The moment his heart stopped beating, the maze vanished.
Not gradually. Not with ceremony. One second we stood in a chamber of living walls, the next we were in the center of the Nexus arena under a gray sky, a massive dragon and screaming crowds.
The transition was jarring. Disorienting.
My attention fixed on the figure waiting on the sidelines. Beautifully brooding Calder, standing with his arms crossed, dark eyes finding mine across the distance. Relief flickered across his face, followed immediately by concern as he took in the crown in my hand. For a moment, Pip hovered near his shoulder, her blue hair blowing in the breeze as she clutched her tiny sword to her chest.
As if someone had given them a signal, they moved onto the field, coming to join me, Wickett and Lucette.
The Oracle stood with unnatural stillness, her face turned toward us with jarring attention, despite the blindfold. Her dragon dropped from the sky with far less ceremony than on the night of Vitoria’s damnation. Shifting mid-air, he landed behind the Oracle almost silently.
The Magistrate stood beside her with his hands locked behind his back, staring up at the crowd, rather than his victors. “Citizens of Grimora. Behold your champions. Proven in blood. Tested by Mortalis.”
The crowd’s roar intensified, but something in their tone had changed. There was less bloodlust now. More reverence. More understanding of what was to come. This had been a show ofpower by the Magistrate, but the hunt wasn’t about him. It was about the Phoenix. She was the reason we were here.
There would be no more hunters combing the streets. Only the world’s truest hunt for the world’s greatest enemy.
Except they’d gotten the wrong girl.
And I was about to do every single thing I could to divert them away from her. If only I knew where she was.
I scanned the sea of faces above us. Thousands of eyes stared back, hungry for whatever came next. But my gaze drifted to the arena’s edge, where the real power stood.
The Magistrate’s inner circle. His advisors, his enforcers, his chosen few. They formed neat rows in their perfectly pressed black uniforms, with their gold Chancellery emblems gleaming on their chests, marking them as untouchable. Just more smug pricks who thought they owned all they saw.
But one figure stood apart from the rest.
Dressed entirely in black with no emblem, no ceremonial colors like the others wore. He kept too much distance between himself and the council members, like proximity to them might contaminate something he valued. His hands were buried in his pockets, shoulders set with tension. Sharp jawline. High cheekbones. Dark hair styled with precision, every strand deliberately placed in a way that somehow made him look more dangerous rather than refined. The kind of face that belonged on ancient coins or carved into marble, beautiful in a way that felt dangerous, deliberate, like something designed to lure you closer before it destroyed you.
But none of that was what made my skin crawl.
It was the way he looked at me.
His mouth was set in a scowl that enhanced those perfect features, but his eyes, burning with an intensity that felt physical, were fixed on me like I was the only person in the entire arena that mattered. Not casual interest. Not even curiosity. Thiswas recognition. Knowing. Like he could see straight through every defense I’d ever built, every lie I’d ever told, every secret I’d buried so deep I sometimes forgot it myself.
He looked at me like he knew exactly what I was.
Like he’d sworn his own oath to hunt me the moment this ceremony ended.
Who the fuck was he?
“You are no longer contestants,” Tiberius’s voice cut through my focus like a blade. “You are the Venatori.”
I jerked my attention back to the Magistrate, but the moment he was quiet, I searched the sidelines again, drawn to the stranger.
The man in black was gone.
Not moved to a different position. Not behind someone else. Gone. Vanished, like he’d never been there at all. I snuck a glance at Calder to see if he’d noticed the stranger. Nothing.
“... victors of the Mortalis,” the Magistrate continued. “You will be our salvation. The end of the Burnings is near.”
Shaking my head to regain focus, I snapped my attention back to Tiberius as he walked toward us and gestured toward a tunnel entrance. A line of witches stumbled forward, iron chains binding their wrists, their ankles, their throats. All of them rigid and broken and terrified. All of them, his.
My blood turned to ice. The hedge maze hadn’t been constructed by witches in his employment. These weren’tvolunteers. They were prisoners. And now spectacles to show his control and power. Again.
With a cacophony of whispered spells, a dome began forming over those of us in the center of the arena. The magic was so dense, I could taste it, feel it sealing us inside with whatever fresh hells Tiberius had planned. The magical ribbon connecting me to Wickett snapped.
Just gone. The constant pull, the awareness of his presence, all of it had vanished as if it never existed. My hand flew to my wrist where the binding mark had burned for days.
