Killian roared, thrashing beneath the pile of heirs. But even his immense strength was no match for four heirs acting in unison.
“Listen!” Cade grunted, his voice strained from the effort of holding him down. “When we go, we go together. You think we don’t want to go after her right away? But we need a strategy, or we’ll throw away the chance she bought us and get her killed!”
“Barbie is my sister-in-law,” Rowan added, his own control fraying at the edges. “Sy would die for her in a heartbeat. Do you think I don’t want to tear that realm apart to find her? But we have to be smarter. Your mate is setting a trap, and we’ll be the blade that falls on that evil motherfucker at the perfect moment. We need to keep cool heads and pool our resources to do it.”
“Barbie is a brilliant, infuriating mage and goddess,” Cade added, “and we need to trust her. That’s the entire point of her letter. She’s asking us to help her the right way. Now, will you get your shit together so we can let you up?”
“Fine.” The word grated out of Killian, layered with a dragon’s growl. “We make a plan. And we do itnow.”
The heirs released him cautiously, their bodies still coiled, ready to pounce again if his control broke. Killian rose slowly, his dignity frayed but intact despite his disheveled clothes and wild hair.
“That fucking god is a liar,” Killian stated, his voice hollow with bitter knowledge. “He has no intention of honoring any deal. He’ll return to burn this realm to the ground. There is no buying peace from him.”
“You think we don’t know that?” Louis said. “We are not sacrificing Barbie. We do not sacrificeanyone. We are a unit—brothers, sisters, mates. We stand together.”
“We don’t let each other face monsters alone,” Rowan said, his arm pulling me firmly against his side. “Not even when they ask us to.”
“Where’s the poltergeist?” Silas’s sudden shout made several people jump. “We need to question him!”
As the heirs scanned the room, I already knew the answer. The faint trace of his energy was gone.
“He’s left the realm,” I said. “He must have gone after my sister. Pucker might be a coward about most things, but when it comes to Barbie, he’d be brave for her.”
A grim, determined look passed between the heirs.
“Then it seems we have an insider,” Cade concluded.
Chapter
Thirty
Barbie
The cage swayed with each rotation of creaking wheels against broken asphalt. I had to grip the rusted bars to keep from sliding across the filthy floor. My father could have teleported me straight to wherever he planned to drain me dry, but he was evil and petty—a toxic combination that meant he needed to see me humiliated first, to savor my degradation from the front row.
So here I was, caged like livestock on a wagon two stories high, a relic that belonged in a history book. The shackles binding my wrists were forged from the same dark material my kidnappers had used at CrimsonTide. But these were worse. Where the old chains had merely muted my power, these new ones, inscribed with my father’s latest spells, drank it. Each attempt to summon my dark flame left me hollow, the metal having learned, evolved, grown hungrier, just like everything he touched.
I could counter the spells. It would take time and focus, and I’d have to drain the land, which I’d vowed never to do again.
Besides, this was the plan. To bide my time. To let him believe he had won.
So no matter how my instincts screamed at me to break this chain, I made my body still. I did not fight. I endured.
I’d half-expected an iron mask to complete the medieval torture aesthetic, but my father clearly wanted me to see everything. He wanted me to witness what he’d done to the world while I’d been playing house at the academy.
The wagon rolled through what was once Chicago. I knew this had been Michigan Avenue only because a street sign hung by a single bolt, spinning in the wind like a hanged man. Everything else was unrecognizable. Skyscrapers had crumbled into sandcastles, and abandoned cars sat with doors still open, as if their owners had vanished mid-escape. Plastic bags danced on the wind like ghosts.
And the smell—it was death and decay and something worse: the stench of rotting hope.
We passed through city after city, each a monument to destruction. Behind my cage, the army marched in grim formation. Shriekers came first, their mechanical parts clicking in a nightmarish rhythm. Then came demons of every variety, from scuttling imps to entities that hurt the eyes to look upon.
The human collaborators brought up the rear, and somehow, they were the worst. The monsters were born or made for this. These people had chosen this. They’d traded their humanity for a few more desperate days of breath.
One caught my eye, a woman maybe thirty, wearing the tattered remains of a business suit. Her eyes held the particular emptiness of someone who’d watched their world end and decided to help burn what was left. She saw me looking and quickly turned away.
I forgot about her just as quickly. She would be forgotten, erased from the timeline like all the other traitors.
My father could resurrect his abominations endlessly, but humans stayed dead. He’d probably promised these collaborators immortality, power, positions in his new world order. They’d learn too late that Ruin only kept slaves.
