I was no longer looking at a woman. I was looking at a fucking goddess. A goddess of death and vengeance and utter, indiscriminate destruction. She could be nothing else—standing there in her white jacket so spattered with blood that it soaked crimson, sword raised, those scarlet butterflies forming a cape around her shoulders. “Ascended above,” I rasped to Sammerin. “Did I look like that?” “Yes,” he said. “You did.”

