Kalon scoffed. “As long as my mother is free, we’re all in danger. First of all, she won’t stop coming after Ansel and me. She’ll want us with her, whether we like it or not.”

  I hoped my brother had found Ansel and taken the boy to safety. After the major betrayal he’d suffered, Ansel needed all the guidance and support and understanding he could get. Tristan had studied numerous extremist and anarchist groups over the years. If there was anyone who could help Ansel with his return to society, it was Tristan.

  “Esme… there’s something else I haven’t cleared up,” Kalon said, bringing me back into the moment. He was closer, the space between us loaded with crackling electricity.

  “What else did you do?” I huffed, only half joking.

  “No, nothing like that. It’s about the bond I have with Trev. You know he loved my cousin, Luna, and that the Darklings killed her,” Kalon replied. “At the time, I’d heard the typical excuse that Luna had to die because they suspected her of causing the Black Fever, though the math and the timing had never matched. The Darklings had lied. Thing is, that’s when I really became a never-Darkling, if that makes sense. That’s when I abandoned all doubt as to where my allegiance lies. The moment Luna died, I told my mother to forget about me, because she was supporting people who’d killed a member of our own family and refused to tell the truth about their motivation. She spent years apologizing, swearing she hadn’t condoned her killing… all just excuses, I realize now. She went out of her way to stop me from hating her, and it worked. But around that time, I became convinced that I could take the Darklings down from the inside. I could get the pieces to fall and maybe even save my mother from destruction in the end.”

  Remembering the first mention of Luna when Kalon turned Trev, I tried to make the right connections. Kalon had given me very little information about her, and some of it must’ve been a repeat of what the Darklings had told him—he probably hadn’t trusted me at the time to tell me how he really saw that entire incident. At least I knew now. “Is that why you got Trev involved?” I asked.

  “It wasn’t me. It was all Trev. You see, a couple of weeks after that monstrous fight with my mother regarding Luna, I went back and told her I’d changed my mind. I said I would consider joining the Darklings. I hoped she’d buy it.”

  “Did she?”

  He chuckled softly. “No. She knew I was still angry. She told me to come back when I meant it. But Trev heard me at the time. He pulled me aside, his eyes puffy from all the crying he’d done over Luna, and he told me not to get involved. He’d work his way into the Darkling faction and would fight in the Blood Arena. He’d earn his right to become an Aeternae. He’d find the right angle to hook the Darklings.”

  “Oh, wow. Trev got involved to keep you out,” I breathed, remembering all our previous moments with the former Rimian and wondering whether we’d see him again. Considering everything that had happened since we’d last met, I had a feeling Trev wouldn’t step anywhere near the imperial city without knowing Kalon’s whereabouts first.

  “Trev knew that if I joined the Darklings, the day would come when my loyalty would be tested. When I’d end up fighting my own mother, and I wouldn’t be able to take her down. He understood my weakness better than anyone,” Kalon said.

  I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out and hugging him. I felt his arms slip around my waist as he pulled me closer, his face buried in my hair, his breath hot and tingling as it danced on the soft skin of my neck.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered. “You’re not alone in this. Not anymore.”

  “I’m sorry, Esme,” he said, shuddering. “I really am.”

  “Let’s worry about you making it up to me later. Preferably after we survive,” I replied, laughing lightly.

  He drew his head back to look at me. His blue eyes narrowed to icy slits. “You know, it just hit me—there’s one thing you and your people have that we might be able to use against the Darklings.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, struggling to focus before I lost myself in his smoldering gaze.

  “A connection to Reapers. If there’s one thing my mother always worried about—and made the mistake of sharing with me, as well—it’s Reapers. She dreaded the thought of them coming to Visio. The Darklings went to a lot of trouble to take Visio off the Reaper map. She told me. Once in a while, agents of Death do show up, and the Darklings are quick to mobilize and capture them.”

  “And turn them into ghouls, which is something I’ve yet to really wrap my head around,” I said, pursing my lips.

