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“Loren!”Ivy screamed. She dropped to her knees beside her as Loren tried and failed to sit up. “Loren, what’s happening?What’s happening?”

She tried to reply, but she couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think coherently. A little voice in her memory told her she was going into hypoglycaemic shock—a drop in blood sugar to levels below normal. She recalled going through this when she was a child, but many years had passed since then, and during that time she had forgotten how it felt, what to do. The tunnel kept getting longer and darker, until she could scarcely see?—

“Can someone help?”Ivy shrieked. “Please—she has a blood sugar condition! She needs help!Please.”

The murmur of a male voice—asking Ivy questions.

“I don’t know—I don’t know what it’s called!” Ivy stammered. “Yes, she has a tattoo. On her arm—her forearm.Thatone—yes.”

Fingers circled Loren’s arm, pulling it straight. A man knelt before her, his face a blur. She thought she must’ve said something—a name, maybe—because the man suddenly looked up at her.

“Can you hear me?” His question was a never-ending echo. “Miss, can you hear me?” It was the paramedic, scanning her medical tattoo through the rips in her bodysuit with a handheld device. Red light passed across her forearm, and her tattoo—the snake wrapped around a rod—responded by brightening to a blinding shade of white. Just below the base of the rod, rows of numbers and symbols that contained Loren’s medical history appeared in her skin like computer code, glowing brighter than the rest of the tattoo.

“Please.” Ivy was sobbing. Hysterical. “She can’t die!”

Darien can’t die,Loren amended mentally, knowing Ivy felt the same way—knew Ivy was really begging the paramedic to save herbrother’slife.

Something sharp bit into her arm. Loren flinched and tried to pull away, but the paramedic held firm.

“This is a glucagon injection,” a voice explained to Ivy as Loren’s heavy eyelids rose and fell. “It will cause her liver to release stored sugar into her blood. It’s what we give to patients who are unable to eat or drink anything.”

More voices. Movement in the ambulance. More faces peered at her, but she couldn’t see any of them. They were all blurs.

“Keep breathing, Loren,” Ivy was saying. Icy cold fingers grazed her cheek with a comforting touch. “You have to keep breathing?—”

‘I’m coming, baby,’said a deep, rich voice, sounding close and far all at once. Her heart ached for the person the voicebelonged to, and a soft, strangled sound—a sob—floated off her lips. ‘I’m coming. Hold on.’

That voice—whether reality or a dream—was the last thing she heard before her eyelids fell shut.

11

The Purple House

YVESWICH, STATE OF KER

“It was you.”Darien’s every thought short circuited as he faced Donovan in the empty living room while Skoll, Don’s wolf Familiar, prepared to square off against Bandit. The two snarled at each other, bodies lowered and hackles raised.“You’redoing this.”

Darien had figured it out the minute he saw that sick smile on his uncle’s face. Somewhere between here and the waterfall, he’d lost his Avertera talisman, which must’ve allowed Donovan to track him, bait him. But as forhowDon was doing this—how he’d forced him to walk into a memory…the sound of his sister screaming…that was a mystery he hadn’t figured out yet.

“That’s right,” Donovan confirmed, his casual tone so at odds with his evil stare. “I thought Roman would be the first to run into my trap, but it turns out it’syouwho’s the bigger idiot. Though I must say…” He began to circle Darien, a predator rounding up prey, shadows swirling about his thumping boots. Darien refused to blink, forever turning in place so he faced his uncle head-on. First rule in fighting was never turn your back on your opponent. “I like it better this way,” Don said. “How else would I get the chance to spend some quality time with my favorite nephew?”

“What do you want from me?” Darien demanded.

“I want to see if the rumors are true.”

“What rumors?”

“All of them,” he said plainly. “You’ve made quite a name for yourself, Darien. Head of the Seven Devils… Undefeated champion in every fighting ring you’ve walked into… Some even say you’re the best fighter on the west coast. That’s quite the claim, wouldn’t you agree?” His smile widened as he came to a standstill, hands hanging loosely at his sides. How many times had Roman been struck by those hands? How many times had Paxton flinched away from them? Don concluded, “I’d like to test that theory.”

“You baited me here for a fist fight?”

Don’s cruel grin fell, black eyes glinting in the dark. “You murdered my brother, Darien.”

Darien’s lungs emptied as if he’d been punched in the gut.

“That’s right,” Don gritted out. “I know it was you. I’ve known this whole time. Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting for this moment? How patient I’ve been? If I’m being honest, it’s been torture—knowing you were only a few hours away, taking over as Head of Angelthene’s Houses, while my brother greeted the afterlife.” His shadows stirred, his face suffused with hatred. “Torture.”The last word was a bark that Skoll echoed with one of his own.

“Why wait?” Darien challenged, stalling. “You could’ve come to Angelthene.”