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She vanished, blinking out of sight.

I held it together as Medusa took me through the portal to the Carving Glade, only to find the clearing barren.

I wasn’t even surprised.

Caer.

Traitor.

It explained why she was so panicked during my first vision of the white corridor.

I hated that Aidan had been right about her.

Alistair and Lia lingered nearby with Elio, the thrall Silv had brought here weeping over the piles of bone dust.

“The vampires…” I whispered. “They’re dead.”

With the huts gone, sunlight bathed the clearing. Caer had taken away their shelter.

My hands balled into fists. Things were shifting again, loyalties bouncing from here to there.

Man, I really needed a mistrock cig.

“What happens next?” I asked Medusa, pushing back the sorrow.

Where the hell would we be safe now?

Medusa put an arm around me. “I don’t know, sugar. I just don’t know. But this is the situation.”

After she explained the official declaration of war by the new human president, she opened another portal, getting us the hell away from Summer Forest.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Silvanus

Iwatched the army surround my burning onyx palace from a clifftop. Warchoppers circled the last of the eight scarlet spires, the other seven lying in ruin across the snowy fields below.

My palace in the Werewolf Domain’s most eastern tip—gone, the Heart of All riddled with sorrow.

There were so many dead that it took all my strength to keep standing.

I could only hope some escaped through the secret tunnels, as long as they weren’t compromised.

I thought of Paris, and of Caer climbing out of his body. What a horrifically strange sight, my poor elf enduring more hardship. I didn’t know what’d happened yet, but I got the impression she was no longer on our side.

I longed to hold him, be a safe space for him. But we could never be any of those things with the curse intact. And I couldn’t dwell on any of it now. I’d left him alone for his sake and the sake of my people. Now was the time for fighting, for amassing my own army to meet the threats in all directions—mortals, possibly still my own kind, Aidan, and those he touched and those who followed him.

Pushing down my emotions, I pondered my next move. Find survivors, feed Elio and Patti tonight, locate a safe place to amass my army.

New life prodded at me in soft supplication, asking for me to welcome it to the vampire fold. A body drained of blood, the vampire having given over their own blood to make the body one of us, as long as I granted approval. If not, the mortal would die.

I welcomed the new vampire. “Be one with me.”

He joined the Heart of All.

Moments later, more life requested to join. I allowed it, impressed with the quick influx. My vampires were busy, undeterred by sunlight and by being hunted.

Good. The more of us, the better. I would unite us all under the same banner.