The light shifted around me, the blues and crackling whites transforming into the blacks and harsh yellows of a city at night. All at once the watery scent of the Hudson hit me, joined by the rusty metallic smell of old, decaying buildings. And blood. Already there was blood.

  Prospects of all shapes and sizes moved swiftly through the abandoned warehouse district we’d landed in. I could hear gunfire, magic flashed all around me, and people were yelling and screaming. I couldn’t see Draven, or Aaryn, but that didn’t mean they weren’t mixed in with all the others who were duking it out on the battlefield.

  I scanned for Valoel right away, but I couldn’t see him anywhere. Cranes loomed high above us, swaying gently in the breeze. Abandoned buildings crowded around us like they were watching the fight break out between them. There were cars here, black SUV’s with tinted windows—some idling, others stopped, their doors open, mages flinging magic from behind them or firing guns.

  And no Valoel.

  The hairs on the nape of my neck stood on their ends the moment my feet touched solid ground. I ducked and twisted my body in just the right way to avoid a blast of arcane magic from hitting me. The blast instead hit the target it had been meant for, one of ours. The magic was powerful enough to lift him off the ground and send him barreling into a warehouse wall, denting the metal.

  I turned my eyes on the mage who had fired it, a douchebag in a leather jacket and shades standing in front of a black SUV. Why did the douchebags always wear shades at night? It just made them easier to spot from the rest of the crowd.

  Magic whorled around him like an aura of fire. His hands were burning and wreathed in blue flame. I started sprinting toward the mage as the battle raged around me. I saw myself in the black of his sunglasses; golden wings, white hair, and a dagger ready to slide into his throat.

  The mage spun his hands around in a circle, putting a sphere of fiery magic and glowing runes between me and him. The flames licked and lashed out at the air around them, and I knew I wouldn’t do well going straight into them. It amazed me that these people didn’t need to speak to use magic, but that wasn’t going to save him.

  He pushed out with his hands once the circle of fire was big enough, and the circle suddenly became a cone of blue fire that looked like dragon’s breath. I leapt into the air to avoid the attack, sailing over the cone of fire and hurtling toward the mage.

  I landed on top of him feet first, sending him staggering into the side of the SUV. Like a cat, my body twisted in the air to allow me to land on my feet. When I was down, I launched the dagger into the mage’s midsection and pierced his soft flesh. His breath hitched, he gurgled, and right away a little blood trickled out of his mouth.

  “Impressive,” I snarled at him, “But not very tough.”

  The door to the SUV opened, stealing my attention for an instant, and there was Slade. He grinned at me. “Hello, Seline.”

  My eyes widened. I pulled my knife out of the mage in front of me and spun away from the car, but chains struck out at me from out of nowhere and started grabbing my limbs. My feet went first, sending me slamming into the ground. Another set of chains wrapped around my waist and spun me around, forcing me to my back. A third set grabbed my knife and yanked it out of my hand.

  I couldn’t see where these chains started—it was like they were coming out of the air—but they were real enough to pin me down.

  Slade exited the car as calmly and as coolly as ever, like there wasn’t a fight going on around us; like his people and mine weren’t killing each other. “He told us you’d come,” Slade said. “He told us to be patient, and you’d show up with that around your arm.”

  My eyes flashed to the stone attached to my wrist. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, struggling to release myself.

  He walked over to me and squatted, angling his head to the side and examining the stone. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Of course, your dulled senses can’t really see just how incredible this thing is; you can’t see the web of power it throws out into the world around it. Already it’s affecting just about everyone here, whether they know it or not.”

  “You wanna wear it? I think it’ll look pretty good on you.”

  Slade grinned. “Oh, I’m going to, but I’m not stupid enough to just reach out and touch it.”

  “Why don’t you go ahead and grab it? Trust me, it won’t bite.”

  “Is that the best you can do? That’s a shame. You were so articulate in my office. Have you had a chance to reconsider my offer?”

  “You’re seriously asking if I’ll sleep with you right now? Can you see the fighting going on around us?”

  He shook his head. “When I look at you, it’s just us. Just this tiny bubble of space and time.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Dude, you probably think that’s smooth as hell, but that’s a total creep move.”

  “Maybe, but the offer still stands. Say the word and I could make this whole fight disappear… all your friends will go free. You may even enjoy it.”

  I’m not considering it. I’m not considering it.

  I wasn’t, of course I wasn’t, but at the same time the thought of none of my friends getting hurt was a tempting one. The thought of being with him made me barf in my mouth just a little bit, but no one said I had to make it to his bed. If I agreed, maybe he’d drop his guard just long enough for me to jab my knife into his neck.

  Then again, he was probably expecting that.

  “Go fuck yourself,” I spat.

  “So be it.”

  I stared at him, wide-eyed. “Wait, are seriously going to go and fuck yourself?”

  Slade rolled his eyes and placed his hands above the stone, though not quite touching it. I kept trying to free my limbs, but every time I thought I was getting somewhere, the chains would tighten around my body. They were like living snakes made of metal, each responding to my movements so the harder I struggled, the more viciously they closed around me.

