1. One

One

I pushed the strands of silver hair that had escaped my braid from my face and adjusted my sword on my hip. I squinted at the orange and red horizon as the burning sun set over the calm seas.

There it was. Valeria’s estate.

“My spies were right.” Quillon slung his rifle over his back and straightened the collar of his long gray coat. His amethyst eyes, left visible by his black silk mask, flicked to Cyrus. “The wards are down.”

Cyrus nodded. The golden dusk light caught his light blond hair, making it shine like the runes that flared to life on his polished armor.

“Good. But we can’t be too careful. I want everyone behind me when we disembark.” He scanned the deck and took a deep breath. “Ari!”

Ari dropped his invisibility glamour, just a few feet from Cyrus. His heavy cloak billowed in the strong sea wind, and his hood draped over his head, concealing his face.

“I want you scouting ahead. You can move faster than anyone else, especially if there are any residual wards.” Cyrus lowered his voice. “Go now. Come back immediately if there’s any sign of trouble, otherwise we’re pulling into the docks.”

Ari’s glamour slipped over his body, concealing his cloaked form in purple mana before shadows engulfed him, and he disappeared.

Quillon had allowed his stubble to grow out, and he smoothed his dark, trimmed beard as he surveyed the water ahead.

Felix twirled the ties of his robe with his inked fingers, his amber eyes on his bare feet. The wind caught a lock of his black, slicked-back hair. His visions had slowed since the battle over the well. Either the threads of fate were calming down or Rava, the Raven Ancient, was too weak to send the SOS. Hopefully, it was the former. I didn’t mind. I couldn’t handle any more dark, mysterious visions of the future. With the Aether growing weaker and the reaper, Enoch, still MIA, I had too much to worry about in the present already.

Skye and Shael stood behind me. Their warring elemental auras, like fire and ice, licked against my skin.

We stood in silence as the estate grew larger on the horizon. I cocked my head. It wasn’t what I’d expected. Less boiling lava and creepy fog. It was eerily … normal. For a rich Daevasi estate, anyway. Expansive platforms of lush gardens and tall buildings spread over the water around an imposing stone castle. Seabirds circled above the garden.

A light, burning touch slid across my bare arms as Shael embraced me from behind. I smiled as he rested his chin on my shoulder.

“What do you think we’ll find?” He asked.

“I don’t know.” A chill ran down my spine despite Shael’s intense heat. I shivered and leaned into his furnace of a body. “I’m still not sure I want to find out.”

But we needed to. It was time to finish this.

I bit my lip and glanced behind us at the fleet of Eqiidan and Rotuuni warships that followed in our wake, black smoke and white steam rising from their stacks. Draqaar had been eerily quiet since the battle at the well in the Sea of Manandi. Some believed we’d beaten them, driven them to a dark corner. But I knew Sebastian better than anyone. He would never give up, and something told me that the corruption inside him would only fuel him.

He was as stubborn as me. Almost.

Sebastian’s mad grin was still burned into the back of my eyelids. I saw it every time I closed my eyes.

Soon, you’ll come to me.

He was wrong. I would never leave the Aegis men. I would never join him. Even the corruption he’d infected me with didn’t change that.

With all my guys close, their powerful auras filling my lungs and buffeting my skin, the corruption sank deeper until it was just a cold, gnawing hunger in the pit of my stomach.

I ran my fingers over the braided metal of my old bloodforged choker. After seeing what hunter weapons did to Sebastian’s corrupt mana, I figured it could keep my own corruption at bay. The bloodforged iron dampened some of the worst effects of the corruption, but it was always there. Waiting.

Valeria’s docks stretched before us. Long metal grate walkways where a few small ships still moored. They must have lost all their warships in the Sea of Manandi. Our ship’s engine slowed as sailors threw ropes, catching them around poles. They heaved us flush to the dock and tossed a ladder over the side.

A flash of silver below caught my eye. My hand flew to Ted, my trusty bennu whip, holstered on my thigh.

Corruption surged through my blood.

Silver hair, down to his chin now, stirred in the breeze. He smiled and walked behind a stack of barrels.

Sebastian?

Darkness narrowed my vision.

He was here. All of this was his fault.

I’d kill him.

I slipped out of Shael’s arms and vaulted over the railing. I barely heard Cyrus’s exasperated shout before my boots hit the dock, cushioned by a puff of air. I’d been getting better at elemental magic. I could even hold my own against the twins in our sparring matches.

“Charge!” Shael let out an excited whoop and followed, landing beside me. He conjured a fireball the size of a beach ball and held it high above his head with both hands.

