But he had changed.

He was still changing.

Sloan swept a hand over the chaos. “Have you met my pet?”

The Compound was a battlefield. Soldiers wrestled on the blood-slick floor, trapped in their violent spell.

Hurry, Soro, he thought.

Many of the soldiers were still alive, but they were killing one another, and there, in the center of the lobby, still as the eye of a storm, stood the Chaos Eater, its head tipped back and its arms wide, as if to receive them all.

As August watched, he felt it again, that horrible, hollow space, like hunger, in his chest. He forced his gaze back to Sloan.

“Still holding on to that human shell, I see.” The Malchai clicked his tongue. “Leo would have faced me in his true form, monster-to-monster, one-on-one.”

“I’m not Leo,” said August. “And it’s not one-on-one.”

Ilsa was on her feet, and the air around her had gone ice cold. He had seen his sister lost, and kind, and dreaming, but he had never seen her angry.

Until now.

She had the knife in her hand, and he had the bow in his, and Sloan must have sensed the scales tipping, because he took a single step back but was blocked by the body of a fallen cadet and, in that instant of imbalance, August and Ilsa struck.

Sloan had to choose. And he chose August. But as the Malchai knocked away the bow, Ilsa moved behind him with a dancer’s grace and slid her knife along the back of his knees. The Malchai snarled and staggered, one leg threatening to fold, but August caught him by the collar.

Sloan slashed at August’s eyes and leaped back, but Ilsa was there. She kicked out his other leg, and his knees hit the floor. She brought her knife to Sloan’s throat as August fetched up his fallen bow.

The Malchai bared his teeth. “Tell me, August, where is Katherine? Surely you didn’t leave her with Alice.”

“Shut up.”

Sloan laughed. “She doesn’t stand a chance.”

Surprise flickered across Ilsa’s face, and her grip must have loosened, because Sloan lunged to his feet in a last, desperate attempt at freedom. Ilsa’s knife carved a shallow line along his throat, and August stepped into the Malchai’s path.

“You’re wrong,” snarled August, driving the steel bow straight up into Sloan’s heart.

The Malchai swayed on his feet, but unlike Leo, August hadn’t missed, and a moment later Sloan fell, his red eyes widening for an instant before their light went out.

It stands

at the center

of a sun

burning

brighter

and brighter

with every

stolen life.

Kate dived for the knife block.

Her fingers skimmed the nearest handle before Alice swept the whole thing off the counter. The knives came free, skittering across the kitchen floor, and Kate rolled, taking one as Alice grabbed another.

“How does it feel,” asked Alice, twirling the blade, “to know that I’m only here because of you?”

The knife came sailing through the air and Kate narrowly dodged, the blade burying itself in the cabinets. She tried to drive her own knife into Alice’s side, but the Malchai had the block in her hands now, and she caught the blade’s tip in the wood, ripping it from Kate’s grip before slamming the block itself into her ribs.

Pain splintered across her chest, there and then gone, a burst of light quickly swallowed up by the shadow. She swept up a cleaver, blood singing.

“To know that all the people I’ve killed—and I’ve killed a lot of people,” added Alice with manic glee, “are dead because of you?”

The words were meant to hurt.

“That everything I do, I get to do because of you?”

But Kate felt nothing.

“Can you feel it,” goaded Alice, “when I kill them?”

Nothing but the cool weight of the weapons in her hands.

“Does it send a shiver through you?”

“Do you ever shut up?” said Kate, feinting with the knife and then driving the spike down into Alice’s hand, pinning her to the kitchen counter. Alice let out a snarl of pain, but even as Kate moved to cut the Malchai’s throat, Alice tore free.

They collided, again and again.

Came apart, again and again.

Until blood dotted the floor, red and black.

Dripped from hands and jaws like sweat.

Alice laughed.

And Kate growled.

And they crashed together.

every scream

like thread

like muscle

drawing it

together

until

at last—

August pulled the bow free, and let Sloan’s body—what was left of it—collapse to the floor just as Ilsa drew in a sharp breath. It was the closest thing to a sound she’d made in months, and August turned, following her gaze.

The Chaos Eater was still there, but it was no longer a silver-eyed shadow.

It was a thing of flesh and bone. August could hear lungs filling with air, and something like a heart beating in the hollow of its chest as a mouth carved its way across its face, and the lips split into a smile, and the smile parted to reveal a voice and—

I