Chapter 57

Orion

Over the centuries, I’d lost count of the things I’d done. While they still lived within my memory, I had become skilled at pushing them aside. At focusing on the present to ignore the horrors of the past.

Countless wars I’d fought, slaughtering in both human and beast form, and yet nothing in all those years gave me such a visceral reaction as witnessing poison’s darkest nightmare.

My own stomach turned as I watched her spew her dinner onto the floor. Disgust for myself and for my people had my skin crawling. I wanted to peel it from my body and take to the forest, running until the residue of her pain was smothered by blundering exhaustion.

Seeing the horrors through her eyes, feeling the blade carving into her flesh as though it were my own—I’d never experienced anything so harrowing.

I’d freed prisoners of war, witnessed torture and its aftereffects. I’d even been maimed a time or two on the battlefield, but never had I felt the unrelenting agony that was dark magic weav