  “Yes. The details are unclear to me, too. Point is, if the Darklings have a few Reapers to deal with, that’s one thing. If a whole army of original scythe-bearers comes over… well, that’s another issue altogether. I think Reapers might be the answer to our problem.”

  I gazed at him for a while, troubled by the beauty in each of his features, wondering what genetic mixtures had led to his creation. He was a wonderful creature, one with perhaps too many facets, too many blind spots and secrets… yet he enticed me. I wanted to peel away the layers until I found the core, the truest form of Kalon. His soul. I wanted his soul because my soul wanted him. A bond had formed between us, and I could no longer resist it.

  “I really don’t want to disappoint you,” I said slowly. “We haven’t had much luck bringing Reapers over. We’ve tried. You know we’ve tried, and that Death is keeping a lid on whatever operations she might have going.”

  “I know. But I’m certain we can figure something out. Perhaps Kalla will have an idea or two,” Kalon replied. I cocked my head to the side.

  “What does Kalla have to do with all this?”

  “She knows more than she’s letting on. And I spotted a black-and-white thread woven into her many necklaces. It’s not immediately noticeable, but I’d recognize that symbol anywhere.”

  I sucked in a breath. “She’s a Darkling?”

  “No, no… I seriously doubt it. But I think she was a Darkling at some point. She probably made herself scarce. Faked her death or something. No one really retires from the Darklings, I’m afraid,” he said. “We should talk to her.”

  “Yes. Let’s!”

  I jumped to my feet, and Kalon was quick to catch up. A split second later, his mouth covered mine in a long and intimate kiss. I melted in his firm embrace, finding solace in his affection. His tongue explored freely, and I gave him everything I had, my skin sizzling, my knees softening like jelly.

  Wrapping my arms around his neck, I held on tight. Kalon deepened the kiss, as if telling me the only way from here was onward and upward. Time stopped for what seemed like forever as we relished this precious little moment, tucked away in a steel stone hut in the middle of nowhere.

  Nightmare Forest surrounded us, its whispers and glimmering eyes never too far. But I felt safer here than anywhere else. Maybe it had something to do with the people of Orvis and the vigilant watch they kept over their village. Or maybe it had to do with Kalon. After all we’d been through, there was one thing I knew he’d go above and beyond to give me: safety.

  He’d risen against his own family to protect me. He wanted to do the right thing. He wanted to be with me, and he wanted to protect the innocents of Visio. That meant the world to me, and it made me breathe a little easier.

  This kiss was proof we’d definitely shifted in the same direction, no longer pushing and tugging at our relationship. No more poking and prodding. No more secrets and half-truths. This was who we wanted to be.

  This is us…

  Amal

  For all my years in service of a creature like Ta’Zan, I’d never experienced this level of fear before. The irony of this was not lost on me. But Ta’Zan had been kind, almost treating me like a father would. Yes, he was a monster, but I’d only begun to see that toward the end of his reign. Visio, however, scared me.

  The Aeternae were strong and fast, a few levels above the vampires. They weren’t as hard to kill as the Perfects and the Arch-Perfects, though. In that sense, Ta’Zan had achieved the impossible. Looking back now, their species made more sense. He’d used the day-walking protein from the Aeternae and the genetic material from the vampires to make them. I understood that his Aeternae gene supply had been too scarce at the time for him to use it in the creation of Perfects, an army of which I hoped we wouldn’t have to bring in because that would mean destruction on a global scale.

  I worried the Rimians and the Naloreans were perhaps too loyal to the Aeternae. Starting a war now would be unwise, to say the least. However, a covert operation could still be undertaken, provided we played our cards right. To be honest, what truly scared me about Visio wasn’t the might of the Aeternae but the skill with which they’d turned subjugated people into faithful subjects. The number of secrets dwelling beneath the surface was equally troubling. I had a feeling we’d yet to uncover the worst of the deeds committed on Visio. I dreaded that day, though I knew it would come.

