“Okay fine,” Joost said, hitching his backpack higher on his shoulders. “I’m right behind you.”

  I followed them less than fifteen steps into the woods before shadowy figures seemed to materialize out of nowhere. Spider-like creatures fell down from the trees, hanging on thick webs. Scorpions crawled out of tiny holes in the ground.

  And in the shadows up ahead, larger creatures seemed to slink between the trees.

  From there, they made their distress call to Mordecai.

  “What are those things, man?” Erick asked.

  “I don’t know, but they’re everywhere,” Joost responded.

  Then, a spider larger than any spider had a right to be descended from the trees, knocking the com stone from Joost’s hands and sinking its teeth into his arm. At the same time, Erick shifted to smoke and tried to grab Joost before he fell to the ground, but the spider was too fast. Too prepared.

  It caught them both in a shadowy webbing that immediately forced Erick back to his solid form.

  Within less than a minute, the huge spider had injected both demons with its poison and spun a dark, shadowy cocoon around them.

  I watched in horror as the spider and several other dog-headed creatures dragged their bodies deeper into the woods.

  Now that I knew what to look for, I dropped the memory and reached down into the dense, mossy underbrush and picked up the ruby stone Joost had dropped when the spider attacked.

  I handed it to Mordecai, who put it in his pocket.

  “Are they okay?” he asked. “What did you see?”

  I hadn't brought him into the memory with me, because I didn’t know what I would find. If it had been terrible, there was no use in both of us having that stuck in our minds for the rest of our lives.

  For now, though, I had hope that our friends might still be alive.

  In fact, I had a feeling they had been taken just to lure me into these woods.

  Whoever had them probably intended to kill them in front of me. They wanted me to experience the pain of watching my friends die, knowing there was nothing I could do about it.

  But what choice did I have here?

  I couldn’t very well leave them behind.

  But I certainly didn’t have to go after them alone.

  I quickly called the search party back to me, showing them the drag marks that looked so clear, now that we knew what we were looking for.

  “I think they’re still alive,” I said. “But I also think this is meant to be a trap for me. Be on your guard with every step. These creatures I saw were magical conjurings of some kind. Chimera sent by the citrine priestess, if I had to guess. Or at least they sound an awful lot like the things that attacked Harper’s roses in the Southern Kingdom. And from the looks of it, there were dozens of them. Stick together and follow those drag marks.”

  The path leading us to my friends was ridiculously easy to follow. A straight shot from where I’d found the stone to where their bodies hung, still in their dark cocoons, from two trees there in the middle of the Witchwood.

  “Oh my god,” Andros said, rushing forward with two guards. “Cut them down.”

  “No, wait,” I shouted, but it was too late.

  The spider who’d taken them had already, in a matter of seconds, poisoned the two guards and wrapped a partial web around Andros in the process.

  I held my hand out, motioning for the rest of our party to stand back.

  But that was when the spider actually lifted its head to look at me.

  I pulled back, a scream nearly strangling me as I brought a hand to my mouth.

  This was no ordinary spider. And it hadn’t simply been conjured from shadows.

  This creature had been crafted by nightmares, combining the body of a spider with the head of an old friend. Someone who had betrayed us all and fled the city.

  “Ezrah,” I said. “What have they done to you?”

  “Ezrah is not here, anymore,” the spider said, using Ezrah’s lips and his voice in a way that made my gut churn. “He outlived his usefulness, and now he belongs to the goddess. To my queen.”

  “Goddess?” I asked. “The citrine priestess? Did she do this to you?”

  The spider laughed, taking its attention off Andros for just a moment. I could see, though, that Andros had already managed to free the right side of his body partially with some kind of dagger he must have hidden in his hand or his sleeve.

  I just had to keep this thing’s attention on me. I was the real target here, after all.

  “No, the citrine priestess is nothing but another pawn,” the spider said. “She’ll be dead soon, along with all of you.”

  “Let them go,” I said, conjuring a set of flaming arrows that were nocked and ready to fly before he could protest.

  “I don’t think so,” the spider said, smiling with Ezrah’s lips.

  Had it been the High Priestess who did this, then? Why had this thing called her the goddess? A queen?

  Queen of what?

  And why would the High Priestess of the Order kill her own citrine priestess? None of this was making any sense.

  But Andros was almost free, so I had to keep this thing talking.

  “Your goddess is nothing compared to me,” I said. “As soon as I find her, I’ll kill her myself. Now, release my friends, or I’ll put two arrows through your heart.”

  “You are nothing,” the spider hissed, taking the bait.

  He loosened his grip on Andros just slightly and skittered toward me.

  Andros broke free of the webbing and sank his dagger into Ezrah’s forehead, while I let loose the two arrows, aiming for the webbing that held Joost and Erick’s cocoon’s to the branches above.

  The two cocoons fell, but Mordecai and Cristo were fast, shifting and flying through the air to catch our friends before their bodies hit the ground.

