ve cut the earth in two. A strike so perfect it could have split the sky.
“The blade struck the Forever King across his throat. Starsteel, fallen from heavenly skies, pitted against immortal flesh, ancient when the empire was a madman’s dream.
“I heard the sound of steel striking stone.
“The song of dreams undone.”
Gabriel looked at his hands.
“And Ashdrinker shattered.
“Astrid struck, screaming, the silver knife in her hand flashing. All hell’s fury in her eyes. If she could have given her life to make him bleed a drop, she would have died ten thousand times. But for all her rage, my love was a child’s fist upon a mountainside. And Voss’s hand snaked out around my throat, cinching like an iron vise. I roared as he seized Astrid with his other hand, drawing her to his chest as he looked into my eyes and smiled like all light’s dying.
“‘There he is,’ he whispered. ‘The lion awakened.’
“I snarled, blind fury, strangled rage. And with all the dark might of his ancient blood, Voss lifted me high and hurled me down, his strength so great I was sent crashing through the floor and into the cellar below. My skull smashed upon the stone, and I felt my bones shatter, my body break, my heart inside it. His voice drifted down through the dust, the blood, the hurt, a whisper in my rising dark, too soft for any but us two to hear.
“‘I shall await thee in the east, Lion.’
“And though I would have given my last drop of blood, my very soul to fight it off, still I felt it take me. The awful arms of darkness, reaching up from that splintered stone and dragging me down into sleep unwanted. And the last sound I heard before it took me was not my broken, ragged breath, nor my love screaming my name, nor the sound of all we’d built, all we’d done, all we’d wished for, crashing down around my ears.
“It was laughter.
“Voss’s laughter.
“And then, blackness fell.”