He smirked. “I thought you were all done with bargains?”

  “Not a bargain… more of a measure of good faith.”

  Vasso tilted his head. Quiet. Assessing. She could tell he was trying to find the loophole. “What is it you ask of me?”

  She bit her smile back. “Tell me where a doorway to Gehenna is.”

  Vasso barked a laugh. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope,” she said. She was close. She needed this, just one. Then she could mark it on the map and go home. It would take months for them to realize that the manor wasn’t an actual doorway, but if she had one that was accurate, well then… Renata would just have to deal with that.

  His face shifted, not to malice or anger but to amusement. “So you won’t take my apology”—his shoulders sank back into the door, and he crossed one foot over the other—“unless I tell you how to get to the underworld?”

  “I don’t need to know how to get there, just an entrance.”

  “Interesting…”

  Why did she feel like she’d just given something away? Something he could take to his commander belowground and barter with? That thread in her chest pulled tight. This wasn’t her magic. It was something else entirely, like being dragged through a current, plunged like an anchor into the sea. But there at the end of it all, a steady beat of a heart…

  Sera jumped at an insistent knock on the door.

  “Sera, can I come in?”

  “Fuck,” she whispered and frantically motioned for Vasso to hide. She pushed him into the bathing chamber with Snik and closed the door.

  Why did Al have to ruin everything? She was close, so damned close to getting the answer she needed. Leave it to Al to mess it all up again.

  Sera cracked the door wide enough for her face to pop through. “What do you want?”

  “To talk.”

  “We can talk right here.”

  “Is someone in there?” Alistair glanced over her head, scanning the room. A second later, she was staring at empty space, and he was inside, looking into every corner.

  “First of all, I thought you were too sick to travel. Second, I didn’t invite you in.”

  “I traveled four feet, hardly a strain.” He was on his hands and knees looking under the bed. Sera zipped her raven back and forth on its string.

  “Snik is asleep in the bathing room. That’s all of who’s in here. What do you want?”

  Al crossed his arms. “I wanted to make sure he didn’t do anything to you.”

  “No, he didn’t do anything to me.” Liar. He’d awoken something… given her hope.

  “Sera, he could have powers that we don’t know about. What if he enthralled you? You’re a Jedan witch, for coven founders’ sake.”

  Sera stared at him. “What did you just say?”

  His shoulders fell. “Sera, I…”

  “Get out.”

  He stayed put. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  She lowered her voice to a deadly tone. “I know exactly how you meant it. You think that because I don’t have a lot of magic that I’m less than you?” Sera ripped the door wide. “Get out.”

  “Do I think you’re less of a witch? No. But you can’t deny the fact that your limited magic makes you—”

  “Get the fuck out, Alistair Alcott.” She gritted her teeth together so hard they squeaked.

  “This discussion isn’t over.” He glared at her. As soon as his bootheels were on the other side of the threshold, she slammed the door.

  How had he known she was originally placed in Jedan? Sera never mentioned that day, nor did she bring up the day after, when she walked onto the Dobro level of Darine Hall, evading dirty looks and whispering tongues.

  A click of a door had her turning to see Vasso cradling a still snoring Snik in his arms. He set the goblin down with as much care as she would a newborn. Taking the decorative blanket from the foot of the bed, he placed it over Snik.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “He gets a little heavy for me sometimes.”

  “He’s had a rough go, this one.” Vasso pointed his chin at the goblin, placing his hands in his pockets.

  “What do you mean?” Snik curled in a ball, his ears relaxed as he rested his small head on his arms.

  The demon lord sauntered toward the door. “Why don’t you ask your captain what happened to his clan?”

  With that, Vasso left.

  Chapter thirty-nine

  Dominick

  Never in his life had he seen so many pyres. Mourners gathered around the platforms arranged throughout the Menage. The wooden bases, surrounded by silber logs and hay, were ready to burn the bodies within them. Even the air seemed dry today, as if the atmosphere itself were eager for a quick burn.

