Behind him, sprawled across the cracked and blood-slicked masonry, Morwenna stirred. Her world was a spinning kaleidoscope of agony and ringing silence.
BEEEEEEEEEEEE...!
The high-pitched whine in her ears drowned out everything else as she forced one eye open, each movement feeling like hot glass sliding through her veins.
Through the haze of pain and the copper tang of blood filling her mouth, she saw him. She saw the silhouette of the man who held Valentina aloft like a broken doll.
A sound tore itself from her throat—not a battle cry, not a scream, but something far worse: a raw, wordless sound of pure, unadulterated grief.
It was a protest aimed at the universe, at the cruelty of fate, and at the man she had shared the intimacy of skin and breath with only days earlier.
'How?' The question screamed in the silence of her mind. 'How could you be this monster?'
'How could you be him?'