  “Go,” I shouted. “Out of the forest, everyone, now.”

  Only, the trap had been set long before we got here, and Ezrah might have been the ringleader, but he was not the only chimera around.

  Shadows moved all around us, blocking our paths with spiderwebs and dripping poison.

  We were trapped here with no choice but to fight our way out of it.

  I conjured another set of arrows and didn’t hesitate.

  “Kill them all,” I shouted, and let the arrows fly.

  On The Edge

  Aerden

  By the time I’d figured out what I wanted to say to my brother after a long night of tossing and turning and trying to make peace with what Solange had said about our abilities, she had returned with a force of more than two hundred demons.

  I was shocked to see such a large number traveling together that way, but when I questioned her about it, she said that all of the believers had gathered to protect the temple and that none of them seemed to be heading back out to look for or capture more demons.

  She thought this was an advantage, because we wouldn’t have to sneak around.

  I could see that it was a huge problem for us and our timeline.

  “Whatever ritual they’re getting ready for, it’s going to happen soon,” I said. “They’ve obviously got the number of demons they wanted, and now they’re just guarding them and the temple to make sure nothing goes wrong.”

  “Which means we don’t have much time to figure out our plan and make our move,” Jackson said.

  “I’ve already got some ideas,” I threw in.

  While he’d been pacing back and forth across the ruins all night, I’d been working out different scenarios in my head. There were going to be a lot of unknowns regardless of what we came up with, but I was confident in the fact that I’d come up with a plan and a contingency that was most likely to end up with us still alive at the end of the day.

  Hopefully, all the demons in that pit would still be alive, too.

  “Okay, let’s hear it,” Solange said. “I’ve told them all your story and how you want to help us, and everyone here is willing to give their lives to try and save the demons who were taken. I wish we could have brought more with us, but the others are scared.”

  “I can’t blame them,” I said. “But I think this will be enough. Before we go through any kind of plan with the entire group, can you gather the demons you consider to be the leaders here? I’ll tell them what I have in mind, and we can refine it from there. You guys know this place a lot better than I do, anyway, so I’d appreciate your input.”

  Solange smiled. “Of course,” she said. “You’re good at this leadership stuff, you know. Almost like you were born for it.”

  I laughed. “I guess in a way, I was. But that’s a story for another time.”

  My chest tightened as I thought of Lea and all the unsaid things between us. What we were attempting to do here today was potentially going to bring us face to face with one of the most powerful beings to ever live.

  And if we messed up the High Priestess’s plans again, I had no delusions about her having mercy on us. It didn’t matter who she was.

  If she got the chance, she would kill us all if she had to, because whatever she had planned for the fifty-thousand demons huddled together in that giant diamond-lined pit was not child’s play. It was magic unlike anything I’d ever seen before.

  I had no doubt she would do anything in her power to make sure nothing and no one disrupted it.

  Which is why we had to keep her attention where we wanted it at all times.

  I went through my plans with Solange and her five top leaders, gathering their feedback and tweaking things when necessary. After about half an hour, we had something that just might work.

  And if it didn’t, we had a plan for that, too.

  Jackson had been tinkering with the diamond amulet last night, too, and he showed them how to reverse the spell inside that was stealing their magic. As long as at least one person in the group could cast, they could take the diamond amulets off any hunter they killed and reverse the spell.

  Our hope was that by the end of the fight, many of the demons would be casting again. Or at the very least, shifting.

  Solange was the first to demonstrate it, using a small piece of the power from the amulet we’d gotten on the beach.

  While the leaders went to explain the plan to the other demons, I motioned for Jackson to follow me a little ways off from the rest of the group.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  I hesitated.

  Now that I had him here, I wasn’t sure exactly what I needed to say to him.

  “Look, I’ve never really been good at just coming out and saying how I feel. I mean, I’m the demon who left everything behind just because I was too scared to tell the princess I loved her.”

  I laughed nervously and ran a hand through my hair.

  “What I’m getting at here is that there have been too many times when I let things go unsaid and regretted it.”

  Jackson shook his head.

  “You don’t really have to say anything for me to know how you feel,” he said. “Besides, we’re going to kick some ass today and be home by midnight, staring up at the moons as we drift off to sleep in the arms of the women we love.”

  He laughed, but I couldn’t join him.

  I had a terrible feeling about this battle and how it might turn out, as if the fate of everyone we loved was teetering on the edge of a very narrow bridge. Too far either way, and everything was lost.

  I couldn’t seem to shake it.

  “I hope you’re right,” I said. “But just in case you’re not, and this goes bad, I want you to know something, Jackson.”

  I cleared my throat and gathered my courage. Why was it so hard to just say what I was feeling?

  “When Priestess Winter died and I was set free, I was so messed up about all of it and so totally lost that I treated you like crap,” I said. “I took it out on you, shutting you out when all you wanted was to help me figure out how to deal with it all.”