  The Council of Elders had declared a mass ceremony with a spare pyre for the parts of bodies that had come back. Dominick shivered.

  Part of him had been ashamed to refuse to view his brother’s body. Now the only thing he’d remember his brother by was what was in his memories, and the linen-wrapped lump among the branches.

  “Shadow.” Chair Briar’s tumbling voice resounded throughout the arena. The Council chair, in her purple robes and jowly face, had those winged warriors on either side of her. Dominick peered around the upper levels where various coven members sat viewing the spectacle. The aliato were standing at attention every twenty feet. “We call to you on this day to ferry those we love into your realm. Watch over their souls, keep them at peace, and forever hold them in your graces.”

  Dom’s father lowered the torch to the hay, and the flames devoured it hungrily. All around, his fellow coven members cried. Dom couldn’t. Not here, not when he still couldn’t understand what had happened.

  A dangerous thought crept into his head, one he refused to dwell on, but still a nagging feeling that if Al had been with Colton… No. This wasn’t Sera’s fault. Dom swallowed hard as Colton’s pyre burned brighter, his mother on one side of him and Theo on the other.

  With each second, the mourning moans from mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters intensified with the thickening smoke that rose to the blazing sun.

  The coven glorified death, called it turning to dust. But that wasn’t truly how it worked. You only turned to dust if your magic burned you out. Roasted you from the inside, a natural sort of combustion.

  But Colton hadn’t burned out. His mother had prepared her son’s body, and she’d said Colton had come back slashed. Death by someone else’s hand left a corpse.

  And Colton’s had just caught flame.

  A low hum left his mother. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and Dominick’s heart cracked. Between her audible grief and the smell of burning hair and flesh, he was overwhelmed. He reached for Theo’s hand and squeezed it tight. Theo nodded and led him away from the smoldering remains, exiting the Menage and finding some solace outside.

  “How are you holding up?” Theo asked.

  “As well as expected. Fucking terrible.” His throat grew thick with the words, and he choked tears down again. Dominick kissed the back of Theo’s hand. “Thank you.” He attempted to keep his voice level. “For being with me today.”

  Theo’s arms wrapped around him. Dominick took in the smell of his skin, burying his nose in Theo’s neck. The warlock only held him tighter.

  He was a mess, but he wasn’t alone. The first tear slid down his cheek, then a second, and a third. Each one swung his heart in some sort of paradox pendulum. Growing and breaking sadness; then a sensation that for once in his life, he almost felt whole.

  The distinct sound of his father clearing his throat prompted Dom to let Theo go.

  Tristan Benero had been stern with Dom and Colton growing up. Dom supposed he had to be, with two young boys in the home who created chaos wherever they went. The day Dominick announced he wanted to try for an oracle position rather than the Legion ranks like Colton, he’d received a stern lecture about honoring their family. His father had been assigned as a guardian despite hoping for a Legion position. Tristan prided on protecting their way of life. It would be his legacy—for him, but also for his sons.

  But now, his father stood, eyes bloodshot, cheeks washed with tears, reaching for him. A solid wall of chest slammed into Dom’s. His father’s bear-size arms wrapped around him, pulling him to his bulky frame.

  Dominick didn’t quite know what to do with his hands, but as his father’s forehead crushed into him, as the Benero household head’s shoulders quaked with silent weeping, Dom wrapped his arms around his father’s broad back and held him.

  “My son,” his father said. “My son, my son.”

  Dominick glanced at his mother approaching and then at Theo. They both had grief and worry painted on their faces. And something surged within him.

  Honor, maybe? Revenge? Something bubbled within. His father never wept. His mother should not have burned her favorite son. And the more he looked around at the coven members filing from the Menage in a line of misery and anguish, he couldn’t help but glare at the aliato standing guard at the door. They had something to do with it. He was sure of it.

