I roar, bloodrage unleashing, and stumble. Her sword plunged deep through the bone and into my chest—not far from my heart.
My face lurches forward and I smash her with my forehead. She leaps off me, leaving the blade stuck in me, and draws another one.
My left arm feels useless now, no matter how painless and numb I feel from the bloodrage. My senses heighten and thoughts swim away, replaced by the bloody necessity to kill and maim and destroy.
I blink through the red curtain, waiting for my former second-in-command to come at me again.
She hesitates, seeing the pure red in my eyes, and clenches her perfect jaw. “You should have never gone against the NightJudge, Vallan. Aramastun is too powerful an enemy for you and your ragtag group.”
“You aren’t,” I roar in a guttural, throaty voice, and then decide I’m finished waiting for her to act.
I charge at the forewoman and she slides back on her heels, as if surprised I’m taking the offensive. She skitters to the left to avoid my bull-charge, bringing her sword down on my one useful arm.
I let the blade sink into my forearm, deep and jarring against the bone, and adjust my momentum to grab at her at the last second.
My axe falls from my hands. She gasps when I close my fist around the hem of her cloak andpullback.
The clasp of the cloak chokes her and sends her flailing back toward me. She swiftly undoes the pin and lets the cloak fly off her body, fluttering into my face.
I charge through the blackness, feeling another surge of pain in my thigh this time as she dips low and skewers me.
Her sword pins into my flesh.
It was that greedy stab to my thigh that makes her falter. She should have run away while I battled with her distracting cloak in my face. Now she’s right in front of me, eyeing the axe at my feet.
I ignore the axe, lunging at her.
She scampers right, into the guard of my useless impaled arm and shoulder—
Except it’s not useless anymore. My bloodrage made sure of that.
My hand closes around her arm and she lets out a wheezing sound, stabbing wildly into my body. One, two, three times, drawing blood with each attack.
I ignore any pain, roar spittle and rage into her face, and bring her body into me to meet my other fist.
My gloved hand breaks the brittle bones of her perfect face. I wrap her hair around my wrist and punch her again, crunching cartilage, snapping her neck back, stunning her.
She’s not so perfect-looking anymore.
Cordea spits a broken tooth at me, eyes wild as she tries to concentrate. For some reason, she’s still focused on my axe on the ground, as if terrified that’ll be the thing that cuts her in half.
But I don’t need my axe when I’m in my barbaric bloodrage. No, my fangs will do.
They puncture her neck, deep and gruesome. The sound is slippery, slurping, as I tear a hole into her flesh and feast on her blood.
Cordea whimpers, she struggles, squirming in my grip as I crush her against me in a hug.
When I drop her onto the ground, steaming veins and torn muscle flop out of her wound, a wave of blood spraying upward. She staggers onto her knees, futilely gripping the cavernous gash, and falls onto her back.
I lift my boot and her eyes flutter and then widen—
As I smash my boot into her face, her neck, and bury her upper half in a crater of dirt and mud and blood.
For good measure, with a roar I punch down, rip past her sleek leather tunic covered in gore, past her breastbone, and mangle a yawning hole in her chest, reaching inside her, past her ribs.
I finish by popping her slippery dead heart in my fist.
Chapter 38