Aerden gripped my wrist, and though we could not speak for fear of being heard, I knew exactly what he was feeling, because the sheer terror of it left me on my knees in the dust, my gut churning.

  There had to be at least fifty thousand demons huddled together inside the pit, with another thousand being led that way in chains. The diamonds that lined the walls of the pit also extended up toward the side of the temple itself, like some kind of glittering runway of horror.

  What exactly was happening here?

  Hunters stood on the top of the pit wall, shoulder-to-shoulder, guarding the demons below.

  Not that the demons in the pit looked like they were in any shape to fight back. Most of them looked severely malnourished. They had no weapons, no fire in their eyes. No hope.

  I knew that look.

  I knew what it was like to lose all hope, and I’d never been through half of what these demons had been through.

  Solange tapped my arm and nodded toward the temple, her eyes wide with fear as the ground trembled slightly.

  Aerden and I both looked in awe as two massive Stone Guardians stepped forward, guarding each side of the long diamond runway. Diamonds glittered in the center of each guardian’s chest, giving them life.

  The fear in Aerden’s eyes told me everything I needed to know.

  These must have been identical to the one he’d faced in the arena back in the King’s City. He’d told me the story of that battle and how so many of the king’s guards had died without being able to land a single blow against the massive being made of stone.

  And now there were two of them.

  Even if we could somehow find a way to defeat the hundreds of hunters flying around this place, we would also have to defeat two powerful Stone Guardians to have any hope of saving these demons.

  Because whatever this goddess was planning for them was potentially worse than death. I was anxious to get away from this place safely so that I could find out just what Solange knew about this pit and the demons trapped inside it, but I had some idea of what might be happening here, and it scared the crap out of me.

  I took a few more minutes to study the layout of the temple grounds. There seemed to be only one main entrance besides the runway of diamonds, and that was a massive white-stone door that hadn’t opened a single time since we’d been here.

  There were no windows along the entire column of the temple itself, which appeared to be relatively narrow and, I noticed with a chill, five-sided like a pentacle.

  The main tower rose high into the sky, piercing the storm above and seeming to extend above it, which gave me some hope. If the top of this tower was outside of the storm, did that mean we might be able to use the ruby bar up there? Or access enough of our power to recharge the stone somehow?

  I was about to motion for Solange to lead us to a safe place where we could talk when the massive door to the tower swung open. In that moment, the yearning and pull I’d been feeling since we first noticed the light of the tower magnified so strongly, it practically slammed into me.

  I fell back, a groan escaping from my lips before Solange placed her hand over my mouth. Aerden’s arms wrapped around my back, holding me up as a vision shook my entire body like a seizure.

  In my mind’s eye, a large diamond pulsed on top of an onyx pedestal. A five-sided room with large, colorful stones arranged around the center diamond.

  The birthplace of the Order of Shadows.

  It had never been in the human world. It had all started right here, less than a hundred yards from where we stood.

  And I suddenly understood with certain clarity that we had been sent here to end it once and for all.

  Trading Our Souls

  Harper

  “I never really knew my parents,” Magda said. “Everyone believes the Order of Shadows was started by five sisters, but even though we have called ourselves sisters for many years, we were not born to the same parents.”

  This was a shock to me, but I kept quiet. Now that she was talking, I didn’t want to interrupt.

  “All of those stories are lies made up over the years like a fairytale,” Magda said. “Before the Order, there was no official organization of witches, but there was still a hierarchy and a way of doing things in the magical community. It’s not a big part of the story I need to tell you today, but let’s just say that back before the Order of Shadows, there were both men and women who wielded powerful magic, and the most powerful families ruled everything. A magical aristocracy, if you will.”

  My heart raced as I listened. I’d never heard any of this before. Once again, the Order had managed to rewrite history and memories to tell the story it wanted everyone to believe.

  “Whenever a member of one of these magical families strayed from an approved match, the children born from that unwanted union were immediately taken by a group of stewards,” Magda said. “Everyone was told the baby died in childbirth, but in truth, all of the outcast babies were brought to a special place where they would be trained and groomed for service. For me and the babies who would someday become my professed sisters, this was Ashcroft Home for Girls.”

  Hearing this sent chills down my spine.

  “Sounds familiar,” I muttered.

  Magda smiled a sad smile.

  “You can see why I have such admiration for you,” she said. “Under similar circumstances, most girls would choose power and popularity. But not you. You chose yourself, and that’s a very difficult thing to do in the face of extreme danger and pressure. I wish I had made different choices, but by the time any of us understood what we’d agreed to, it was much too late to turn back. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.”

  She took a long sip of water and pulled her legs underneath her and to the side, running a hand along the golden snake on the side table.

  “There were dozens of girls at Ashcroft, all brought there as newborns and trained in various forms of magic.”

  “What were they grooming you for?” I asked.

  “Mostly to be sold into servitude with those same powerful magical families who’d denied and abandoned us at birth,” she said. “But if I go into the specifics of that history, we’ll be here for days. What’s important for you to know is that the five of us who would eventually create the Order of Shadows quickly rose to the top of our class at Ashcroft. Exceptionally talented, we were told. Cherished for the price we would someday command. We grew close as young girls. Hazel and I especially. We were practically inseparable from the time we were five years old. I loved her dearly.”

