Prologue

Shadows and embers engulfed me, a twisting wind lashing my hair against my cheeks and whipping in my dress as I was pulled through the portal after my brother.

In front of me yawned a churning brown abyss, like the earth was swallowing me whole. Maybe it was. At its center, so many hundreds of feet below, was a red, molten glow. It was almost the same shade as the demon Arcadis's eyes, which had widened with ferocious incredulity at my stowaway presence. His grip tightened in my brother's hair, yanking him away from me. Towards the portal's terminal end.

Imprisonment, or worse, in the Unseelie Court.

Marten's face was contorted in pain, his robes stained a color darker than black from where the hellhound claw protruded from his shoulder. It was hindering him somehow, both physically and magically, and he couldn't resist when Arcadis wrapped his free arm around his chest, dragging him down. But he wasn't senseless in his pain—his hand was clamped tightly around mine. His brown eyes were wide, desperate and pleading for me not to let go.

I wouldn't.

But it would be easier for me to haul him away from Arcadis if I had the use of both hands.

Risking a glance behind me, I discovered both what was holding me back and what was impeding Arcadis's descent.

Shari.

The quiet crafter had my hand in a death grip in both of hers, the overlong sleeves of her sweater billowing about her elbows and revealing pale, slender arms. Behind her wing-tip glasses, her brown eyes were so wide with fright they were ringed in white. But she held on to me in more ways than one.

A thin, glittering red thread I'd only seen once before, on that overlook in the Tussock woods where we'd put our hearts and souls into crafting the Hunting Spell, sprouted from the center of her chest. So much like her crochet yarn, it wound down her arms, over our joined hands, and buried itself into my iron cuff.

An anchor. A lifeline.

I could feel its strength and the will behind it. Though terrified, Shari would not let another person fall prey to a demon ever again.

Behind her, Grandmother fisted Shari's sweater hem in her talon-like grip, her eyes blazing with the green light of her magic. Then it was Dad gripping Grandmother's hand in a chain of family members that terminated in a halo of scratchy gray light.

The sky! That was the gray of the November storm I was seeing and the bare limbs of the naked trees cross-hatching the expanse.

Somehow Shari and the Circle of Nine were keeping the portal open.

But it was Arthur, legs planted wide in the center of that gray halo, teeth bared in a silent roar, the corded muscles in his arms straining, who fought to reel us all back to the mortal realm. Lewellyn and Uncle Badger were on either side of him, holding on to his thick thighs and rooting him to the ground with their body weight in case his strength failed.

"Marten," I shouted, though the churning wind of the portal snatched my words away. We had to hurry.

One hand wasn't going to free my brother from that horrid demon. Yet when I called on that great tree of magic within me, only a fraction of it surfaced. Not that it wasn't eager to obey, but something was blocking it. An external force, given the pressure I sensed suddenly crushing in on me from all sides. Like deep water, the kind where no light penetrates.

Gritting my teeth, I fought against that pressure, and thin tendrils of my green magic leaked from my fingertips, wreathing around our joined hands in imitation of Shari's red life essence thread. I already knew they wouldn't hold like I wanted them to.

"Thistle thorns," I shouted once again at my brother, "I need you to actively participate in your own rescue. Help me!"

From the way his face twisted, I knew he was trying, but the hellhound claw in his shoulder somehow wouldn't let him summon his magic. Marten flexed his arm, though, attempting to pull himself towards me.

Arcadis struck. In one fluid movement, the demon traded Marten's hair for the hellhound claw, his other hand tightening into a fist and cracking me across the jaw.

My chin snapped to the side as fireworks ignited across my vision, but my grip didn't falter. Dad had taught us never to release a weapon no matter how badly we were beaten. In this case, it wasn't a weapon I held, but something equally dear.

Marten. My arrogant, insufferable brother. But he hadn't always been that way. And… he had taken a vow—willingly—to sacrifice and feed his magic to that demonic half-heart in order to protect me. From what, I still didn't know, but none of that mattered anyway if we couldn't get free of this portal dragging us towards that hellish maw far below.

