“It’s a list of traitors.”

  “Not loyalty right now!” she roared. “Going forward.”

  Thana slammed her hand on a table. “Calm down,” she said evenly. “I will not have your Aspects escaping on top of everything else.” And to her astonishment, they quieted. She’d never felt more like the monarch’s pyradisté.

  It couldn’t last.

  But riding the feeling and keeping her fear for Sylph, for the kingdom, as her motivation, she grabbed the list, and one name stood out, a way to secure the future she was supposed to be sorting for her and Sylph.

  “Duke Felix Montague.” She was certain he’d agree if it meant he got to keep his lands, his titles, and it would give him a chance to help save his daughter. After what he’d done in the council chamber, she had to believe he cared a little.

  And even if he complied solely because he thought it would save his skin, it would tie him forever to the Umbriels, to Thana, too, and from her to Sylph again, to a future for them.

  Right now, she’d give anything just for the chance.

  She left it to Earnhilt to explain it to the duke while she went into Gunnar’s bedroom with him and Dina. Perhaps he’d never have to find out about her and the queen after all. Then all that was left was for them to stare at each other awkwardly, and Thana suspected they were all wishing that the crown prince lived closer or that his father was anywhere to be found.

  Dina sighed. “Look, this isn’t the first threesome I’ve been part of.”

  “It’s not a threesome,” Thana said as her face burned, and Gunnar mumbled, “Me neither.” Thana closed her eyes and blocked out his words.

  “I just never thought I’d be having one with you, Than,” Gunnar said, and she could tell he was teasing, but she was not in the mood. She glared.

  “The secret is, don’t think too hard about it. Just lose yourself in the moment,” Dina said.

  Thana transferred her glare, but she could tell Dina was teasing, too. “Shut up, the pair of you.”

  Gunnar touched her shoulder. “Sylph will be all right. We’ll save her. You can relax a bit.”

  She shook her head. She did not want to accept his comfort and risk bursting into tears right now. “I’m going behind that screen. You two…situate yourselves. You’ll know when the magic starts to happen, or so I’m told.” She went behind a changing screen and sat on a stool. She took her pyramids out and tried her best to pretend she’d gone deaf.

  As she fell into the pyramids, a warm current ran through her, and a feeling rather like sensuousness flooded her limbs, bringing back memories of Sylph. She let herself linger there as the air warmed. She focused the pyramid energy toward Gunnar and Dina, but she hardly needed to bother. The energy was drawn to them, to their pulses, the same warmth infusing their limbs as coursed through hers.

  She became a link in their triangle and had to block out all their talk of threesomes again. She forced herself back to memories of Sylph’s smooth skin and breathy exhales. As the power flowed back from Gunnar and Dina into Thana and the pyramids, it sped up before beginning the journey again, picking up speed each time.

  Thana’s breath came faster, her eyelids fluttering, and the energy changed, becoming darker. It was still powerful, beautiful, intoxicating. Finally, the dark energy came out in a burst, slamming into Gunnar, where it seemed to drag something from him and carry it into Dina. When the pulse passed through her again, the dark energy was gone. It settled back into the pyramids and dimmed.

  Thana curled her hands around them and tried not to weep, missing Sylph with an ache that was nearly too much to sit through. She wanted to run from this feeling or to chase it down through the earth and tear at the rock with her bare hands.

  The screen moved, and she jolted, realizing that her face was wet. She’d been sobbing and not quietly. Gunnar had at least paused long enough to put his trousers on before he sought her out. He wrapped her in his arms, and Dina pressed into her from the other side.

  She wept against them for a moment, happy to lose herself in worry, if only for a breath. Then she realized that Dina hadn’t taken the same care to put some clothes on, and that both she and Gunnar were a bit sweaty from the hurried ritual, and she had to break away.

  “Thanks, thank you,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Get dressed.” She hurried to the door. The palace shuddered as she went, and she hoped that using more Fiend magic hadn’t made their problem worse.

  The tremors didn’t stop as she gained the sitting room, and she didn’t know if they had time to give a Fiend to Duke Felix even if he agreed. But could they pacify Yanchasa with only three? When a lamp tumbled off a table, she knew they had to try.