  It was difficult to hear someone talk so lovingly about a witch who had done such horrible things in her lifetime. A witch I’d basically killed with my bare hands.

  “I had no idea,” I said. “I’d been told you were sisters. Daughters of a witch named Haven who became greedy for more power.”

  Magda shook her head. “That was never our real story,” she said. “We didn’t go looking for more power. It came looking for us.”

  “In what way?”

  “As we grew into our teen years, the five of us used to meet in the woods behind the house. We would perform ritual circles. Midnight spells. Dances. None of us really felt we were being challenged by our teachers. We’d surpassed their knowledge, so we met in secret under the moon, experimenting with new spells and constantly pushing the boundaries of what we were told was possible,” she said. “It was actually fun, if you can believe that. I felt I had really come into my own, enjoying magic and being in nature. But then one day, we found a set of large stones on the floor of the forest, arranged in the dirt on each point of a five-sided star. A gift.”

  “From who?” I asked, breathless.

  “We didn’t know, but the moment we saw them, we knew they were for us. We assumed someone had been watching us, drawn to our power and our joy. We were so naive.”

  Magda grew quiet for a moment, and I waited for her to continue.

  “There were five stones and five of us, so naturally, we each picked the stone we liked the most. Eloise picked first. She was the oldest of us, anyway, and had always loved the color blue,” Magda said. “Hazel chose emerald, I chose ruby, Gladys wanted the amethyst stone, and Alexandra took the citrine. We took them home and put them in our rooms, knowing somehow that the person who’d left them for us would come to us in time. It was exciting. Our little secret.”

  “How old were you?” I asked.

  “Eloise was eighteen at the time,” she said. “Hazel and Gladys were both seventeen. I was sixteen. Alexandra was the youngest at fifteen. Too young for what happened next, though. We all were.”

  My heart raced, wanting to know and yet afraid to hear what they had been through.

  It was strange to sympathize with the priestesses of the Order of Shadows. They’d all done unspeakable things over the years, but Magda’s story of them as children playing in the woods, having fun with their magic, made it seem so tragic.

  Who was behind all of these carefully-laid plans?

  “A few weeks later, I woke up to the sound of a terrible flash of lightning and the sound of rain pelting against my window,” she said. “Only when I sat up to look, there was no storm at all. The woods outside my window were calm, bathed in the light of a full moon. I remember being so confused at first, wondering if I’d just had a nightmare. But when I turned to curl back under the covers, I saw a woman standing there at the end of the bed.”

  I swallowed and sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for more.

  “She looked like an angel, bathed in light with a glowing doorway behind her. She wore a white cloak and a large diamond amulet on a chain around her neck, but her face was lost in shadow.” Magda pulled her legs up to her chest and rocked slightly back and forth. “She held her hand out to me and called me her child. She said my sisters were all there waiting for me and to bring my new ruby. I was hesitant at first, not sure if I was awake or dreaming.”

  Magda took a few deep breaths in before continuing, her eyes closed as if she were taking herself back to that moment over two hundred years ago.

  “She told me not to be afraid. That she’d been watching me for a long time, and that she could see just how special I was. How special all five of us were. She said she could give me a life beyond my wildest dreams, where no one would ever again treat me like an outcast or a trinket to be sold away. All I had to do was take her hand and I would have anything I ever wanted.”

  A tear fell from the corner of Magda’s eyes.

  “That’s how easy it was to take my soul from me,” she said, finally opening her eyes and looking at me. “I didn’t argue or fight. I didn’t question her or ask who she was or what she wanted in return for this life of power. I’d never had a mother or anyone to tell me I was special the way she did. She offered that to me, and I took her hand. If I had the power to go back in time the way Hazel did, that’s where I would go. Back to that moment so I could make a different choice.”

  “Where did she take you?” I asked, careful of my tone. I could tell how difficult this was for her, but this was the information I’d been longing for since she first appeared in my domed city.

  “You’ve been there,” Magda said, her words nearly taking my breath away.

  Of course.

  “The onyx room where Jackson and I saved you back in the dungeons,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Yes. She led me through the portal of light and into that room with walls carved from black, shiny stone,” Magda said. “On the floor of the room were five stones, similar to the ones we’d found in the woods, only these were much larger and were embedded into the floor of the ritual room.”

  I could picture the onyx ritual room clearly in my head, even though I’d only seen it once, but I was seeing it now through Magda’s eyes. A sixteen-year-old girl, just like I was at Shadowford, brought into a ritual room, not understanding the weight of her actions.

  “My chosen sisters were all there. All except Alexandra, who joined us a few minutes later. Hazel and I held hands, clutching the stones we’d found in the woods in our free hands, both full of excited jitters,” Magda said, holding back tears. “In our years at Ashcroft, we’d often been brought into ritual rooms and introduced to new spells or new forms of magic. Walking through a portal with a new witch and being told we’d been chosen to learn powerful magic was exciting, but it didn’t feel scary or impossible. It just felt like another step on our journey. A new adventure.”

