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“I kept him small. A flicker instead of a flame.” The changeling’s black eyes slid to me. “Weak enough that Erlik looked past him. Strong enough that I could still feed.” It sighed like it found the taste of me sweet. “Could have fed for centuries.”

“Gross,” I grumbled. “I’m not a sippy pouch.” Even if the changeling had treated me like one.

Gunfire erupted, a sustained, crackling roar that rattled the windows and shook dust from the ceiling. Shouts followed, sharp and fragmented, too many voices overlapping to make out individual words. I heard Victor’s snarl, deep and feral, and Ezra’s answering howl cut through like a blade.

My heart lurched as I reached for Angel through the bond, stretched thin, frayed at the edges, but still there. Still alive. Moving. Fighting. Buying me time. I clung to our thread like a lifeline, even as the gunfire outside grew louder, closer. A window shattered somewhere in the house.

“Can’t keep the other children. Someone always comes looking for them.”

“Changelings bring mortal children to the otherworld and live their lives,” Remi muttered, his gaze flicking between me and the shadow-thing wearing my face. “But he couldn’t keep you because you were never a mortal child.”

“Rude. Am too. Or was...” I trailed off, frowning. What did that even mean? Had Lilith’s touch changed that? Rewritten whatever I’d been before she’d sunk her claws in?

Remi met my gaze. “Like me.”

“Half fae, you mean?”

“Child of the xian, born of eternal threads to weave fate,” the changeling said, its tone dropping into something almost reverent. “Deliciously dark.” Like I was some incredible dessert instead of a person. A seven-course meal it’d been picking at for decades.

I blinked at it. Then at Remi. Then back at the thing wearing my face and calling me tasty.

“Xian?”

“Immortals,” Remi offered with a shrug. “Explains your ability with the weave. And the whole juice box thing.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

The pieces clicked together slowly, Lilith’s touch, the way the weave bent around me, the reason the changeling couldn’t keep me, and why all of a sudden everyone wanted me. I wasn’t just some random human who’d woken up with magic one day. I was magic all along. The changeling had been taking pieces of me to keep me small, and hidden, but only for its own benefit.

“So let me get this straight.” I held up a hand, ticking off fingers. “I’m not fully human. I’m not fully dead, maybe because I was never truly human to begin with. And apparently, I’m some kind of immortal-adjacent snack bar meant to control fate? How do I opt out of the god-tier game level? I’d rather have the easy storyline.”

The changeling smiled with too many teeth. “Gave you mortality,” it offered waving at the motes.

“How kind of you to bite off more than you can chew just to save my sanity. Not. And Erlik wants me for the same reason.” But again, if Erlik wanted me, why hadn’t the changeling just handed me over.

I met the changeling’s black eyes. “Erlik doesn’t want me at all. It wants you.”

Zhenjun had mentioned he thought Erlik devoured the universe. And since changelings ate anything mortal, hunting them really was eating everything, soul by soul, thread by thread.

A volley of gunfire ripped through the night outside, closer now, rattling the windows in their frames. Something heavy slammed against the front of the house, and I felt the foundations groan, felt the floor shudder beneath my feet. Dust rained from the ceiling. A crack spider-webbed across the plaster above our heads.

What the hell were they doing out there? They were supposed to be surviving, not giving me a front-row seat to their last stand.

I spun toward the changeling, rage burning through the last of my patience, and I launched myself at it, surprised when my hands found solid purchase on shadow that should have been intangible.

The changeling’s black eyes widened, but the instant my fingers sank into its form, a vision crashed through me. For a moment, I wondered if it was one of those stolen memories, like the psych ward, or like Jason, but it didn’t feel like the past.

It felt like now.

“See, Jude Alexander Holt,” the changeling demanded.

A sedan idled at the curb outside our apartment building. Adrian Holt, the man I’d thought for years was my father, leaned against the driver’s side door, hands in his pockets like he wouldn’t hurt a fly. He towered over Ivan, and as I looked closer, I realized his threads were a matted mess of rot and decay.

Ivan sucked in a deep breath, steeling himself for whatever he’d decided he had to do.

“Ivy,” I whispered, instantly afraid.

Don’t follow. Ivan’s voice echoed in my mind, the words he’d left me with before I’d walked out the door.