  Duke Felix waited in the outer sitting room. His finery was rumpled, and he had a bruise on one cheek. The guards hadn’t been gentle with him.

  Good.

  Especially since he had a haughty look on, lifting an eyebrow as if shocked that Thana could look him in the eye. She fought the urge to make an obscene gesture and looked to Earnhilt.

  “He’s agreed,” she said, staring at the walls as if she could hold them still on her own.

  “We don’t have time,” Thana said. “We need to go now.”

  “With only three?” Gunnar asked as he followed with Dina, both of them clothed.

  Thana nodded. “But bring him along.” She pointed to Duke Felix. “We might be able to find a use for him.”

  He didn’t do anything so common as sputter or sneer. He went along quietly between Ivar and Illis, and Earnhilt seemed a bit relieved as she followed. Thana couldn’t blame her. They might have to give him a Fiend in the end, but at this moment, no one had to have sex with him, and that was a blessing to be cherished.

  The palace kept rumbling as they ventured below. To his credit, Duke Felix didn’t balk at the sight of the capstone, hadn’t balked at all, but Thana questioned if he’d remain silent about everything if he didn’t carry a Fiend. She supposed it was enough that he was already in disgrace and that if he went around badmouthing the Umbriels as part Fiend, he’d be in even worse trouble.

  And would anyone believe him when the pyradistés who’d held the proof were all dead?

  That had burned her at the time, but now, when she had to scramble to fix their mistakes?

  No, she couldn’t help feeling like death in secret was never warranted.

  She really didn’t belong in the Order of Vestra. But that was a future to be contemplated later.

  In the capstone cavern, Duke Felix peered curiously when Thana fitted the manacles around the legs of Earnhilt, Gunnar, and Dina. Again, to his credit, he pointed to the fourth pair. “And those would have been for me?”

  “If we’d had time,” Earnhilt said.

  He nodded sternly. “But you still think I might be needed?”

  Thana had to shrug. If this didn’t work, she didn’t know how they’d pause to give him a Fiend. As soon as the Waltz began, Earnhilt’s Aspect would emerge along with the other two, and if Duke Felix tried making love to her then, she’d rip him to pieces.

  Not that he’d even have to get close for that.

  A sheen of sweat broke out on his forehead, but he still stepped up and shackled himself. “Just in case.”

  Thana’s admiration went up a smidge from nonexistent. Earnhilt looked at him with respect. Maybe that would keep some of him intact if they had to use him, though the spirits only knew how that would work.

  “Don’t touch the capstone until I say,” Thana said to him.

  He nodded. She collected the necklaces of Earnhilt and Gunnar, drew her Fiend pyramid, took the deepest breath ever, and got to work.

  * * *

  “No, no, no,” Sylph chanted. Pain arced up and down her spine, and her muscles quivered as if she’d run for miles while carrying a ton of steel on her back. Pebbles rained around her as she shuddered, nearly vibrating from the strain of holding the great Fiend’s prison intact.

  He was moving, too. She felt his massive limbs rasping inside his prison, could imagine his eyes fluttering and again saw the prince’s eyes as they bled all blue and shone with murderous cunning. She’d opened so many airholes that her little pocket within the stone filled with the scent of blood from those dead above.

  That seemed fitting.

  As the great Fiend once more flexed against his prison, she kept up her chant, painting her mouth and throat in another coat of dust. But she held him, though some of his rumbles had broken through. She hoped Thana felt the urgency, that she could do some—

  A spark from above sought to pull her attention away. She tried to ignore it and focus on her task, but the Fiend quieted as if he had also been distracted. Someone was using the capstone, the malevolent heart, a metaphor that became more apt when she knew its function. It had to be Thana, but more than just her. Sylph sensed the same energy that emanated from the Fiend pyramids. But this magic held another note, too, not so much a herald of destruction but of distraction, like a lullaby used on an agitated child.

