Standing there, knife still dripping, Kaya looked at the five groaning men on her floor and felt something shift inside her chest.
These assassins were worse than her old battalion. And that was saying something, because her battalion had been pathetic.
But at least they'd had the excuse of being undertrained and undersupplied. These men? These beastmen had claws, wings, strength that could tear through stone—and they'd wasted all of it. Came at her like drunk amateurs stumbling through a bar fight.
Disgust curled in her stomach, sharp and cold.
And then something else woke up. Not the survivor. Not the soldier who'd learned to kill to stay alive.
The instructor.
The part of her that had drilled recruits until they cried, that had broken down egos and rebuilt soldiers from the ground up. The part of her that knew exactly how to turn useless meat into something sharp.
Her eyes swept over the groaning bodies, and one thought crystalized with perfect, terrifying clarity:
