Fuck, I wish I knew how magic worked.
“Where are you, Dante?” I whispered, even though he couldn’t hear me. A stupid, useless plea, as the sigils overhead flared white-hot, then guttered out completely. Another snap of intense pressure sent a fresh gush of blood seeping from my nose and ears, and my head filled with panic.
These protections were keyed to my husband’s power.
Was Dante dead?Oh gods, was that why they were failing?
That ember that had burned so brightly in my heart went out, coldness seeping through me like Death itself had made a reappearance.He can’t be dead, he can’t. I’d know. I’d feel it, and he promised he wouldn’t leave me.
The house shuddered, stone and wood protesting, glass shattering as windows blew out from the ground floor up. Power gathered outside, like a storm about to break. I gathered enough pitiful magic to ghost myself out of there, not caring about the risks.Get me somewhere, anywhere but here.
I opened my eyes.
Still in the training room, still bleeding like a stuck pig, my ears ringing.Fuck.
I was too frightened, too injured, or bleeding too badly to dematerialize. I was going to fucking die here because Iwas weak and powerless. Then the world condensed into a single breath, as though it was being squeezed between the hands of the gods.
The entire house—the world—dissolved into chaos. All around me, fire and black smoke boiled, like I was trapped inside a caldera, about to be incinerated.
I closed my eyes, heat scalding my face, surrounded by the acrid scent of burning hair and skin.
Thick, putrid smoke opened up like twin edges of a tattered veil flapping in a violent wind to reveal that beckoning darkness that haunted my nightmares… and now, my days.
I searched for my parents, some part of me yearning to be folded into their arms.
A figure ripped free of that darkness, flying, sprinting toward me from another dimension, and Nico Draconi—dark hair wind-tangled, eyes burning like pale fire—gripped my arm.
This isn’t real, I told myself, his fingers digging into my skin, his cherry-sweet scent wrapping around me.
This cannot possibly be real. I must already be dead.
“Stop gaping and close your mouth,principessa,”he snapped, already dematerializing. “And hang on.”
Smoke and heat and flame exploded all around us as we vanished—too fucking slowly—and I barely had time to suck in a final, searing breath before the world yanked sideways.
Nico wrenched me through a tear in the sky, moving faster than I’d ever moved before.
Cold, razor-sharp air carved along my skin, pressure squeezing my bones until I thought they’d snap. The world turned inside out, streets and rooftops smearing, and forone endless heartbeat, there was nothing but the sensation of falling.
Then my boots hit red tile, and the world slammed back into place.
I stumbled, knees buckling. Nico’s arm locked around my middle, keeping me upright as the rooftop beneath us tilted wildly. I gagged on the bile clawing up my throat, everything in my stomach coming up in a violent wave. He held me in his arms as I purged my stomach, murmuring to me the entire time.
Finally, I lifted my head, forcing my soot-filled eyes to focus.
We were three, maybe four streets away, perched on the sagging roof of some narrow house. The air tasted like smoke?—
“Don’t look, Emberline,” Nico warned, his breath warm against my ear as he turned me away from the destruction already branded into my brain.
Dante’s house—our house—was gone.
I wrenched free to watch flames roar like a white-hot beast punching through ancient wood and stone. The flames glowed blue, fragments of Dante’s magic scattering like dying stars. A second explosion sent a smoke cloud spiraling upward, before the concussive blast slammed the breath from my lungs, Nico grabbing me to keep me from falling.
“Oh gods,” I whispered. That had been my house. My things. The bed where Dante and I made love, the desk with his secrets, the training room with all my weapons?—
Gone. In less than a minute.
“Whoever did this is dead,” Nico growled, voice brutally calm, dirt and ash coating his face.