  Amane and I were invisible as we moved through the city. We kept a reasonable distance from all the gold and silver guards in our path, as there was always the risk of one of them catching our scent or the sound of a rushed heartbeat. After all, the two of us were about to engage in something quite dangerous—not a common occurrence in our scientific line of work.

  The imperial capital was busy and agitated. Word had spread about the courtroom incident. Many of the commoners were still in tears. They had lost one of their beloved monarchs. Others nervously glanced over their shoulders, as my team and I had somehow been vilified and linked to that horrific attack.

  “I can’t believe they’d think we had something to do with Acheron’s death,” Amane muttered as we made our way around a busy marketplace. “Where did they even get that idea?”

  “The message became distorted along the way,” I said. “Acheron was assassinated by the Darklings, and the outsiders took Valaine and ran away. Someone made a connection at some point. The rumor expanded, and now we’re the boogeymen of Visio.”

  “Those used to be the Darklings.” Amane sighed, shaking her head.

  We walked fast, turning left and right through narrow and shaded alleyways. Our feet were light, but our hearts were heavy. Acheron had possessed the authority and influence to turn some of the sky-scanner people away in order for us to bring in extra troops and integrate them into Visio for the sole purpose of taking down the Darklings.

  And now… we had to deal with an angry and grieving widow who’d been given far too much power, considering her frayed emotional state. Everything had basically blown up in our faces, and only we could bring it all back to some sort of normal. Unfortunately, we did not have Danika to rely on. We could only convince her after the fact.

  “How much farther?” Amane asked after a long silence.

  Looking ahead, I could see the ocean glistening in the distance, between the stone and marble buildings of a western neighborhood. “Almost there,” I said. “But we have to work out an entry strategy. You know security will be twice as heavy now.”

  We stopped in the shadow of an old tree, its rounded crown trimmed to match the others lining the alley. It was a prosperous area, where funds were injected into the aesthetics of the neighborhood. Each of the trees had a neat border framing its base. Potted flowers adorned every windowsill and decorative pillar. All the façades were clean and painted white, the blue shutters contrasting charmingly. Nothing here reflected the turmoil that had taken over the imperial palace.

  A couple of Nalorean children were playing outside just a few yards away. Silver guards patrolled farther down the streets, their eyes scanning everything around them. They were still looking for us.

  “Derek and Sofia have found a good hiding spot,” I said to Amane. “It’s a hilltop southeast of the city. The woods extend over it, so there’s enough shade to keep them out of sight.”

  “Any roads nearby?” she asked.

  “Just a village path. The nearest proper road is about ten miles away.”

  Amane nodded slowly, watching the Nalorean children play. As the silver guards drew close in their patrol, the boys’ mother stuck her head out the window. “Come back inside now!” she hissed, nervously motioning for them to leave the alley.

  The children rushed inside, slamming the door shut behind them just as the guards reached their playground. The silver-plated boots thudded across the cobblestone, their faint jingle making me shiver. I was seeing them differently now—not as enemies, per se, but as a major obstacle for us to overcome in order to get things done and save Valaine. And ourselves. On the one hand, avoiding Danika was smart. On the other, it probably irked her, and she had already begun acting irrationally.

  “They pass, we move,” I whispered, my gaze fixed on the four silver guards. They walked past us, and we didn’t even breathe. Once they were gone, Amane and I slipped between houses and into the next alley. “Derek and Sofia will be waiting for us at that hilltop.”

  “What makes that place recognizable?” Amane asked. “It’s not like they can just come out and wave at us.”

  “Derek placed a few rocks outside the woods. He says we’ll know it when we see it from the air,” I explained.

  “Won’t that alert the airships that might fly by, as well?” Amane frowned. Her orange eyes had a reddish tinge behind the garnet glasses.

  “I asked him the same thing, and he said not to worry. The Aeternae wouldn’t recognize the symbol. It wouldn’t even look like anything they might know.”

  Amane scoffed. “Now I’m wondering if we’ll figure it out ourselves.”