Groaning, I fought to regain my senses above the roaring wind and the strain in my shoulders and the pain that now ignited in my hand; Arcadis was stabbing me with his talon-like fingernails, the ring on his finger twinkling madly with each strike.

Marten's head snapped back, the wind stealing away his scream as the demon used the hellhound claw as a handle to steady himself as he pawed at my hand, trying to peel my fingers back. But I wouldn't let my brother go. At least, I wouldn't have if the blood from all the claw marks hadn't oozed between my fingers and soaked my palm.

"No," Marten cried as my hand slipped, half the tendrils bursting into glittering green light and dissipating into the churning brown around us.

Arcadis bared his sharp white teeth into a feral sneer as he seized hold of two of my weakening fingers and wrenched.

I yelped, and there was a frantic scrabbling of my hand and its magic vines. I had to catch hold of something—anything—before Arcadis and Marten plummeted below and my family yanked me back to the moonflower grove.

The demon snarled as my vines lashed around his wrist, retethering him to me and the chain of witches and once again halting his decent with his captive. Battling against the increasing pressure that seemed wholly intent on snuffing out my magic, I strained towards the demon.

My bloody hand latched on to his, and I squeezed hard, frantic not to let go. A new wound wept from where that twinkling gold ring on his finger bit into my palm, red soaking our skin.

"Troublesome witch," Arcadis spat, rearing back.

His booted foot lodged in the cleft between my neck and outstretched hand, and stomped down.

The magic vines snapped, my hand sloughing off his… and taking his twinkling golden ring with me.

Arcadis's crimson eyes exploded into red flames as he lunged after me with a roar. "No! "

But the churning brown shadows of the portal plucked him and Marten away just as my family hauled me back towards the gray light of the mortal realm.

I landed hard on my backside, but I only mourned my bruised tailbone for a second before I lurched onto my hands and knees and scurried after the edges of the rapidly closing portal. The swirling earth stilled with a tiny exhale that jettisoned the dry leaves into the air and nothing else. Trembling, I just stared at the earth as the leaves fluttered back down to the ground, covering the location my brother had disappeared like flowers at a grave site.

The quiet tension of the forest snapped as my mother howled, dropping to her knees. Her sobs brought tears to my own eyes, finally overflowing and dripping off my cheeks to splatter in the dirt.

Marten . I'd lost him.

Overhead, the sky finally opened, the rain surprisingly gentle.

It was cold, though, and I shivered. A bone-chilling cold entered me, but it had nothing to do with the rain.

I'd let my brother go.

I started when a furry head butted against my elbow—Sawyer. He looked up at me with wide amber eyes, his wounded mouth crusted with blood at each corner, his striped fur singed and missing in places. The parasite bracelet he'd torn from my wrist had not been kind to him. Stifling a sob, I hauled the little tomcat into my arms. I had my face buried in his fur when a warm hand melded over my shoulder. It didn't attempt to pull me upright or away from my cat, only sought to fill me with comfort. And I did feel it; it was warmer and more nourishing than the springtime sun finally breaking through winter's chill.

"Get away from her, bear," a witch snapped. Which witch, I couldn't be sure. My hearing was still overwhelmed with the phantom rush of the portal's winds. Of my own heartbeat that was crashing like storm-churned waves upon the shore. Of Sawyer's soothing purr.

Arthur didn't move. Didn't even acknowledge he'd heard.

"Why you—"

"He was the one who brought you all back," Lewellyn snarled, "or have you so easily forgotten you would be lost without him? And someone give him another robe before the women faint!"

"Be quiet, you yapping dog, before I—"

"That is enough," Grandmother's voice lashed. "I… I need to think."

Dimly, I was aware that my family was recovering and regrouping, all nine— eight —voices filling the air simultaneously as they frantically tried to figure out what to do next. The cacophony of their panic and desperation bludgeoned me back to the present.

The Circle of Nine was broken.