  “Come home. I’ll make some tea.” His mother, with her puffy eyes and voice hoarse from her mourning chants, rubbed her husband’s back.

  “Yes, dear,” his father said, wiping away his tears and with them his vulnerability.

  Still, Dominick glared at the winged warriors. Not one of them acknowledged him. They looked hollow. Their wings held high, the magic seeping from their scabbards.

  His mother’s hand was warm and soft in his. She took Theo’s in the other. “Let’s go, loves.”

  “Yes, Mother.” He let her lead him home.

  Through the streets of Daedeth Quarter, Colton’s face kept flashing in Dominick’s mind. His tightly cropped blond hair, the slight sunburn he always seemed to have across his nose and cheeks. His laugh. Memories of his brother levitating frogs, crabs, and other critters around the house in a parade of ribbits and clicking pincers until their mother chased him with a wooden ladle.

  Colton would giggle as he ran, his procession of varmints bouncing off furniture and walls behind him, while Dominick, squealing in delight, watched the madness.

  At the base of the stone steps leading to the row house, his mother finally let go of his hand.

  “Thank you for being here for him… for us.” Fresh tears raced to Dominick’s eyes as his mother kissed Theo on each cheek. She gave her son a knowing smile and climbed the steps after his father. “Theodore, you’ll stay for tea at least.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Benero, I couldn’t impose.”

  “Not an imposition, dear. See you inside.”

  “Do you want me to stay?” Theo directed the question at Dom now. This was the first time he had brought a man home to meet his family. In the light of the tragedy they had endured, his mother and father had accepted Theo with open arms.

  “I’d like that.” The words felt like blades against his throat. Moons, he was tired of crying, tired of being… sad. Dominick tilted Theo’s chin and kissed him. His lips were soft and familiar now. They were outside, and he couldn’t seem to care. What the neighbors thought, what his parents thought, any of them.

  Theo broke their kiss. “I’m going inside. Take your time.”

  Dominick sat on the steps and listened.

  To the door squeaking closed behind Theo, to the murmurs inside the house, and to the scuffing of other Daedeth members’ shoes across the white stone blocks of the street.

  That bit of rage sat heavy in his chest. War had been the coven’s way of life since the beginning of its existence. They took the most vulnerable of their people and placed them as fodder on the front lines, claiming that it was the demons who wanted to control them.

  But as Dominick looked around at the stone homes, at the iron posts holding mage lights, at the esoti warlock who trimmed the bushes across the street, still adorned with his mourning ribbons, he wondered how this war could have raged for so long. The witches and warlocks of the Solarni coven were powerful. But were they more powerful than a demon army?

  His mother interrupted his thoughts. “Dominick, come inside, please.”

  He waved her off. Just a minute more.

  Dominick scratched the stubble in that place below his ear, almost hearing Sera’s voice: Such a nervous lock you are. He wondered if she was all right. If she knew—if Alistair knew about Colton. Dominick didn’t think he could go through it all again, have the rush of grief overwhelm him as he watched Sera and Alistair crumble.

  He let out a sigh and stood. There was a flash in the sky. “What in Eraphon’s name?”

  A flaming projectile arched toward the center of the Citadel. He couldn’t look away from the ball of flame. When it hit the barrier the coven guardians kept around the city, it burst into sizzling sparks that poured over the warded dome.

  Chapter forty

  Seraphina

  It was the perfect late spring day. The sky was a clear blue, the clouds were white and fluffy, and Sera had created a lie so terrible, she was sure her soul would be damned for eternity never to enter the Shadow realm.

  The lie she’d told Al was… runny shits.

  “We’re going to work with… what did you call it? Death fog?”

  Sera rolled her eyes. “Sorry the vernacular wasn’t correct.”

  Vasso smiled at the sky before landing his gaze on hers. “Well, what have you accomplished so far with this death fog?”

