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My mind was spinning, aching, the world shifting away from me before snapping back into clarity.

I was…

I was a prisoner, not a guest. And Nix was right. They took me to use me for something. I didn’t need to know what for to know that I would not be used.

The rattle of chains rumbled through my feet, and countless armed guards came running out in some kind of formation, their weapons trained on me and Nix at the center.

“Got any tricks up your sleeve, Grayshell?”

“Don’t even have sleeves,” I muttered dryly. Grayshell. Grayshell. Grayshell. It was a drum in my mind.

“Go down swingin’?”

Panic, frigid and unforgiving, slid through my veins.

Too many. So fucking many guards—we didn’t stand a chance. Especially not with more than half of them wielding elements now alive around their fingertips. Better to conserve our energy?

I was robbed of the choice when excruciating agony engulfed my mind. A cry flew from my lips as that fire shot down my spine, my knees cracking into the earth. Eyes blurring, world spinning.

Through the blur, I saw them go for Nix first. He head-butted the first guard, then slammed his elbow into the second. But there were so many of them. The butt of a gun was rammed into his face, sending blood spilling.

“No!” The scream ripped from my throat.

He might not’ve been a good man, but he’d been a warm voice in the darkness, a shirt over nakedness meant to humiliate me, the truth in a sea of deceit. One of two assholes in this den of monsters who’d told me the goddamn truth.

“Leave him alone,” I barked as my arms were wrenched behind my back, my shoulders popping as his blood poured onto the sand, painting it violently crimson. “Stop it!” They slammed my face into the earth, but they were beating him—clubs and guns, fists and feet. Nix cried out, and I was pretty fucking certain it was my goddamn name. “I will fucking kill you,” I snarled. “Touch him again and I’ll gouge your eyes out with my bare goddamn hands.”

“Oh, sister, you were always too brash for your own good. As bullheaded as Adrastos but without his capabilities.” A low laugh slithered along my bones, and then Moros crouched in front of me. His voice was so lethal, so quiet I could barely hear him as he snarled, “The bastard was right. You are a hard one.” Someone landed a brutal kick to my stomach, sending me gasping a mouthful of dust. Moros held up his hand, but the cruel sneer lifting one cheek told me it wasn’t for my benefit. “And I have to say,”—he slid his blade along my cheekbone. A whimper crept from me as the blade bit into the skin beneath my eye. “I rather enjoy your word choice.”

Magnolia

Long past nightfall, we continued at a more urgent march. All we needed was to get inside Grayshell’s wards and out of the borderland; then Aren and Brody could jump us home.

So, we walked. Silence consumed us. Something heavy and haunted filled each step like stones in our boots. For the first time, the dread gradually bubbling in my gut had nothing to do with Balorath’s presence, though he still glided far above. I didn’t need to see him to feel him anymore, but his wingbeats had grown subtle.

My eyes kept flicking between Aren and Ambroise, whose faces had gradually darkened. Jason’s tail kept twitching like Salem’s when I’d intentionally bugged him with snuggles.

“Nothing?” I breathed, the familiar ice of terror slicing through my chest. Because they should be able to hear them—the souls of Grayshell should be connected by now. Even I could see the castle from here.

Dread settled in my stomach, dark eyes and a broad smile flashing in my mind.

Was I really so naive? So desperate to find some trace of the man I thought I knew—some part of me had been clinging to the thought that he’d somehow cut them off without decimating their numbers, but this looming silence hung like a storm cloud.

We were likely walking into a mass grave, and I’d been too delusional to reconcile the man who’d saved me had damned tens of thousands of others in one brutal sweep.

Aren just shook his head, the eyes I loved uncharacteristically hard. His skin had gradually lost color as we crossed the valley—draining as though each step accompanied another thought of those he’d lost. So many souls left behind, where he thought they’d be safer.

Hadn’t he done the same thing with me, only for me to turn around and compromise myself just as severely?

My beautiful mate. My brilliant, boisterous, loving mate—known by warriors for his deft blades and sharp strategy, but known by me for his kindness, his grace, his unending forgiveness, and his love for his people. For a smile that felt like home, and a laugh just as warm.

How I hadn’t seen it—wrapped my head around the way Aren completed the world to me, I would never understand. He was my beginning and my ending, and perhaps that was what terrified me so deeply. The magnitude of him still made no sense—the legend, given flesh, paired with a shadow walker with three decades of breath. But the gods didn’t make mistakes. Only my ego allowed me to think I was so damaged, so dark that I’d somehow ruined their plans, destroyed my own destiny.

A petal-soft caress hummed over my skin, and I hesitated, head snapping up to Aren, whose wide eyes were frantically flicking over the horizon.

Wards.

Nobody said a godsdamn thing, but in the next breath, each of us had a hand pressed to The Commander in time for him to jump.