With a grunt, Karigan smashed the eyestalk, shattering glass and denting metal. It dangled from its socket by wires that sparked. The mechanical squealed and whirled around, skittering erratically and dragging Karigan on the floor in circles at a breakneck speed.

“Cade!” she cried.

Her blind Enforcer ran into display cases and grew more erratic by the moment, bowling into the guards and bouncing off the other Enforcer, which went flailing across the room. Glass and wood and plaster smashed around Karigan until Cade shoved his sword between the mechanical’s legs and tripped it. It heaved over, splitting its central orb along a previously invisible seam. Dark viscous fluid and tubing, like entrails, gushed out onto the floor into a boiling, hissing puddle.

At that moment, another wave of discord passed over and through Karigan. The ground shook and articles fell off shelves and smashed to the floor. The guards who remained standing paused in consternation. The remaining Enforcer, already unbalanced by its collision with its companion, staggered. The quaking undermined the last of its stability, and it tripped over its own spindly legs. It keeled over, its legs scurrying in the air like a dying insect.

“What in the name of—?” Silk cried.

Even if Karigan had wanted to give him an answer, she didn’t have one.

YOLANDHE UNLEASHED

If anyone tried to stop Yolandhe, she simply shoved them aside with a thrust of air. If they actually threatened her with a weapon, their landing was messier than that of others. She had, in fact, left a trail of bodies from the lift all the way to the emperor’s throne room.

The emperor was not present in the icy throne room when she arrived, but Webster Silk was. He’d known she was coming so he met her with a small army. They were nothing to her. She flung them and their spider-legged mechanicals away with a gesture, like the felling of a forest, leaving only one tree standing. The others were meaningless to her, but not Webster Silk, not the man who had imprisoned and tormented her, the first to carve his initials on her body. Those scars now blazed with furious light. The power filled her, and even without eyes, she could see.

He tried to shoot her with one of his fire weapons. She melted it in his hand. He screamed and tried to shake off the molten metal. His cries were music to her. Next she stripped off his clothing with a mere thought, first the fur coat, then his suit, and finally his small clothes, revealing flesh and a manhood shriveled by cold and fear.

“Do you wish to romance me, Webster Ezmund Silk?” Her voice rang out more sweetly than it had since he had crushed her vocal chords.

“Please . . .” he said, shaking.

Beautiful music.

“Do you remember how you shackled me? I will shackle you now.”

She drew on her powers and melted ice from the ceiling. She reshaped the melt water and froze it into an icicle-pronged noose around his neck. He fought to break it off, but it might as well have been made of steel. Blood trickled from his neck onto his chest.

“Webster Ezmund Silk, you were the first to show me your love.” She pointed to his initials across her breasts. She would not sully herself by touching him, so instead, she hurled her memories of the violations, the degradations, the torture, into his mind so he experienced them as she had. His body thrashed and pleas spilled from his mouth in incoherent sobs, a grand symphony.

It was still not enough.

She slashed her hands through the air, and he howled. With every gesture she sliced his skin open, writing her own name upon his flesh in the characters of a long lost language that once belonged to the goddesses of the sea. Blood pooled around his feet. She covered him in her name.

“Webster Ezmund Silk, no sea witch am I, but a goddess of elder days. Older than old, yes? You played at an eternal life, but you will not know immortality.”

He sobbed.

“I am Yolandhe. Look upon me. You did not make me, but you reshaped me.”

She forced him to look, to look at the river of power flowing through her. She drew on the etherea that was so rich within these upper levels of the palace, as though trying to quench a deep thirst.

When she was sure he had seen her, she with her scars blazing triumphantly, she slashed out his eyes. She admired her handiwork, satisfied. She did no more and dismissed his existence from her mind. He was no longer of any consequence to her, for she sensed the arrival of her beloved. Anticipation sent shockwaves of power through the palace, through the water-borne systems of etherea. The very ground shuddered.

Her beloved strode toward her, giving Webster Silk, writhing in his collar of ice, a sidelong glance, but that was all. His eyes were wide, and all for her.

“Is it really you?” he murmured more to himself than to her. “You are so very bright.”

“Yes, my love.”

“They told me you’d died. That you’d perished in the war. All my fault.”

“No, my love, I was entrapped. Held prisoner beneath the earth, but now I have emerged.”

He reached for her, trembling. His third aspect, the corrupt, vile one, attempted to assert control. His gray eyes clouded, darkened in a storm.

“It is time,” she said, “to lance the poison in you.”

His body convulsed then steadied. His eyes were completely black. “You are too late, Yolandhe. All is mine.”

“We shall see.”

She warmed the room so that ice drip-drip-dripped into a crescendo of rain and steam rose up from the floor. Webster Silk’s noose melted and broke. He fell to the ground, an icicle driven through his throat.