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And the pink one, he realized. By some miracle, the one with the hot-pink braid had made it, too—injured but still breathing.

“Magenta,” Maya croaked. She dug the Elemental out of the rubble, where the rest of their friends lay in crushed pieces. She hooked her arms under Magenta’s shoulders and tugged her across the ground. Sat down and cradled her head in her lap. “Stay with me,” she was saying, her tone frantic. Pleading.“Magenta, stay with me.” Magenta was young—fourteen, at most. A child still.

With a grunt of pain, he pushed himself onto his hands and knees, a thick line of blood streaming out of his mouth like paint. His vision shimmered, the ground beneath him going in and out of focus.

It cost him the last of his strength, but he got to his feet. Swayed?—

“Max!” Maya shouted. Her voice echoed, over and over again. She eased Magenta’s head onto the ground, preparing to stand. “MAX!”

The ground tipped. Maya shot to her feet just as Max fell?—

“Max,”Dallas said, shaking his shoulder.

Max blinked the memory away.

They were out of the tunnels—walking the streets of Yveswich. It had taken them hours of blind stumbling, but they’d finally made it out of the dark shroud that was swallowing the metropolis like a monster’s mouth.

This section of the city seemed to have not been hit as badly by the Void, the street dark but still visible. How, Max had no clue. The sky was pitch black, the sun nowhere to be found, but if Max was calculating correctly, it had to be nearly midday.

Just ahead limped Maya and Magenta, conversing in Ilevyn. The pink Elemental’s arm was slung across MJ’s shoulders, her skin marbled with bruises. In the time in which their group had staggered through the streets, those two hadn’t said a word to anyone but each other.

Max was still trying to decide how to feel about that.

“You okay?” Dallas asked, stepping into Max’s vision. For a moment, he saw two of her, then three, her head haloed by a streetlight. He was still deaf in one ear, the other ringing. He wondered if the damage was permanent.

“I’m fine,” he said, his voice sounding lopsided. “Just trying to figure out where we are.” And how long he’d been out of it for.

Up ahead, the streets were packed with people. Cops, paramedics, firefighters, and ordinary citizens were everywhere, many of the latter injured and hysterical with fear. LED street-lamps lined the roads, white pooling across asphalt, and red and blue light bars flashed atop dozens of ambulances, fire trucks, and police cruisers. The lights were behaving…strangely. As if they were covered by a thick haze of fog or smoke, and constantly in danger of guttering out like flames.

“Look there,” Dallas said, pointing out a street sign. “North Financial District. That’s not far from Roman’s house, right?” She turned to him with eyes bright with hope, her copper ponytail catching on a warped wing.

He sighed. “I don’t know, Dal.” There were many things he didn’t know anymore—things he wasn’t sure he evenwantedto know. Such as where his family and friends were—which of them were alive…and which were dead. He didn’t think he could stomach it—seeing them if they were…gone. Nothing left of them but corpses. Burying the people he loved was something he hoped he never had to do. He’d rathertheyburyhim.

“It’s going to be okay, Max,” Dallas said. But her voice cracked when she said his name, her chin shaking. “Ithasto be.”

He cupped her face with a filthy hand. “It will,” he told her. Because it was what she needed to hear, even if it ended up not being true.

Max prayed that it would be—prayed to every deity of the Terran pantheon. If the others were dead… If he was the only survivor…

Gods, he couldn’t do it—life.He couldn’t live without them, couldn’t imagine a world without the other Devils.

As they limped down the crowded street, Max must’ve scanned nearly a hundred faces. People did the same to him, as they, too, searched for loved ones. Some sat on curbs, sipping hot chocolate or tea from paper cups, thermal blankets wrapped around them. Others had their vitals checked in ambulances, while the less fortunate were wheeled away on stretchers.

There were people from all walks of life here—vampires, werewolves, veneficae, humans, hellsehers. There was no division on a day like this. Today, they were just people, all of them in need. Funny how the walls came down when it felt like the world was ending.

Still no sign of anyone they knew. Max couldn’t decide if that was a good thing.

His ears started shrieking again. Blood rushed through his head, weighing it down. Roaring like a great flood of water.

Something wet dribbled down his lips. His chin. He cursed, pressing a fist over his nostrils to stop the bleeding.

Dallas reached out to steady him. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just another nosebleed.” He tipped his head back, blood trickling down his throat. “Maya!” he called. She was about a dozen paces away now, but she turned. “Hold up, I need a sec.”

“We can sit and rest for a bit,” Dallas offered.

He shook his head. “We have to find the others.” He wiped his nose on a clean part of his sleeve—the waffle shirt peeking through the rips in his black armor. “I’m fine—bleeding’s already stopped.”