  And it was working. The great Fiend’s shudders calmed. Sylph let out a sigh and relaxed a fraction. She focused her magic and sought to bring herself into the light, but before she could move, the great Fiend flexed his power, focusing on her in an instant, reaching for her pyramid from a distance as she’d seen no other pyradisté do but her.

  Making them kindred?

  No, that was another distraction, maybe from the Fiend, maybe herself, difficult to tell anymore. The sluggish power of the Fiend groped for her pyramid, drawn to her the more she used it, but she couldn’t let it go. He would be out of the prison in a moment.

  She fell in deeper. She was stone, ancient, unbending, no matter how time battered her. The essence of the Fiend was change, so she would be eternal. Even if all life upon the sphere should die, she would remain.

  Her body ceased to matter as she sagged in her stone pocket and gave all her will to the earth.

  * * *

  Something was wrong, and Thana scrambled to find out what. It had been going well. Yanchasa had been quieting, the rumbling around them dying. Then she’d felt a burst of power, not against the capstone, but directed somewhere else, somewhere close. And there were only two other pyradistés in the vicinity.

  She opened her eyes and looked to Calla, who was glaring from off to the side. But for once, she wasn’t directing her ire at Thana. Holding a detection pyramid, she stared at the ground.

  “What is it?” Thana said, fighting to keep her focus on the task at hand. Earnhilt, Gunnar, and Dina had their hands on three sides of the capstone. Their eyes had all bled to solid colors, and while Gunnar’s horns sprouted from his forehead, Earnhilt’s came from her temples and curved back along the sides of her head. She also sported four crow’s wings that had shredded the back of her tunic when they’d burst forth. Dina had two wings and no horns, but a spike jutted from her chin. All three snarled, revealing monstrously sharp teeth.

  Duke Felix leaned away from them as far as his shackles would allow, his expression horrified. But he didn’t beg to be set free.

  “It’s that cursed stone pyramid,” Calla said. “Your girlfriend and the Fiend are fighting for it.”

  Thana’s stomach shrank as she imagined massive claws reaching for Sylph, but Calla had to mean grappling in a metaphysical sense, power to power, but how was that better? Fiends were said to be made of magic. Surely, they would know how to use it better than any pyradisté, no matter how mindless they might otherwise be.

  But Thana also remembered how Sylph had merged with the rock in the cavern, their own stone lady, and how terrifying the idea had been that she might not come back.

  “Right.” She fell deeper into the capstone through the Fiend pyramid that shielded her from Yanchasa’s influence. She called to him, masking herself behind the Fiendish Aspects of the royals. It was all right. They were all Fiends here, and Yanchasa could go back to sleep among his kin.

  But she caught a blip of power from Sylph’s stone pyramid, and lulling Yanchasa felt like trying to put a child to bed while someone nearby was blowing a whistle. The Fiend wouldn’t turn its attention to her while Sylph was using the stone pyramid, but if Calla was right and Sylph stopped using it, Yanchasa could grab hold and tear the whole palace down.

  Maybe the world.

  “No, look over here, you great bastard,” Thana said, pulling harder at the Aspects of those around her, making them growl. Maybe if she created the sense that they were imperiled, that would spark some sort of feeling, and Yanchasa would focus on them again. Though whether to comfort or kill, she didn’t know. But once that happened, she could switch back to putting him to sleep.

  A flicker of attention came her way, then he turned for the stone pyramid again.

  “Spirits curse it!” Thana staggered back from the pyramid, wiping at the sweat on her face. The Umbriels and Dina shifted and snorted, but they couldn’t take action while held by the manacles.

  “I need four of them,” Thana said quietly.

  Duke Felix swallowed and grimaced as if the action was as painful as it looked. “I’m ready.”

  But she didn’t know how to give him a Fiend right now, not without the physical joining, and how could they do that? Any of the others would be more likely to eat him than mate with him.

  Just as Yanchasa might kill them all, kill Sylph at any moment.

  “There has to be a way,” Thana muttered. She’d brought Duke Felix for a reason, a plan that wasn’t impossible, something lurking in her subconscious that the rest of her hadn’t yet realized.

  “What are you doing?” Calla asked.

