“My lord!”

The guard saluted and Bael snarled at him, understanding why Kett hated being called “my lady” so much. He wasn’t a lord, hadn’t done anything to deserve being a lord, and-

And he was thinking about Kett again.

He punched the guard in the face but it didn’t make him feel much better.

The courtyard was cold and damp, small drifts of dirty snow piled up in the corners. His house in Galatea on the other side of the mountains was at a high altitude and suffered from the cold during the winter months. In his absence, the staff clearly hadn’t bothered to do much about clearing the ice and snow from the stone courtyard. Someone would probably slip and fall and hurt themselves if it wasn’t done.

Bael was feeling so savagely angry that he hoped they would.

“Albhar!” he roared as he neared the crumbling stone edifice. “Old man! You there?”

A steward came dashing up, half-dressed, trying to fasten his sword belt as he ran. “My lord-”

“Can it,” Bael snarled. “I want a hot bath and a change of clothes. Now.”

“Yes, my lord. My lord-”

“I said don’t call me that.”

“Uh, yes sir. Lord Albhar isn’t here, sir. He’s in Vyiskagrad.”

Bael stared for a second, puzzled, since Albhar vastly preferred Euskara to Asiatica. “Right,” he said. “Didn’t I say I wanted a hot bath? I’m leaving as soon as I’ve had something to eat. Go cook something!” he snapped, and the man ran off.

The courtyard was suddenly full of people who recognized Bael’s mood and were desperate to avoid it. He ignored them and grabbed the scryer Kett’s stepmother had given him.

“Albhar? Where the hell are you?”

“Vyiskagrad.” The old man peered through the scryer at the buildings behind Bael. “Where are you? Galatea?”

“Yeah,” Bael said surveying the usual level of chaos as animals and people milled around the courtyard. “Not for long. I’m going west. Feel like killing something.”

“Not the house in the Bascano mountains? Bael, that’s the one that burned down last year.”

“Burned down?” Bael asked. “No one told me this.”

“I did, but you didn’t listen. I know you have a lot of houses, Bael, but really-”

“Look, I don’t care,” Bael said. No wonder Albhar thought he was an idiot. “I’ll stay here and hunt. I just need to kill something.”

He narrowed his eyes. Var could change into any one of several lethal creatures, but Bael liked firing weapons. He yelled to a page for his hunting bow.

“You’re going hunting? Wonderful!” Albhar said. “Take some of the knights with you. Bael,” he leaned in close, as if imparting a wonderful secret, “the shapeshifter is nearby.”

“Wow,” Bael said flatly.

“Aren’t you excited?”

“Sure. Maybe I’ll come to Vyiskagrad and eviscerate it,” Bael said. “Where’s my fucking bow? I want arrows too.”

“No, don’t kill it,” Albhar said. “We need it alive. You will be coming back, won’t you? To see the ritual?”

“The fabulous power one?” Bael asked, as the page scurried back with a hunting bow Bael didn’t recognize. “What the hell is this? This isn’t my bow. Bring me mine,” he snapped. “And my crossbow too. And get me some fucking knights too!” he yelled after the kid. “What does it look like?” he asked Albhar, who gave him a dead look. “I mean-does it have a base state? Does it look human? Male, female?”

“Female, we believe,” said Albhar. “I don’t know whether it will have aged, but your father said it appeared to be a woman of about forty.”

“That was twenty-odd years ago,” Bael said. “Do I go around shooting every old woman I see?”

“Bael, you’re a Mage,” Albhar scolded. “Use your senses.”

“I’m too fucking mad to use my senses,” Bael spat, because the anger, the rage, the hideous humiliation inside him was so murderously powerful he could barely see.

“Why?” Albhar asked curiously, as if he hadn’t noticed. Or as if Bael’s anger was an interesting research subject.

“A fucking woman.”

“Ah,” Albhar said, and Bael wondered if the old man had ever even had a fucking woman. “You should find a mate, Bael.” Bael looked at him sharply, but the man he regarded as his godfather went on, “A good woman, a wife. Children. Settle down.”

“It’s on my To Do list,” Bael said, as the page scurried back carrying so much weaponry he kept dropping bits of it. Snatching up his crossbow, he discovered he couldn’t load it with the scryer in one hand.

“Remember, if you see the shapeshifter, don’t kill it,” Albhar said as Bael started to sign off.

“I will if I fucking want to,” Bael replied, and cut the call dead.

Kett flew until she thought her wings would drop off, and came to land somewhere in the Vyishka mountains. The range was full of violent peaks, steep drops and gorges hundreds of feet deep. Kett turned herself into a mountain lion to cross the jagged collection of mountains, padding over rock and snow on weary paws.

It hurt, but not as much as the hurt inside her. You did the right thing, she told herself for the hundredth time. You don’t want a mate, you don’t need a mate. You’d have ended up being hurt by him, just like you have whenever you’ve become involved with anyone else.

If she’d never gotten married, he’d never have cheated on her and she’d never have gone to jail for nearly killing him. If she’d never joined the army and tried to channel her anger into something constructive, she’d never have come to the attention of Captain Cuntface and ended up getting flogged to within an inch of her life.

If she’d never met her father, she wouldn’t have tried to save him from that sorceress, and Kett wouldn’t have been killed. Neither would Tyrnan.

The Curse of Kett fell on everyone. Love caused pain and death and misery and anger. She was better off without it.

She was.

Bael flew, his dragon wings beating the air because the air itself offended him. His blood sang, every cell in his body screaming with rage.

He couldn’t remember ever being so angry but the worst part was, he didn’t know what he was really angry about. His own stupidity and humiliation? Or Kett’s hideous betrayal, at the same time carelessly impersonal and terribly, pointedly specific?

Howling with rage and misery, he incinerated a small wood and watched with feral enjoyment as the living trees crackled and burned. A village nestled in a valley nearby, and he considered it with detached cruelty. He could destroy the whole lot, burn houses, people and livestock. Let them fry in their own skin, watch flesh heat up until it boiled, bathe in their screams. He was miserable to the point of pain, why shouldn’t everyone else be?

The air full of screams, the scent of charred flesh, rivers of blood and pain and fear. He slaughtered them, he did it for fun, he massacred them…

With a jolt of revulsion, he shook himself out of it. Was this how Striker had become so terrible, so powerful and so dangerous? Was this why he’d rampaged through Euskara twenty years ago, murdering Magi and stealing their power, flattening cities, roasting people alive-just to mirror his own pain?

What the hell could have hurt such an inhuman man so badly?

He found himself on the ground, back in his human body, staring at the scryer in his palm. It glowed red then the face resolved into Striker’s visage.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asked.

The same shock of fear and disgust ran through Bael, but far less powerfully than it had before. “Why did you do it?” he asked.

“Do what? Who are you?”

“Kett’s- I’m…a friend of Kett’s,” Bael said through the bad taste in his mouth.