Cyrus climbed down the ladder at lightning speed and caught up with us. He pulled his runeswords from the sheaths on his back. They flared with golden light as the runes carved into the blades filled with bennu magic.

“I said I wanted everyone behind me.” He pointed a blade at me. “We’re in enemy territory, not the palace canals.”

My eyes darted to the barrels, but there was nothing there. “I—I thought I saw something.”

“So, you ran to it?” Cyrus shook his head and took the lead. “Gods help me,” he mumbled under his breath.

Shael and I shared a look before he extinguished his fireball, and we fell behind our captain. Ari emerged out of the shadows next to me while the others came down the ladder. Soldiers poured from the other ships, now docked, too.

Was it overkill? Maybe. But we’d learned to never underestimate Valeria and Sebastian.

The soldiers followed us in loose formation as we made our way up the docks.

As we neared the wrought-iron fence surrounding the gardens, the wind shifted. I covered my nose with my hand. I knew that smell. Bile rose up my throat. Rotting flesh.

The gate groaned as Cyrus opened it, and he paused. Bloated corpses littered the overgrown grass, dried pools of black blood soaked into the soil below them. Black and white seabirds perched on decomposing limbs, picking the bones.

My lip curled. I hated birds.

“There’s so many,” Shael said as he scanned the manicured flowerbeds strewn with bodies.

Cyrus entered the garden and inspected the nearest body, shooing the birds away. “They’ve been dead a long time.”

I walked along the stone path. Another body lay across it. I knelt beside it and batted a fly away. Black mana clung to the rotting flesh. My fingernails bit into my palms as my own corruption rose to the surface, urging me to absorb this. My bloodforged iron choker burned against my skin as it struggled to hold my magic back.

“Since the battle?” Skye asked.

I blew out a breath and turned from the body. “Longer than that. These were undead before they were dead-dead.”

“Valeria and Sebastian left them here?”

“If Sebastian’s magic sustained them, maybe the undead couldn’t survive when they left. But where did they go?”

“Hopefully, they left a clue.” Cyrus started walking down the path to the castle which was casting the garden in shadow. “My team and Quillon, with me. Everyone else, fan out.”

We climbed the stone staircase to the castle’s grand doors as the soldiers filed down the other walkways to the rest of the estate. Ari pulled out a lock pick, but Cyrus grasped the shiny brass handle. It was unlocked. He pushed it open and took a cautious step inside, his runesword raised in front of him.

Tapestries and paintings covered the walls, sculptures of muscular, naked men lined the entrance, and intricately woven rugs spanned the space. The inside looked a lot like Quillon’s palace. Except for all the dead bodies.

Felix whistled. “She may be a psychopath, but she certainly has a knack for interior decorating.”

The others spread through the grandiose foyer while I knelt beside the body of a woman. A single deep gash cut her throat. Red blood crusted the rug, and sparse purple mana hovered over her body. No corruption. She was daeva, but her magic hadn’t been strong.

Quillon wrinkled his nose. “These must have been her slaves.”

I shook my head, a spark of rage igniting in my belly. “Why kill them?”

Cyrus pressed his lips into a grim line and surveyed the room, littered with the bodies of Valeria’s servants. “Wherever Valeria went, she didn’t take them. And she didn’t want them leaving the estate alive.”

I took a steadying breath and splayed my fingers above the woman’s body. What remained of her mana slowly rose, funneling into my hand and joining the steady thrum of power in my veins.

Skye propped his hands on his hips and frowned. “I’ll never get used to that.”

I winked at him and rose to my feet, moving on to the corpse of a weak earth elemental. I sought out the thin cloud of mana that clung to her body.

“Enchantress,” Shael squeezed my shoulder while the others explored the rest of the building, “you don’t have to do this.”

My jaw clenched painfully as corruption roiled in my stomach. “Yes, I do.”

“It’s not your—”

“The Aether is dying,” I snapped.

Shael flinched.

I shrugged off his touch. “You haven’t seen what I’ve seen.”

He hadn’t seen the Aether crumbling, everything turning to dust. He hadn’t felt the Aether’s desperate pull, sucking life from his body. I shook my head and moved to the next one. Since the battle a couple months ago, I’d been bringing any mana I could find to the Aether.

But it only seemed to get worse.

The others returned to the entry hall, their expressions grim.

“It’s empty.” Quillon inspected one of the more risqué paintings on the wall. “I don’t detect any survivors.”

Cyrus nodded. “Where’s Ari? The room at the end of the hall’s locked.”

