“Your father will never know who killed you,” I said, stepping closer, my blade still dripping with his guards’ blood. “You’ll simply disappear, another noble who wandered into the wrong part of the city after dark.”
Fear finally began to register in Varin’s eyes as he realized the seriousness of his situation. “Wait,” he gasped, struggling against Tarshi’s grip. “I have money. More than you’ve ever seen. Name your price.”
“We’re not here for money,” Tarshi growled, tightening his hold until Varin’s face began to redden. “We’re here because you touched her.”
Something shifted in Varin’s expression — a flash of recognition, then a twisted smile despite his predicament. “The Cantius whore?” He laughed, a choked, desperate sound. “Shewanted it. They all do. Playing hard to get until they get a taste of real power.”
I saw something change in Tarshi’s eyes — a flicker, like flames igniting in their dark depths.
“You know what?” Varin continued, seemingly oblivious to the danger in Tarshi’s gaze. “Kill me, and you’re all dead too. My father’s men will find you. And then they’ll find her. They’ll take turns with her before they finally let her die—”
What happened next occurred so quickly I almost couldn’t process it. Tarshi’s free hand, the one not holding Varin’s throat, seemed to transform before my eyes. His fingers elongated, nails extending into wicked, curved claws that gleamed like obsidian in the dim light.
Varin’s eyes widened in terror, his sentence cutting off mid-word.
“What are y—”
Tarshi’s clawed hand plunged into Varin’s chest with a sickening crunch of breaking bone. Blood sprayed outward, hot droplets spattering across my face. Varin’s mouth opened in a silent scream, his body convulsing as Tarshi’s hand twisted deeper.
I stood frozen, unable to look away from the impossible sight before me. Tarshi’s eyes had changed completely, the endless black blazing into an unnatural golden glow that illuminated his face from within. His teeth, when he snarled, looked sharper, longer than any human’s had a right to be.
With a savage growl that sounded nothing like Tarshi’s voice — more bestial, ancient, and terrifying — he ripped his hand free of Varin’s chest, bringing with it a pulpy mass that could only be the nobleman’s heart.
Varin’s body slumped to the ground, eyes staring sightlessly at the night sky. Blood pooled beneath him, black in the moonlight, seeping between the cobblestones in rivulets.
Silence fell, broken only by Tarshi’s laboured breathing. He stood over Varin’s corpse, blood dripping from his still-transformed hand, the glow in his eyes gradually fading as his chest heaved with exertion.
For several long moments neither of us moved. The reality of what we’d done — what Tarshi had done — hung in the air between us like a physical presence.
“We need to move the bodies,” I finally said, forcing practicality through my shock. “Into the alley. The night patrol won’t find them until morning, if at all.”
Tarshi looked up at me, his eyes now back to their normal colour but filled with something I couldn’t quite name — fear, perhaps, or confusion. He stared at his hand, which had also returned to its human appearance, though it remained covered in Varin’s blood.
“What am I?” he whispered, so softly I almost didn’t hear it.
The vulnerability in that question cut through my defences. For all our animosity, all our rivalry over Livia, I found myself unable to feel anything but a strange, reluctant empathy for the warrior standing before me.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Are you... are you a demon?” The question sounded ridiculous even as I asked it, but I’d seen his hand transform, seen the unnatural glow of his eyes.
“I don’t know,” he echoed, clenching his bloodied fist. “I’ve always felt something inside me, something dark I had to control. I thought it was just the Talfen blood.” He looked up, meeting my gaze directly. “But no one gets to touch her. Not if she’s unwilling. Not ever.”
There was such fierce protectiveness in his voice that something twisted in my chest — recognition of a feeling I knew all too well.
We worked in tense silence, dragging the bodies into a nearby alley and arranging them to look like the aftermath of a robberygone wrong. I stripped them of valuables to complete the illusion, tucking coins and jewellery into my pockets to discard later.
“We should separate,” I said as we finished. “Take different routes back. Less conspicuous.”
Tarshi nodded, wiping his blade clean on a dead guard’s cloak. He still moved with a strange tension, as if afraid of what his own body might do next.
“I saw what you did to him,” I said abruptly, unable to let it go. “That wasn’t normal, Tarshi. That wasn’t human.”
His head snapped up, eyes narrowing. “And that bothers you, doesn’t it? That the ‘half-breed’ you’ve always despised might be even less human than you thought?”
The bitterness in his voice stung more than I expected. “That’s not—”
“Isn’t it?” he interrupted, advancing on me suddenly. “You’ve made your feelings about the Talfen perfectly clear from the beginning. Called us animals, demons, abominations. And now you’ve seen something that confirms your worst suspicions.”
I stood my ground as he approached, refusing to retreat despite the memory of what those hands had done to Varin. “If I thought you were a monster, I wouldn’t be standing here,” I said firmly. “I’d have run the moment I saw what you did.”
