Page 166 of Hellbound

Ksenia’s vision rippled at the edges as she blinked.

“You had the access. The cover. The plan. All you had to do was the one thing you’re actually good at.” The noblewoman stalked closer. “And you made it some kind of fucking performance.”

Ksenia stumbled backward.

“Because you wanted Bohdan to know it was you.” The word was branded deep in Ksenia’s stomach. Varka’s finger jabbed her chest. “You had Karsan in your sights, and you wanted to play games with his son.” She tilted her head, disgust in her eyes.

“Every one of their deaths is on you,” Varka said as she swept a hand across the seething masses. “Not Karsan. You.”

She blinked.

She was back in her family’s forge, but the fieldstone walls were crumbling, molded with decay, not moss.

The patchy stonework let in beams of orange, flickering light—a raging fire.

Ksenia’s pulse quickened. “Danika!” Her bloodshot eyes scanned for her sister, but she knew all too well what had happened. The same outcome that’d claimed her parents.

The silence responded to her, amplifying the rustle of fabric and the crackle of flames outside.

With trembling fingers, she pushed open the ash-covered door to a hellscape.

The entire city of Brannfels was aglow with ember and flame.

Two wooden poles were staked to the ground before her.

And strung up on ropes and tenterhooks between them: Danika, flayed and bloated with scavenging birds circling overhead.

Ksenia dropped to her knees, eyes wide, mouth gaping.

A soundless scream broke at the back of her throat.

The corpse twitched.

Was it a trick of the light? The heat shimmering through the air?

It couldn’t be.

“I—” The jaw unhinged, slackened. “—always knew.” Her tongue lolled, connected by a single strand of sinew. “You’d choose yourself in the end.”

The body swayed on the hooks.

“I did everything”—a long rattling exhale wheezed through her throat—“right. And it still wasn’t enough.”

Ksenia was unable to stop staring at Danika’s gaping sockets, picked clean by the rats.

Damp grass cushioned the impact as her back collided with cool stone.

She scrabbled away from a pale headstone, looking about her surroundings.

Back in Karsan’s private garden.

Cold fear gripped her heart as the world fell silent.

Her throat closed as she turned.

“This is what you wanted, right?” Karsan’s bemused smile painted his face as he kicked Bohdan to his knees before Ksenia. “Revenge.”

Bohdan’s eyes were ringed with white as he looked up to her.