The Ember Vein camp.
As we near, the smell hits me.
Smoke. Blood. Hot metal. That sharp, coppery tang of magic burning too hard.
The camp is chaos.
Tents are in various stages of ruin—some collapsed, some already reduced to smoldering piles of ash. The tall ward-torches flicker erratically, as if something keeps slapping at the magic that powers them.
Shapes move in the dark—soldiers, miners, twisted things that can only be SoulTakers. Their edges look wrong, like someone smudged them halfway out of existence and forgot to finish the job.
“Down,” I murmur, patting the Mustang’s neck. “Please.”
He rears once—flames shooting high—then plunges into a controlled skid, molten hooves carving glowing furrows in the packed earth as we slide to a stop just outside the main ring of ruined tents.
I hop off, legs jelly.
He bumps my shoulder with his flaming muzzle.
“Thank you,” I whisper, dazed. “You’re insane. I love you. Do not tell Thorne I said that.”
A roar tears the air apart.
Not from the battlefield.
From the center of camp.
I spin.
Near where Thorne’s pavilion used to stand, four enormous figures are locked in a deadly dance.
A massive dragon of silver and shadow—Alaric—rears back, blue-white flame streaming from his jaws to collide with a column of red fire that shoots up into the sky.
Kael stands nearby, arms raised, water spiraling around him in furious whirlwinds that hiss and steam as they try to contain the inferno.
Dagan is half-shifted, stone crawling up his arms and chest, eyes glowing green-gold as he braces both hands on the earth, channeling his power downward, shoring up the Vein’s shattered wards.
And at the center of it all—Thorne.
Or what’s left of him.
A fifteen-foot titan of bone and fire.
His skeleton form towers above the wreckage, ribs made of obsidian and white-hot cinder, wings of pure flame lashing the sky. Lava pulses through the cracks in his bones like molten blood. Fire roars from his eye sockets, from his fingertips, from the spaces between his ribs.
Everything about him screams power.
And rage.
And pain.
He swings one massive fiery arm, and a row of empty tents disappears in a spray of ash and embers.
“What’s happening?!” I shout, stumbling forward, mind rejecting what my eyes are seeing.
“Lady Delia, stay back!” Kael’s voice cracks across the space like a whip, even as he flings another shield of water in front of Thorne’s wild flames. “He is not himself. This has always been the curse of the Two-Face.”
“Curse?” I echo, breathless.
