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The world around us pressed inward, my power rumbling within the very cells of my blood in warning.

When Kade spoke, his voice was something ancient, laced with the command of one and many. “Mine versus yours, what do you say… cousin?” The earth began to tremble, a prickling sensation up my spine drawing my eyes to the necromancer as he inhaled deeply, his pupils swallowing his irises… the whites… disappearing beneath spindling black veins stretching toward his temples.

I staggered back a step, horrified as he inhaled deeply, green mist unfurling from his fingers.

But it was Marlana’s cackle that announced just how fucked we were. “I’ll take that wager.”

If I hadn’t fought alongside Aphaea for the last year, I would’ve missed it, that rumble beneath our feet, the subtle vibration of the ground, the clap of leaves behind us.

“Shields!” I barked. The ground erupted—shards of stone and clay rocketing upright. Unlike Fae’s magic, which kissed and caressed, Marlana’s shattered like shrapnel. Ash drifted through the air, the pillars of earth crumbling almost as quickly as they launched forward. Blight.

She’d devour us with blight.

All around us, the earth reached for souls, for wolves. Screams within the palace and beyond told me we weren’t the only ones.

All around me, souls loosed arrows and threw blades. We advanced, leaping from clear ground to green grass, narrowly avoiding her sickness. The shades followed suit, tangling with her demons, her men. Dropping them, only for that green mist to lift them on invisible strings, marching back toward the palace.

Kingsley moved like a torpedo, single-minded as my lightning scattered Renown and demons alike.

“No!” I barked. “Thornquist!”

But his maw was open, his mammoth body extended as Marlana whirled. Her black eyes widened, hands rising.

“No!” But my arrow just skimmed her back. I braced for the loss. The ash. The cry of a wolf at his end.

But the wolf was thrown sideways, as if he’d been shot from a cannon.

In his place stood Kade, his lip curled, a hand around Marlana’s throat as she choked on a laugh. Black blood spurted from where he’d driven a blade to the hilt in her gut. Kade’s nostrils flared, his hands dissolving before her fingers could find his face.

A grunt of pain ripped from him, those black veins spiderwebbing back toward his eyes.

“Always did lack that killer instinct,” Marlana rasped, staggering back a step. Rose appeared beside Kingsley’s still form and vanished with him just as quickly.

But I was rapt. Horrified.

Because Kade was disintegrating—and his eyes were only for me.

Blue like the teal of the sea.

Shadows poured from the necromancer as ash ate away at his skin, a green mist swirling in spindling fingers that scrambled over the ground like spiders. “I’m not him.”

“I know,” I breathed.

“Run.” One quick nod. That’s all I got before he snapped his gaze back to Marlana.

Marlana, whose eyes flew wide when Kade turned his face up to the rain as ashes peeled away his flesh. As his lip curled back in a sinister smile. As his magic spiraled in a whirlpool at his center. The world tilted. Swayed. As though Kade had become his own gravitational pull, everything within his radius reached for him, tugging at my center as though his power would consume us all.

Like the reapers in Chicago. Horrified understanding had me barking, Shields! down the line as Marlana threw up a wall of shadows, a scream ripping from her throat as she shifted into the gray⁠—

—and the world exploded.

Blythe

“Now, gentlemen, that’s no way to treat your future queen, is it?”

The world was rocking—I wasn’t entirely certain whether it was me or the palace shuddering beneath my knees. All I knew was that Moros’ pale face came in and out of focus as he flashed a smile I was certain had been charming at some point.

A smile that splintered like glass beneath a flung stone when the guards holding me did nothing. “Forgive them, Princess.” With a sigh, he marched toward the throne as the beams above us cracked and splintered. He set the crown atop its plush onyx seat before turning back for me. Moros extended a hand, his expression a sad mimicry of a grin—the muscles trapped on a marionette. “They forget themselves.”