Page 177 of Hellbound

The children huddled in the far corner, wide-eyed stares darting between Ksenia and Danika.

“Danika!” Ksenia’s voice shrieked inside her but came out muffled and sluggish, as if the air had thickened. “We have to get out—now.”

“Senna?” Danika’s voice sounded distant, surreal. Her lips were cracked and bleeding. Up close, Ksenia could see raw, fresh burn wounds that spiderwebbed up her hand and forearm.

No.

Fear doused her white-hot rage.

“We’re leaving.” She forced calm into her voice despite the tremor in her fingers as they wrapped around Danika’s upper arm. “Right now.”

Danika’s eyes lifted to hers—bright but vacant. “I did it.”

“Did what?” Ksenia whispered. But she already knew.

“My quiet rebellion.” Danika gestured at the shards. “I destroyed all of the kingswords.”

“What—how?” Ksenia took in the thousands of glittering fragments scraping beneath her boots.

Bound weapons had never been successfully destroyed. Not once in the history of bondsmithing.

“I figured it out. Bond nullification.” Danika’s dazed stare drifted to a strange hammer on her anvil—oil-slick black metal that seemed to drink in the light. “Krahomor. The hammer of unmaking.”

“You brilliant, reckless—” Ksenia broke off as she hugged Danika quickly, feeling her sister’s sharp intake of breath from her wounds. “Now, let’s go.”

Then she felt it.

A discordant echo pierced through the oppressive silence, reverberating from the hallway. The sound curled back on itself, creating a repetitive, dissonant chord that made her own heart claw to escape her ribcage.

He was coming.

Against all common sense, Ksenia straightened and prepared to meet the butcher king.

“Senna.” Danika’s voice was low and feverish beside her. “We have to destroy Radegast. I don’t know if Krahomor will work on a hellbound blade, but we have to try.”

“I know.” Ksenia reached past her and closed her hand around the hammer’s handle. The metal bit into her skin, so cold it burned.

She slung it onto her belt and pushed Danika behind her.

The door slammed open.

Karsan’s pale eyes locked onto them, searing as frostbite. His cloak billowed around him as he entered and kicked the door shut behind him with brutal finality.

Those eyes tore from the sisters and darted rapidly across the floor, taking in the carnage—all of his kingswords, shattered like wicked stars across the stone.

“What have you done?” His voice dripped venom.

“What my father spent the remainder of his life trying to accomplish,” Danika replied, tilting her chin. “Rid the world of your scourge.”

The shards on the floor reflected a thousand sneering Karsans.

“Sevrant,” he snapped. “By my side.”

“No.” A small, twisted smile crawled onto Ksenia’s face.

Power in a single word.

He blinked once. Twice.