Their heads snapped toward the sound of their names to find Virgil, Nisha, and Vera running across the fighting pit toward them.
Theursus magnusjumped between them with a growl, spittle dripping from its open maw as it headed straight for Emory’s friends.
Romie’s grip tightened around her wrist. “Do it!” she screamed, eyes wild.
The dam around Emory broke.
She blasted back the demon and the beasts once more, erecting a barrier between them and her friends. It wouldn’t last. She opened herself up to all the magics around her, to the three bright spots that called to her like lodestars: the power in Romie’s blood and Aspen’s bones and Tol’s heart, all of themdemandingto be used. She drew the magic into her, and instinct propelled her into the mind of the giant bear.
Emotions and senses and wisps of dreaming overcame her as she felt everything theursus magnushad ever felt. The freedom it had once known. The daily torture it underwent under its captors. The terror and death it was forced to instill.
She laced this new magic coursing through her with the power of Glamours, influencing the bear’s mind to do her bidding, pushing it in the direction she wanted it to go. She extended this magic to the other beasts too. All at once, the eldritch stopped fighting the prisoners and bystanders—and turned instead on the guards. The draconics who had captured and tortured them into submission.
“Heretic!” one of the draconics yelled, pointing at Emory with pure terror before theursus magnustrampled him.
They thought she was aligned with the Night Bringer, even as bright, silver light emanated from her. Still Emory did not feel on the verge of Collapsing. Power coursed through her like a river unleashed and filled her with elation. Only a small, weak voice inher mind made her think to check on her friend. Romie was on her knees, face drawn and pale, lips gone colorless as if all the blood in her had left. At her side, Aspen writhed in pain as her bonesbroke, her arms and legs snapping at unnatural angles and rearranging themselves under some invisible torture.
And where Tol stood before the demon, he suddenly dropped his golden sword to the ground and clutched at his chest, doubling over in pain.
Leaving himself undefended for the demon to rip his heart out.
“No!” Emory screamed through the rush of power, trying desperately to let go of it, to shut the conduits open between her and these other magics she was tapping into, these threelivesshe felt vibrating in the palms of her hands, but she couldn’t, and now the darkness was pressing in, lunar flowers in her mouth and sprouting from her lungs, ghosts tearing at her clothes and shouting in her ears—
“Em, behind you!”
Virgil’s warning came a moment too late. Emory had barely begun to turn when she caught the glint of golden armor, a blade arcing down toward her, and knew death, at last, had found her.
Except it didn’t.
For a second, she was too stunned to realize someone had jumped in front of her, taking the death blow that had been meant for her. More stunned still to realize who it was.
The demon held her at arm’s length, fingers digging into her biceps, a pained, surprised expression on his face as he looked down at the sword tip protruding from his middle.
He met her gaze, and for a moment that seemed suspended in time, everything was clear. All the darkness Emory had been drowning in vanished, as if drawn into the demon, silenced by his touch, chased away by the shifting light of his eyes. She could feel the magic she’d been leeching from Romie and Aspen and Tolslowly returning to them as her own blood faded from silver to red and the ley line beneath her quieted.
It felt like when Baz had saved her from Collapsing, except Emory knew this had nothing to do with time, and everything to do with the demon who had taken a sword for her. As if he were a stopper on her magic, a balm against this twisted, uncontrollable, deadly side of it.
Time resumed as the sword was pulled out of the demon’s middle, making blood splatter. But instead of crumpling to his death, the demon moved with lethal speed, turning to tear the sword from the knight’s hands. With it he sliced their helmeted head clean off their body.
He looked every part the demon he was then, a thing of death and darkness and blood. With movements that were too graceful to be human, he heaved himself onto theursus magnus’s back as the beast bounded toward the blasted gate. But Emory saw the way he clutched his middle, the wince of pain as he gripped the beast’s back. And the face that looked at her over a shoulder, deathly pale.
The demon might not be human, but Keiran’s body was. And with a wound like that, Emory knew he wouldn’t last for much longer.
Her gaze cut to her friends, worry and guilt warring inside her. Tol was picking himself up, looking winded but fine. Aspen had stopped writhing in pain, her limbs unbroken, set in all the right angles. And though Romie had regained some color, she looked at Emory with an ashen, defeated expression. As if saying,You see now? This is what you are.
Tidethief.
And she was right.
40ROMIE
ROMIE WAS DYING. SHE COULDfeel her blood turn to ash, the magic fade from her veins, the song in her soul go quiet—a silencing she knew was mirrored in the witch and the warrior at her side, for in this moment, their pain was her own, felt through whatever conduit had been opened between them by Emory. A Tidethief stealing all their magics.
And then the pain stopped. Romie watched Emory through bleary eyes, standing with the demon, the two of them entwined in darkness. As if whatever passed between them was stronger than Emory’s grasp on the ley line, strong enough to sever her connection to Romie and the others.
Romie was still trying to make sense of it when Nisha was suddenly at her side, helping her to her feet. Virgil yelled at everyone to get up andmoveas more draconic knights swarmed the arena.
“Where are we supposed to go?” Vera yelled in despair.
