---
Akayoroi moved last. She stood over the Frog-Prince's flattened body, watching the blood pool. "This is for all of us," she said. "For the last fifty. For the hundreds before us. For the broken colony and the mother who was stolen from my life."
The dagger descended one last time, this time across his neck. It was slow. Jagged. She wasn't trying to be clean.
By the time the frog's body fell still, the swamp had fallen silent. The air hung thick with death and ash.
One of the assassin ants gently retrieved a shattered carapace from the mud—a fragment of a fallen sister—and placed it atop the frog Prince's cooling chest.
Azhara walked up beside Kai, licking her bloody claw absentmindedly. "You know," she said, "I thought I'd be the wild one, but I've never seen vengeance so thorough."
Kai didn't smile. "She earned it."