  We both chuckled as we finally reached the harbor. Coming to a sudden halt on the edge of a commercial road that snaked along the coastline and passed through the docks, Amane and I paused a moment to take it all in.

  “Well, this is worse than I’d imagined,” I muttered.

  There were hundreds of gold guards patrolling the area. Too many for me to count at first sight. Too many for us to take on in a fair fight. And our shuttle was smack dab in the middle of that cluster, stationed on a platform just above the ocean. The filtered sunlight glistened across its obsidian-like surface, the sleek lines curving and dipping toward the front.

  “So, what you’re actually saying is that this… sucks,” Amane replied dryly. She looked as worried as I felt. No wonder, since we shared so many feelings as twins. “That being said, it’s not that bad.”

  “Really? How so?”

  “We’re still invisible. That’s our upper hand. We just need to sneak through and get inside the shuttle,” she said.

  “You make it sound so easy, it’s almost infuriating. There are hundreds of them and only two of us. And they’ll smell and hear us coming, especially since they know we need the damn shuttle.”

  Amane shot me a cold grin. “I think you’ve spent too much time in the lab, sister. Remember what we’re capable of.”

  As much as I hated to admit it, she was right. We were Faulties. The early version of Perfects. We were fast and strong, even though we’d dedicated most of our lives to science. We weren’t powerful enough to take on a regiment of Aeternae, but we could still pull one over on them.

  Taking a moment to analyze each of the guards’ movements, I began to see a way through. Breathing slowly, I prepared myself for a silent approach. If they couldn’t see us and we moved fast enough, we could still breach their lines without any of them pinpointing our exact location.

  Amane had spent time in the savage jungles of Cerix. She had more hands-on experience than I did, but with our close connection, I could easily learn from her in a matter of seconds. I exhaled deeply, then looked at her. As long as we were together, we could pull off pretty much anything.

  “Okay. How are we going to do this?”

  She took out a handful of blue smoke bombs and smiled. “The old-fashioned way. Blitz the crap out of them, then sneak onto the ship.”

  I was about to laugh and agree with her rudimentary but effective plan, when murmurs erupted from the gold guards. They moved and cleared a path as palace soldiers came through from one of the city roads.

  “Ah, crap,” I mumbled, recognizing the gilded carriage at the end of the procession. “Danika’s here.”

  “What the hell is she doing at the harbor?” Amane gasped, her eyes wide with confusion. I crossed my arms, cursing under my breath.

  “How much do you want to bet it’s about the shuttle?”

  Amane gripped my arm and pulled me closer to the gold guards. I tried to resist, but she frowned at me. “Come on. They’re too distracted by the convoy to pay attention to any foreign scents,” she whispered.

  As we made our way around the guards, we caught snippets from various hushed conversations.

  “What is the Lady Supreme doing here?” one of the guards asked another.

  “I think the lieutenants told us about this. She’s going to try to get inside the shuttle.”

  “Why would she do that? Shouldn’t we just catch the foreigners and force them to do it?” a third replied. “We’ve tried getting in. They have strange technology and magic combined on that thing. Not even the high priestess’s mazir could break in.”

  That chilled me to the bone. It meant that at some point early in our stay on Visio, Danika or Acheron—or both, for that matter—had tried to get into our shuttle, even though they’d assured us it would be safe and that boundaries between us would be respected. Not only had they not kept that promise, they’d even enlisted Petra to attempt her mazir on the shuttle’s security systems. Fortunately for us, all their attempts had failed, yet I did wonder what they’d hoped to accomplish with such a move.

  Amane and I couldn’t discuss it because we were too close to the soldiers, but the glances we exchanged told me we were on the same page. The Aeternae had tried to get something from us, though they didn’t know what we stored inside the shuttle—our pulverizer weapons or our swamp witch magic paraphernalia or perhaps even the magi-tech that powered the vessel would’ve been valuable to them. It had been wrong then, and it was still wrong now.