“A ward?” Quillon tore his gaze from the passionate couple depicted in the painting.

“Perhaps,” Cyrus said. “That would explain why my runes aren’t working.”

“I can pick the lock, and if there’s a spell, I’ll just absorb it.” I stood. “Easy-peasy.”

“I don’t know.” Cyrus inspected me in the way he inspected everything. Taking in every detail. My leather combat boots, the hunter blades covered in blood on my hips, then up to my windblown silver hair and matching eyes. “Are you sure you’re—”

“I can do it.” My magic was stronger than ever.

Cyrus and Shael shared a look, but I didn’t stick around for another lecture. I strode down the hallway Cyrus had returned from, passing the dark wood doors that lined each side until I reached the one at the end. A shiny silver snake coiled around the doorknob, threatening to bite anyone who tried to enter. Purple and black mana shifted over the burnished surface like a shimmering oil slick.

I felt for it but kept my barriers up. Icy tendrils of darkness crawled over my skin. Corruption. Daeva mana trailed behind it, whispering to me, commanding me to leave the lock undisturbed.

Absorbing the spell would mean absorbing more corrupt mana. I couldn’t seem to get rid of it, no matter what I did. It stuck to me like thick tar, clogging up my channels and making my insides itch.

Quillon and the others caught up to me. He walked past me and lifted a hand. A thread of his purple magic reached for the doorknob.

“Don’t!” I grabbed his hand, wrenching it down.

Quillon raised his eyebrows. Six gazes burned into me.

I wasn’t sure how corruption worked, really. If Quillon tried to undo the ward, who was to say the corruption wouldn’t infect him? I couldn’t risk that. At least I could manipulate mana. I knew how to resist the corruption.

I cleared my throat. “I just mean ... I sense other magic there, too. It’ll be easier if I absorb it.” I shrugged and stepped between him and the door. “No biggie.”

Biting my lip, I reached for the mana. It funneled into my hand like a tornado of black smoke. It polluted my blood and flooded my body with ice and heat. The corruption rose to the surface, pressing at my barriers, urging me to release it. To use its potent power.

I took a shaky breath and wiped the sweat from my brow before retrieving my lock-picking kit from a pocket strapped to my thigh. I tried to ignore the others.

Ari had told Quillon he’d felt the darkness in my mind. The corruption. The others knew something was off. I couldn’t hide it forever.

After some highly skilled finagling, the lock gave way with a click. The snake’s scales were smooth against my palm as I twisted the handle and opened the door.

It was an office of some sort. Slivers of sunlight cut through the gaps in the heavy velvet curtains over an arched window. Scrolls and books filled the shelves, and loose papers littered the floor. A large, polished wood desk sat in the center of the room, a pair of plush leather chairs facing it.

Paper crumpled under my boots as I took a few cautious steps into the room. Felix darted between my legs as a black cat before perching on the messy desk.

He cocked his head at a vintage-looking globe. Red pins covered the surface.

I spun the globe and frowned. “This is Earth.”

“Why does a Daevasi woman have a globe of Earth?” Shael asked from an armchair.

The globe’s spinning slowed, and my heart sank. The pins weren’t random. I knew this pattern. I’d seen it on the map in my dad’s study every day growing up.

I touched a pin in the Northern California woods. “They’re hunter compounds.”

“That’s weird.” Shael leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “What do they want with hunters? I thought Sebastian hated them.”

“He does.”

Skye’s gaze snapped to me from the scroll he’d unfurled. “You said Enoch’s disappearance might have something to do with hunters. Do you think Sebastian and Valeria know that? Could they be looking for the missing reaper, too?”

Whatever they wanted with hunters, it couldn’t be good.

I turned from the desk to the seven-foot statue behind me. “We need to go to Earth.”

“Enchanter, we’ve been over this.” Cyrus sighed and ran a hand through his carefully styled blond hair. He’d cut it a few days ago, and the pointed silver tips on his ears glinted in a shaft of sunlight. “The Aether’s too unstable to risk teleporting. The others can’t survive a second in the Aether if they get stuck.”

“That’s why we need to find Enoch.” I took a step toward him, raising my chin to meet his icy gaze. “The Aether’s not going to get any more stable on its own, and I can’t do it alone.”

No matter how much mana I harvested from the dead and brought to the Aether, it didn’t seem to matter. The Aether was dying, and we needed a reaper.

He lowered his head, so his face was inches from mine. “It’s too big a risk.”

I ground my teeth together and pushed mana into my teleportation rune on the inside of my wrist. “See you back at the palace.”