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Holy shit.

It worked.

Max cheered, the girls whooping, his first grin of this wretched night breaking like the sun across his face.

Dominic drummed his hand on the truck canopy in victory. “Got him!”

“Hell yes,” Max panted. But his smile was soon fading.

Because they were far from safe. Donovan was taken care of—for now. But the city was collapsing, and they were almost out of time.

And he hadn’t said a proper goodbye. Ivy, Tanner—he may never see them again. May never get a chance to mend his friendship with Darien.

And he had less than three hours to find Maya and get out of Yveswich, or he’d be as dead as the soldiers and pilots in that helicopter.

41

I-5

STATE OF KER

Parkedon the side of the I-5, Loren sat in Darien’s car. She had her door open to the night, her sneakered feet bouncing in the frozen dirt.

Gods, it was so cold out here, but she didn’t want to shut the door and miss out on anything important. Darien had left the car running, warm air blasting through the vents, her seat heater on high.

And she was still so cold. Even while drowning in his heavy jacket.

Lace stood by the front of the car, the burning tip of the cigarette she pinched between her fingers glowing a vibrant orange as she took a drag. Her worried gaze was fixed on Darien, who paced nearby on the shoulder of the road, phone to his ear. Arthur and Jack were still in the truck, their silhouettes masked by the magic spells and tint.

The others had roughly two hours to make it out of Yveswich, and that was only if the authorities obeyed Roark’s command to keep the forcefield down until then. Loren wasn’t feeling very optimistic, not after they’d already failed to do so once—and not when she knew that Roark was getting his orders from the imperator himself, who could overrule him at any time.

She stared at the phone cradled in her hands. She’d used Darien’s car charger for a few minutes before ripping the connector out, certain that she had changed her mind about using it. But she was already back to feeling undecided, her stomach melting into nausea.

When she checked the screen, she saw that the device had less than a ten percent battery charge and barely one bar of patchy service—just enough to maybe send a few messages, if she so decided.

Vehicles were pouring out of the city, headlights pulsing white. Every lane was full, drivers fighting to move faster as the homes they’d abandoned fell prey to a threat they knew nothing about.

Even out here, a ways beyond the forcefield, the darkness was pressing. But it was also nighttime, so it was hard to tell exactly how far the Void had spread. A thorough study of the damage would have to wait until morning, and by the looks of things they’d be gone by then.

She typed in her passcode, nails clicking on the screen, and pulled up her list of contacts as vehicle after vehicle drove by—quicker now, some moving with enough speed to shake the car.

She scrolled through her contacts. She didn’t have many. And before she’d met the Devils and had made more unlikely friends through their tight circle, she’d had even less. So it wasn’t hard to find the contact she was looking for. She so seldom messaged him that merely the sight of his name had her nausea tripling in intensity.

It spun completely out of control as she tapped the nameRoark Bright—neverDad—and hit the message icon.

A timid little voice in the back of her head told her she shouldn’t be bothering him. Especially when he was working—andespeciallytonight, when he was in the middle of a war zone. That voice had stalked her every waking moment since the dayshe was born. For twenty years, fear had dictated every step she’d taken in life, no matter how small.

Heroldlife. That was her old life. Not her new. Fear was no longer her god.

So she told that voice to go meet Ignis and typed up her message.

Because she didn’t know if she’d get another chance.

Because she was going to die before her twenty-first birthday, and she was determined to greet death with as few regrets as possible.

She would not pretend that Roark was a good father. He wasn’t—not even a little. But she could admit there were far worse parents out there than him. He’d taken Loren—a helpless mortal baby—in when surely no one else would have. Had given her a safe place to live for twenty years and—against all odds, in a world that routinely ridiculed and scorned her kind—had secured her an acceptance letter from her dream university.

And he’d pulled through and saved their butts tonight, which called for a thank-you, bare minimum.