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I couldn’t breathe as I felt the beginnings of something, something—

Clades turned from us to look over the gathered Infernari. When he swiveled back to us, he gave a curt nod. “Very well,” he said, pulling out a blade. “Jame Asher, you are hereby sworn—as it is writ in your blood, which you give to us willingly—to be guardians to the Infernari and never bring us harm...”

Aecora lifted her palms and formed a glass sphere the size of a grapefruit—the quantity of blood needed to curse me to death, should I break my oath—leaving a quarter-sized hole in the top. She handed the container to Clades.

I offered my arm, and this didn’t feel like defeat. It felt like hope. Hope that I might be freed from the vendetta that had ridden me for two years, the hate that had shackled my mind and my heart.

Holding the sphere, Clades touched the cold blade to a vein in my forearm, still chanting, “...and in return, we are sworn to you, Jame Asher, as is witnessed here at the ninth portal, to never bring you harm, and so henceforth shall we be allies, bound by your blood and our oaths, for the rest of our days—”

“I will not make that oath,” spat a voice from the far side of the cavern.

Clades backed off the blade, looking up to see who had spoken.

A demon rushed out of the crowd with superhuman speed, bloodred eyes blazing like embers.

The creature moved so swiftly I never even had time to react. I only had a split-second to make out his face—the portal master, Fidel—before he plunged a dagger into my abdomen.

I felt the blade part skin, heard the wet, slick sound of it meeting flesh.

And then came the pain.

I grunted and doubled over around the burning agony.

The demon held me close, his hand still wrapped around the hilt of his weapon as he hissed in my ear, “I willnevermake that oath.”

Payback for cutting off his hands and head, torturing him, and vaporizing him with bullets.

I heard screaming. The most beautiful voice in the worldscreaming. It sounded as though she were the one dying.

Fidel yanked the dagger from the wound. Immediately, blood began to flow from it, oozing between my fingers. He drove it again into my neck.

I choked on my own blood, my eyes sightless for a second.

Lana’s screams turned into a war cry and she tackled Fidel to the ground. They landed in a heap, grappling and spraying up bone fragments.

“Lana...” I toppled sideways, wincing and stemming the blood flow with my palm.

We’d almost had peace. Almost. And then the demons had to go and do that.

For two years, I’d been hunting Infernari. Creatures that when fueled by their lethal magic, were strong as tanks and nearly unkillable. For two years, I’d outsmarted them off sheer wit alone.

I’d almost started to think I was invincible.

But in the end, all it took was a nick to the carotid artery. In the end, when you stripped away our machines, our will to fight, our cunning, our insatiable hunger, we humans were fragile, fragile things.

I would bleed out in two minutes.

Hell, I deserved it.

Other demons joined the fray and wrestled Fidel away from me. The brawl quickly turned violent, as some defended the portal master and others defended Lana, and then others defended those defending the first ones.

Lana crawled free and knelt over me, tears streaming down her cheeks. “No, no, no,” she moaned, cupping my face. One of her tears hit my cheek. “Wait, let me try to heal you...I can heal you.”

“Lana, no—” Blood bubbled into my throat, and I coughed it up, felt it slip down my chin. More of it pumped out of my neck with each beat of my heart.

Messy way to go.

As I watched, I saw her lock her panic away until she was nothing more than a war medic.