  “Hey, Aerden, you don’t—”

  “Shut up, man. I’m trying to tell you I’m sorry,” I said, hitting him in the shoulder. “You are literally the only person in the world who never gave up on me.”

  He grew quiet, finally really listening to what I had to say.

  “You never really act like it was an option, but you could have married Lea and lived out the rest of your days in the safety of that castle as the king. And it would have been an honorable life. A good life. But you gave all of that up to come looking for me. To stand by my side, even when your powers were gone. You never left me. You never gave up. And I never really told you how much that means to me. I love you, Jackson. I just needed you to know that.”

  For a moment, he just stood there staring at me like he wasn’t even sure what to say back. But then, he threw his arms around me, pulling me into a strong hug.

  “I love you, too,” he said.

  “Sorry to interrupt the hugfest here, but I think it’s time we started putting this plan into action,” Solange said. “Because whatever the hell that is, it can’t be good.”

  Jackson pulled away from me, and both of us looked in the direction of the temple in the distance.

  Lightning flashed overhead as a bright yellow light radiated from the top of the building.

  Even from here, we could hear a woman screaming from inside. The sound was so full of pain and agony that it turned my stomach.

  Still, I had a feeling whatever was going on in there was nothing compared to what the High Priestess had planned for those demons in the pit.

  “Let’s get moving,” I said. “Tell everyone to get into position, because we don’t have a minute to waste.”

  I handed the drained ruby bar to Jackson, and he handed me the second axe.

  “You better hope this works,” he said. “Because I have a feeling we’re not going to get a second chance at this.”

  “Just do your part, and I’ll do mine,” I said, also taking the diamond amulet we’d taken off the hunter on the beach and stuffing it into my pocket. “And when you talk to Harper, tell her to bring a freaking army.”

  Throw It All Away

  Harper

  Back in Rend’s office, Charlotte explained more about her little sister’s abilities.

  “She is a seeress. Rayla can see the future, but it’s not the same as what Jackson can do,” she said.

  I didn’t even ask her how she knew about Jackson’s abilities, and I certainly didn’t correct her and tell her he no longer had access to those abilities.

  Right now, I just wanted to figure out what the heck was happening and how I was going to help the people I cared about get home safely.

  From the way Magda had been talking at the hotel last night, it sounded like she was sure she was about to die any day now. I had honestly just assumed she was being her normal, melodramatic self, reacting to the level of attacks we’d endured throughout the day.

  Now, come to find out, she’d actually known something was going to happen to her here at Venom. And she didn’t say a word to me about it.

  We could have gone somewhere else. Anywhere if it would have meant she was safe.

  Instead, she’d walked right into it.

  “How is it different?” I asked.

  “Rayla sees possibilities,” Charlotte said. “Pathways rather than certainties.”

  “What does that mean? That we can change it if we make different choices?” I asked.

  “In a way,” Charlotte said. “Standing here in this room right now, there are a number of choices you might make. You could choose to sit down in that chair right there, or you could choose to keep standing up, for example. Whichever you choose then narrows the possibilities of what you might choose next.”

  I shook my head and groaned.

  “A series of calculated choices,” I mumbled.

  “What?” Charlotte asked.

  “Something Magda said to me last night at the hotel. I think I understand.”

  I leaned forward, talking directly to Rayla.

  “You’re able to look into the future and see the results of a number of different choices, then?”

  The little girl nodded. “Yes, but sometimes, when one certain choice is made or one specific event occurs, the choices converge and narrow, meaning sometimes one choice creates a domino effect where some things become inevitable, no matter what choices are made.”

  “Which is how Magda knew she would be taken, no matter what, after she saw those names being crossed off the list in her sister’s roster.”

  “Yes,” Rayla said. “Everything up to that point had the potential to lead to something different, but after the High Priestess’s plan to destroy the Order was put into motion, Magda was going to end up in that room, no matter what.”

  “Wait, did you say the High Priestess was planning to destroy the Order?” I asked, making the sudden choice to sit down before my legs gave out on me. “Why? Why would she go to all this trouble to create the Order and build up all this power, just so she could destroy them?”

  “Because her power does not come from the Order,” Rayla said. “It never has. As Magda’s told you several times now, the Order was never more than a means to an end for the High Priestess.”

  “Okay, so that’s why we’re really here,” I said. “Magda arranged for us to both be here after she was gone. Why? So you could tell me what I should choose? Or to tell me which path to take?”

  “Not exactly,” Rayla said.

  She was sitting in the large leather chair behind Rend’s desk, and it was so big, it practically swallowed her whole.

  “The trick to this kind of magic is that sometimes, if you know the outcome of a certain choice, you change the outcome that otherwise would have been,” she said. “Magda was right in telling you that sometimes a path is just a series of specific choices made in a very specific order. If I tell you the outcome, your choices change. Which is basically just saying that if I tell you everything, it won’t happen the way it needs to happen.”