  I tried to imagine what that felt like.

  I’d been through similar things in Peachville, like when I was taken through some of the prima futura rituals and ceremonies. No one really explained what was happening, and it all happened so fast, it was hard to say no or ask for more clarification.

  I could definitely see how Magda and these other young girls would have gone along with this, not fully knowing what would happen.

  “The woman who appeared to us made us feel special. Like we’d been chosen above all others,” Magda said. “That meant something after a lifetime of being cast aside by our true families and hidden from the world. We’d all grown up feeling ashamed of our magic to some degree, and the High Priestess knew it. We were easy to manipulate because of how desperately we wanted to be accepted and loved. I wish I’d been stronger.”

  I knew exactly what she was talking about. That was where I’d been, too, just a few short years ago. All I wanted was to belong. To be a part of something.

  But then again, it was hard to admit that I related to the priestesses of the Order after all they’d done over the years. They might have started out innocent, but that’s not how they ended up.

  Was it possible the High Priestess changed them that much?

  “What happened once you were all in the room?” I asked, anxious to hear the rest.

  “She told us to each stand behind the stone we’d chosen. I remember Alexandra asking what she was planning to do to us, but the woman’s voice was so soothing and convincing, I don’t even remember her answer. All I remember was that we each did as we were told,” Magda said. “And then, there’s nothing.”

  “What do you mean nothing?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “The next thing I remember, I was waking up in my room at Ashcroft, wondering if it was all just some dream. The only thing that had changed was that the ruby sphere I’d found in the woods was gone, and my power, all of a sudden, was stronger than ever.

  She placed a hand on her heart, and I realized what must have happened that night.

  Magda’s human heart had been replaced by that ruby stone, now powered by a demon’s magic and soul.

  “So you don’t remember anything about the ritual itself?” I asked.

  “I don’t,” she said.

  I sat back against the pillows, frustrated that Magda couldn’t remember much of the actual ceremony. She’d told me as much before when I’d asked, but I still hoped to get more out of her than this. Without knowing the exact ritual, we might not be able to reverse it.

  Ever since we’d come up with the idea of reconstructing the portal stones and ritual Illana had used to open the doorway to the onyx room, I’d had this idea in my head that if we could simply figure out the ritual that had been used to create the Order of Shadows, we could reverse it the same way we’d reversed and freed the sapphire and emerald gates so far. Just on a larger scale, ending the Order of Shadows in one ceremony.

  My dreams of that happening now, though, were fading away.

  The only possibility remaining for this was to either find a spell book with the ritual written inside or to somehow get Lea to that ritual room so that she could try to pull up the memory of that night.

  “What happened next?” I asked.

  “It was soon obvious we hadn’t been dreaming,” Magda said. “Our powers had grown exponentially overnight, eclipsing that of our teachers. Magic hummed in our veins. We hardly slept or ate. Instead, we spent all our time exploring these new powers and testing the boundaries of our abilities. This led, as you know, to opening the demon gates. One for each of us, at first, and then eventually, hundreds. Even though we have never seen her face or known her true name, the High Priestess has guided us for all these years, making it clear that if we ever wanted out or dared to betray her or disobey, we would be killed in horrible ways, exchanged for a witch who was more loyal.”

  This part didn’t surprise me, but I also didn’t believe for one second that the priestesses had all gone along with the horror of the Order of Shadows out of fear alone.

  “You make it sound like you acted against your will,” I said, my shoulders tense. “But from what I’ve seen over the short time since I was first brought to Peachville, the priestesses enjoyed their power and immortal life. They hurt people for the fun of it. Destroyed lives and imprisoned millions over the years. Including you.”

  Magda lowered her head.

  “I won’t try to defend myself and my sisters,” she said. “What we went through over the years brought us past the brink of madness, and our madness made us monsters. I won’t deny it.”

  “Then, why are you here, Magda?”

  She didn’t answer for a long moment, and I wondered if she even knew why she was here. Was she simply trying to make up for the wrong she’d done and the pain she’d caused? Or was there more to it?

  “Our relationship with the High Priestess is not easy to explain, and I know it must be difficult for you to understand, but there, at the root of it all was this deep desire to be loved,” Magda said. “To be special. She played the role of a mother in our lives, in many ways. A relationship that, like you, none of us had ever experienced but desperately wanted. For that reason, my sisters and I did everything we could to please her. She was the source of our power and our rebirth, and we wanted her to be happy with us.”

  Tears flowed down Magda’s cheeks.

  “Yet, no matter how faithfully we carried out her orders, it was never enough. She held her love and praise just outside our reach, demanding us to go further every time, betraying even ourselves and each other when asked,” Magda said, sobs shaking her shoulders as she hid her face from me with her hand. “She tore us apart and rebuilt us into exactly what she wanted us to be, powerful beyond explanation and yet powerless to deny her anything. We devoted our lives to her, always believing that if we could just do a little more or be better, she would give us the love we desired from her.”