  The chains around my stomach were already making it hard to breathe. I needed to be careful. I also needed to be quick, because Slade was doing something I’d only ever seen done once before.

  He was uttering the same magic words Bastet had used to create a shell of magic around the stone. My eyes widened as the stone started trembling in its socket. I could feel the power draining out of me, like a candle trying hard to stay lit in the face of a strong wind—and I couldn’t move, I couldn’t attack him, I couldn’t do… anything.

  Well, not anything.

  I saw her charging toward Slade in the SUV’s reflection. On leathery wings tipped with sharp spines she descended, with a dagger in one hand and a set of sharp claws in the other. Six bashed Slade with her shoulder when she landed, sending him sprawling to the floor. Her body wasn’t as large as other fiends—Serakon—I’d seen and fought before, and her skin also hadn’t turned grey and dull; nor had she grown those glowing red marks other Serakon had.

  What the hell?

  “Bitch!” Slade growled, struggling to stand.

  “I’m sorry, did that hurt?” Six crooned.

  I stopped struggling for a moment and just stared at her. There was something in Six’s eyes, a strange kind of confidence I hadn’t seen yet. It was hard to remember her as the scared girl I’d found in that run-down slum. She’d almost looked like a child, barely able to defend herself. Right now, it looked like she was enjoying this.

  He raised his hand toward her and magic runes appeared around his palm like a halo. He was about to attack her, and she was a big enough target with those wings that he wouldn’t miss. But I felt the chains wrapped around me slacken just a little, just enough to let me pull my hand free.

  Six curled her wings around her body and yelled the magic, Aevian word to shield herself from what was about to hit her. Slade’s deep blue light met Six’s wall of crimson magic. Her feet scraped along the ground as his magic started to win out over hers.

  I aimed the palm of my hand at him and yelled, “Veshrim!”

  A blast of energy shot from out of my hand and struck Slade in the chest hard enough to push him into the SUV. One of its windows smashed where he’d hit it, sending bits of glass flying all over the place. The chains keeping me mostly pinned to the ground burned away to ash, and I was able to move again.

  I whirled around on the ground and kicked myself up to standing. That was when I finally caught sight of Draven. There was blood on his face and his sword, his hair was stuck to his forehead, and his shoulders were heaving. A little blood trickled from his sleeve, over his hands, and to the ground. He’d been fighting.

  It was like a fire had started to burn inside of me. Seeing him made my blood boil, it sent an angry heat rising into my cheeks, through my chest. I tightened my grip around my dagger as I stared at him, fighting the flurry of images trying to bore their way into my mind like worms, but the images came anyway.

  They cut my wings off.

  They cut my wings off, and then they tossed me out like garbage.

  “Now that we’re all here!” Valoel called out, his voice booming across the tops of abandoned, old warehouse husks. It warping and echoed as it hit walls and empty chambers, sounding more and more distorted the further it travelled.

  I looked up at the source of the sound, and standing above a crane, on its very tip, was Valoel, his wings spread behind his shoulders.

  The fighting around me died away to little more than a whisper, and I immediately understood why. Something was tugging at my chest, some invisible power trying to pull me into submission. Six had it worse. Her eyes were glazed over, her wings were drooping, and her hands rested slack at her sides. As I watched her, she dropped the dagger she’d been holding.

  Not even Draven could withstand the stone’s power. His sword slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor.

  “Good of you to finally join us, little sister,” Valoel said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  If it weren’t for my stone, I’d be under Valoel’s spell right now. I could feel its magic wrapping around me like a suit of armor. That meant there was only me and him, now. Only me standing between him and everyone else.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this,” I called out.

  “No?” Valoel asked. “Tell me, how should this be?”

  “You shouldn’t have escaped the fortress. We could’ve talked and worked something out.”

  “I’m afraid your ideals don’t line up with my goals.”

  “That’s because you’re an asshole, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have talked to you. It doesn’t mean Draven wouldn’t have talked to you.”

  Valoel laughed. “Draven?” he turned his eyes on Draven standing a few feet away from me. Draven was looking up at Valoel, but his eyes were glazed over and glassy. It was like he’d been zombified or something. “Draven is a fool, and a stubborn one at that. Tell me, has he confessed yet, or will he wait another ten years before telling you the truth?”

  I swallowed hard. “Confessed about what?” I asked. I knew what he was talking about, but if I could keep him talking, I could maybe buy enough time to figure out a way out of this.

  “You mean to tell me you don’t already know who you are?”

  “Who I am? How about you tell me who the hell you are. I’m starting to remember a lot but, I don’t ever remember seeing you in any of the family pictures… and yet, you call me sister. What’s up with that?”

  “That’s because I’m not in any of the pictures. Mistakes often get swept under the rug.”

  “Mistake? What are you talking about?”

  Valoel leapt from the top of the crane. His wings beat gracefully, kicking up a strong wind as he came to land. I shielded my eyes from the dirt and the dust that came flying my way as Valoel came to stand in front of me.

  I noticed then, as Valoel landed, that there was someone hanging from the crane. Is that… Ferrum? My eyes widened. Ferrum was tied up, his hands and feet bound by warped pieces of metal. Those same pieces were magnetically gripped to the head of the crane—they were at the same time the thing keeping him tied up, and also keeping him from falling to his death.

