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“Get the fuck away—” Bryon growled, his voice so rich with dominance and rage that Maia shrank back. “What the chasm?”

Yeah,what the chasmsummed it up perfectly.

She’d expected a saint in the doorway, maybe Ismene’s bestie or psychotic Enryr. Instead three children stood blinking at them.

“Maia Isellien Nysavion,” they said in unison. “Come with us.”

CHAPTER TWO

Saints, that name. Not Delakore, not the name she’d grown up using as Ismene’s niece.Nysavion,the name of a princess born in Sainsa. Cold spread further. Maia wanted to tell these creepy kids that wasn’t her name but she didn’t have the nerve.

They turned to face her with syncopated movements, like different parts of the same machine, one small and fair, one dark-complexioned and tall with a halo of curls, and one with bronze colouring that reminded her painfully of Azrail, but the boy’s eyes were brown rather than sapphire blue. All boys. All around the same age. Far too young to be in a place like this.

Bryon edged closer to Maia, his whole body bristling. He was fucking massive, bigger even than Ark, like a brick wall made into fae. If the brick wall was made of solid muscle. “Keep your distance,” he warned the children, but he looked to be as uncomfortable as Maia with the fact these were kids.

If they’d been fully grown, she’d be fighting right now. Her right hook would have broken their noses. Butchildren…she couldn’t hurt a single one of them, even if she cringed when they flowed another step closer.

“You will come with us and serve Enryr.”

“I don’t fucking think so,” Maia laughed shakily, suddenly glad she hadn’t been locked up alone. He might have been unfriendly and a dick, but Bryon was like a lifeline, a single bolt of comfort in the blackness of her fear. She had a fair idea what Enryr meant byservinghim, and no way in the dark, icy pit of the otherworld was she going anywhere near him.

“That’s close enough,” Bryon growled, the power in his voice ripping their air from Maia’s lungs and doingnothingto slow the progression of the three children.

“A children’s home burned down,” she whispered without looking away from the kids, half expecting them to start floating above the ground instead of walking on it like mere mortals. “Mother Ransk’s, in Vassalaer.”

“Is this relevant?” Bryon demanded.

“Ismene took them in. The children. She gave them a place to stay because they were homeless. I knew something was wrong with it at the time but I didn’t think she’d hand kids over to the dark saints.”

And yet here was proof she’d done just that. Maia’s stomach roiled.

“Just when I think that bitch can’t get any more diabolical,” Bryon growled, exhaling air like an angry bull. Maia was very glad they were on the same side; she wouldn’t like to be the one standing across from him on a fighting mat. Or a battlefield.

“Any plans?” she asked him out of the side of her mouth.

“I’m a soldier, not a tactician. You’re the princess, don’t they train you to use that pretty head of yours?”

First of all, ignoring the sneering tone, that was almost a compliment. Maia smirked and backed up a rapid step when the children advanced, repeating her name and their command to come with them. “Not sure what your idea of elocution lessons is, old man, but it doesn’t exactly cover this. They teach us how to walk like there’s a stick rammed up our asses, to suck in ourstomachs so we look slimmer, and how to needlepoint so we’ll have something to occupy our small, simple minds while we’re waiting to fire out the latest baby in our wombs. Which of those do you think applies here?”

She didn’t bother pointing out she’d trained in combat and fighting; that didn’t exactly help here, either. She couldn’t knock a kid’s lights out. Even if they served a dark saint, they werea kid.

“I’m not going with you,” she snapped when the children spoke again, “so you can tell your master I’m staying right here.”

Four stone walls and a cracked ceiling were much preferable to going fuck knows where with a saint who’d looked at her like he’d enjoy ripping the skin off her fingerbones. So Maia ignored her fury and her frazzled instincts and slid down the wall until she sat cross-legged on the cold floor. If they wouldn’t get the message when she spoke, maybe her actions would speak louder.

“Maia,” Bryon warned. She ignored him, reaching for her magic. Maybe snaring the minds of children would make her a true monster, but she’d do it. If her search didn’t ram her soul-first into a pewter barricade that was. Maia’s teeth rattled, pain flashing through her.

“Hey, stay where you are,” Bryon warned the tallest boy as he came closer, leading the pack with his arm lifting in a graceful swoop. “Back up.I really don’t want to hurt you, but I’ll knock you out if you insist—”

The boy brushed Bryon’s arm with his fingertips and the soldier dropped to his knees with a roar of pain that made Maia scramble off the wall towards him, knocking the kid’s arm away.

“Shit,” she breathed, shaking Bryon’s big shoulders, panic like lightning racing across her skin until she was shaking. “Come on, old man, wake up.” His head lolled into her chest and for a moment she didn’t breathe until she realisedhewas breathing. “What did you do to him?” she snarled at the boy,startling when she saw his eyes were onyx from edge to edge, as black as the darkest night.

“You will come with us,” they spoke in unison. Maia gnashed her teeth, pressing two fingers to Bryon’s throat to be sure he had a pulse and she wasn’t hallucinating him breathing. He was alive. But whatever that boy had done, he’d done it with a single brush of his fingertips. Fuck.

“You better appreciate this when you wake up, you bastard,” she snarled at his unconscious face, not particularly liking how different he looked when he wasn’t glaring and growling. Less like a force of nature and more like a mortal man who could be hurt. She rose slowly to her feet, towering over the children but feeling scarily outmatched. They had magic, and hers was trapped within her.

“If I come with you, you’ll leave him alone?” She swallowed hard, dragging air into her lungs, and tried not to think about how Enryr would make herservehim.