  Their steps crunched as they crossed the meadow to the center of the training circle. Sera had thought all night about what she was going to ask him. She wondered how her magic worked within her to begin with, but the worst of it was the voice’s assurance that she’d hurt Al. She’d never been so close to doing so as when he’d called her a Jedan witch.

  There was nothing wrong with Jedan’s members. It seemed the prejudices of the Citadel had followed her even here.

  “It kind of just falls out of me. It only takes shape to surround me in a form of protection. It’s… almost sentient.”

  The corner of his lip twitched.

  She hoped he wouldn’t ask what she was being protected from. She didn’t want to have to admit that she’d been curled in a ball, having a nervous breakdown. He didn’t need those details.

  Vasso released some of his mist, and Sera instantly heated. Her darkness thrashed inside her, ready to play.

  “You can manipulate it as you would your arm.” His magic took shape, snaking forward, forming a claw, and delicately picking up a strand of her hair. “Think of it as an extension of yourself. It’s connected to you, but if it’s broken, you will lose your ability to manipulate it.”

  “How would it break?”

  “Run your hand through it,” Vasso quipped. There was a lightness about him today. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was exactly. Maybe it was the smooth way he held himself, or the slight sparkle in his eye. Regardless, she’d rather have this Vasso around than the one she’d dealt with yesterday.

  She swiped at the claw, and it dissipated. “That doesn’t seem very useful, if anyone can break the connection.”

  “No?” he asked with a smirk.

  Something flicked her ear. Sera swatted the shadowy mist away, but just as one tendril disappeared, another flicked her other ear.

  “Hey!” A prodding at her cheek had her swiping again, only to be jabbed in the ribs. Sera waved her arms around her body when her feet were swept out from under her and she was hauled upward. Her face was even with his, and she couldn’t look away from his amusement.

  And that laugh—it was like sunlight, like air.

  “Are you going to let me down?” Her voice was nasally from hanging.

  “Let yourself down.” His eyes danced all over her. She must look ridiculous hanging there, at least six feet off the ground.

  Sera reached for her magic, which happily obliged, unfortunately not in a helpful way. Surrounded by a curtain of black fog, she could barely hear Vasso’s snickering above the hum of it. The fog just kept falling, and deep in her mind, her darkness laughed too.

  Sera’s cheeks were heavy with a rush of blood, so she bent up and swatted her ankle. Her finger had barely brushed Vasso’s magic when she realized her error and fell.

  “Whoa,” Vasso blurted out before she landed directly in his arms. She could feel his heart pounding. The smell of fresh air and his scent filled her lungs with each inhale. Sera couldn’t stop the heat blooming across her cheeks. Nor could she look away.

  Vasso raised a brow and grinned wider at her. “My my. If I’d known it was this easy to get you to fall into my arms, I would have strung you up outside Crowpass.”

  Sera slapped his chest, and Vasso only seemed more pleased with himself. “Let me down, you fool.” He lowered her feet to the ground, and she made quick work of putting some distance between them.

  “Okay, teach me.”

  He squinted at her, but his smile was playful. Vasso crossed his arms. “It’s not easy. Could take you years to develop.”

  “Believe it or not, Lord Vasso, but I’m a very quick learner, and as much as I’m sure you’d love to teach me for decades, I don’t have time.”

  Vasso’s smile dropped. “Well, let’s not keep you waiting, then. Let it flow.”

  Sera released her power. It crept from her feet, surrounding the entire training circle with mist and shadow. Her stomach lurched at the sight. It looked exactly the same as when it manifested before, only instead of a field, it had been homes, then flames.

  “Well, you’ve got good reach. Start with something small. Visualize a tendril. It can be as thin as a lock of hair.”

  Envisioning the natural curl of her hair, she imagined a wisp of mist reaching out in a coil. Tiny tendrils began to rise from below, only to be reabsorbed into the brume below it.

  She concentrated again, and again. Vasso stood still in the knee-high fog, his arms crossed but silent. Sera held out her hand.

  Vasso hadn’t needed his hands to manipulate the magic, nor words…