  I gripped my dagger tightly and raised it toward Valoel. “Let him go, let them all go, or I swear,” I warned.

  Valoel stopped walking, swept his hair aside, and grinned. “You say you’re starting to remember your past,” he said, ignoring my threat, “But there are some things you’ll never remember because they happened before you were born. It looks like we have a bit of time right now, so how about you let me tell you the story?”

  “Why do I feel like you’re going to tell me no matter what I say?”

  He grinned. “Clever. So, there was a time when our lovely mother was an unwed Queen. Her parents had passed while she was very young, and she hadn’t yet found a suitor—at least, not one she could outwardly talk about. You see, before she met your father, she met mine.” He walked around me, circling me, waving his hands as he talked. “You know how the story goes. Girl meets boy, girl falls for boy, girl can’t marry the boy because she’s a Queen and he’s just riffraff.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him and turned with him, making sure he never left my sight. “Rifraff?”

  “He was a Night soldier… like our friend Draven. They were in love. They’d sneak around all the time, avoiding the citizens and the nobles alike. Then one fateful day, he put a baby in her belly… and sealed their fate. She couldn’t very well present him as their new king. They’d never accept him as a king. He was the enemy, after all. So instead, she locked herself away in the castle until the night I was born…”

  “You’re telling me my mother hid herself away for nine months? She was a Queen. People counted on her.”

  “And she shirked her responsibilities so she could secretly carry me to term. The Gods only knew why. She’d have been better off without me from the start.”

  “You really expect me to believe all of this?”

  He pointed at me. “I expect you to believe it because it’s the truth. So far, I haven’t lied to you about a single thing, but he has. And yet I’m the one you’re standing at odds with. Why is that?”

  “Because Draven isn’t trying to bend people’s minds like you are. He doesn’t have an agenda that involves the killing of innocent people.”

  “I haven’t killed any innocents yet. If anyone’s died by my hand, it’s because they’ve deserved it. I like to think I have strong morals.”

  “I’ve met cats with stronger morals than you.”

  He grinned, still spinning around me. “I’m sure you have… but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m not here to lie to you. I’m here to help you fill in the blanks, learn the things about yourself and your past that you won’t remember. Like me, like what your family truly is, and what it means to be you.”

  A woman running through a tunnel with a baby in her arms. The image flashed across my eyes as we spoke. I’d only seen it for an instant, and I hadn’t known what it had meant then, but it made sense, now. Somehow, I’d seen the night my mother smuggled Valoel out of the city… she’d smuggled him out through the same secret passage Draven and I would use to meet.

  “She spared you…” I said.

  Valoel paused, his grin widening even further. “There was a little passage under the city…” he said, his voice soft and low. “Maybe you know of it.”

  I swallowed hard, but said nothing.

  “I came early,” Valoel continued, “And before anyone could find out I’d even been born—”

  “She wrapped you up in a golden blanket and helped you escape…”

  Valoel’s eyes narrowed. “How did you know it was a golden blanket?”

  “That’s not important…”

  “I suppose not. What’s important is, you know I’m telling the truth. Our mother helped me escape the city using the same passage you discovered many years later. The one you used to bring your boyfriend into the city most evenings. The same one the House of Night used to murder your people… because of you.”

  Because of me. That stung, and I couldn’t deny it, either. It had been my fault. If I’d never had told Draven where the passageway was, he never would’ve been able to guide his soldiers into the city through it. Inside, I was screaming. I wanted to break, but I couldn’t. I had to keep it together.

  “Do you know who was waiting to receive me?” Valoel asked.

  I shook my head. “Your father…”

  “Yes. And do you want to know what he did with me? What he did to me?”

  I swallowed hard. “Yes…”

  “He hated me,” Valoel hissed. “Our mother ended their relationship that night, told him to leave and made him swear never to come back. He blamed me for that. Blamed me for the loss of the woman he loved. He would beat me when he wanted to. He would disappoint me every other day. When I was old enough, he forced me to join the military, that way he could be rid of me forever.”

  “If you were smuggled out of the city that way, then that means the House of Night knew about that passage for a long time. Why did they never use it until Draven?”

  “My father never said a word about the passage. He was hurt and enraged, but he was an honorable man. Draven, on the other hand, he was driven by a special kind of rage. The alleged desecration of his father and brother hit him very hard. Until then, the idea of an Aevian cutting off another Aevian’s wings was unheard of. The word itself hadn’t been uttered in centuries. But he was convinced he had been told the truth, and he acted out of emotion, as he always does. A stronger mind would’ve asked for proof. Not Draven, though. His blood boiled, and he was out for revenge, even if that meant hurting you.”

  I hated to admit it, even if he could probably already tell, but what he was saying didn’t sound… insane. He was, after all, right about all the Draven parts. Could it also have been true that my mother fell in love with, and had a child with, a soldier of Night before she married my father? Yeah, sure it was. Could it also have been true that she smuggled that child out of the city to avoid the scandal? Sure. Especially considering I’d seen it happen, somehow.