She was so focused on holding the illusion, she didn’t hear a word Finn said as he spoke in a casual, friendly tone to the guards at the gates.

But then the man was asking for his I.D., and another was coming around to the passenger’s-side door and shining a flashlight in Ivy’s face.

“Name,” the guard snapped.

Ivy gave the name of the woman she was disguised as.

“I.D.,” he demanded.

She handed over the fake I.D. Tanner had given her.

Loren’s heart was pounding, but she held firm to her illusions and kept her expression calm and unbothered as the guard shone a light on her next.

“Name,” he demanded.

She gave it.

“I.D.”

Her hand didn’t tremble as she took out the I.D. card and gave it to the guard. He looked it over with his flashlight, then handed it back.

“They’re good,” he declared, lowering the light. “Let them through.”

Loren loosed the breath in her lungs.

A buzzer sounded, and the gates swung open. Finn drove through?—

Her magic fooled the spells, too. The thick, impenetrable spells of Blackwater Penitentiary…the spells that had never once been tricked, breached…

She had fooled them.

And they were in. Holy gods, they were in.

They did it. Shedid it.

As the gates swung shut behind them, Loren dropped the illusions with a pained gasp. She curled over herself, her knee bouncing, arms clutching her chest. Her racing heart.

Lace rubbed her back.

Finn glanced at her in the rear-view, looking as concerned as he was stunned.

“Are you okay?” Ivy asked, twisting in her seat.

“Yeah,” Loren gritted out. But she was fatigued. Her white magic was fully drained, and she knew she would not be able to use it again. Not tonight.

They were on their own.

Blackwater Penitentiary loomed like a leviathan, the building so tall it seemed to blend in with the sky. Finn drove the SUV to the staff parking lot, where they all prepared to face the horrors that lay within.

The rattlingof chains and the pounding of boots were the only sounds slicing through the quiet as Darien followed Glen through the prison. There were two guards in front of him and two behind, the latter nudging him in the back with their guns as cells upon cells upon cells passed by.

They led him out of death row—into a different wing of the prison, where the cells had bars he could see through. Prisoners paced in the cramped spaces, others shouting and swearing as they passed.

Darien slowed as he caught sight of a male hellseher twitching and pacing, his eyes black. There were dark lines in the surrounding skin.

Stage Three Tricking. Not even the prison was safe from the Venenum virus that was coming to devour their world.

A gun jabbed him in the back. “Keep walking.”

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