  “Thinking.” She ran through her knowledge, but nothing came. “Spirits curse it.” She’d always known this would happen, that it would come down to her, and she wouldn’t be up to the task. “Why did he even pick me? I’m not strong enough to—”

  “Hey,” Calla shouted as she gripped a fistful of Thana’s shirt. “Get a fucking grip, or I’ll take over and steal your job and your girlfriend. That what you want?”

  Thana blinked, knocked off kilter by the strong swear and the threats. A laugh bubbled up in her, but she fought it down and nodded. “You know, that’s the most I’ve ever liked you.”

  “Ditto. Now do something.”

  “Right.” No one knew as much about pyramid magic as she did, after all. She needed four people with Fiendish Aspects, and no one could give one to Felix right now, so he’d have to get one from somewhere else. Think, she told herself. Remember every book. Remember—

  She gasped. Where had the Umbriels gotten their Aspects all those years ago when they’d first defeated Yanchasa? From the Fiend himself.

  She looked at her hand. What was her Fiend pyramid but a siphon? Designed to channel Fiend magic at Yanchasa and placate him, but why couldn’t it work in the other direction, too? And what better way to stop Yanchasa than by siphoning some of his energy, weakening him, then using that same essence to pacify him?

  “Put your hands on the capstone,” she said to Duke Felix as she stepped forward again.

  He licked his lips and hesitated before complying until Calla turned her glare on him and stepped behind him as if she might shove. As soon as he touched the capstone, Thana fell into her pyramid again. She could sense the energy that connected Dina and the Umbriels to Yanchasa, but Duke Felix was like a void in the magic, a sandbank in a river. How to change him?

  Something Sylph had said came back to her. The essence of Fiend magic was change. And it changed humans into monsters, so perhaps all she had to do was let the magic wash over him, almost consume him.

  The flow was hard to turn, and she grunted under the weight of it. Yanchasa didn’t seem willing to let go of any more power, but he was still distracted. When Thana called to that power rather than sending it away, it moved sluggishly toward her.

  She steered it as she might a skiff on unruly waters, swearing with the effort and gripping her pyramid until cramps went through her hand. As the Fiend power filtered up through the capstone, she wrestled it away from the Umbriels, Dina, and herself, and shoved it toward Duke Felix.

  He screamed, an agonized sound that harmonized with the crunch of bone and shredding cloth. Thana squeezed her eyes shut harder and tried to block out the sounds, hoping he’d either pass out or enter the same fugue state as the others, who wouldn’t remember their transformations. But they’d either been born with Fiends or had received a weakened version, already carried by generations of humans. Duke Felix was getting his from the source.

  Now she had Yanchasa’s attention.

  Thana gasped as the trickle of power flowing into Duke Felix became a flood. He howled, and Thana cried out as well, terror filling her at the idea that Yanchasa might be seeking a new way out since they weren’t going to let his body free. She opened her eyes to find a monstrosity standing next to her, horns and wings and spikes and barely any human left at all.

  She had to stop it, and her first thought was to kill him, much as that appalled her. Such a creature could not escape this cavern, but she didn’t have any weapons.

  An anti-Fiend pyramid like the one she’d used on Gunnar’s Aspect? But she’d need more than that. The magic had to get inside him. Instinct moved her, and she rammed her pyramid into his chest, turning the siphon back the other way. He screeched, an inhuman sound that filled her mouth with the taste of blood. Agony filled her head, and the sounds of the world faded to a dull roar, but the flow of power reversed.

  Thana sobbed through her pain and clenched her teeth. When the duke retained only a little Fiendish essence, she pulled the pyramid from his chest and focused on the capstone. The four Fiendish essences seemed to be working in harmony as they were meant to during the Waltz.

  The rumbling of the palace eased, but Yanchasa had gotten a taste of freedom, and he wasn’t going lightly. She felt his will fighting to get past the four Fiendish essences, to get to her. She could almost hear him, could feel his rage. She shut her eyes tightly and fought the instinct to drop her pyramid and flee from the room, out of the palace, across the kingdom, as far as she could get from this exemplar of evil.