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“Bryon,” she warned in a rasp, trying to push off the wall. A white blaze of pain knocked her back with a gasp.

Air churned around Scylla as she walked, the stone seeming to curve beneath her feet, bowing to her sheer power, and her rich crimson hair floated above the shoulders of her velvet dress as she advanced. She was magic incarnate, and Maia was only just now understanding how much danger they were in.

“All our magic,” she rasped, jaw clenched against the pain of the arrow in her chest, “comes from nature. From the earth. Sheismagic.”

“Lovely. Real uplifting, Maia,” Vawn muttered, raking a hand through his unkempt hair and looking from her to Bryon, who’d abandoned his attack on Scylla, much to her relief. “What’s the plan?”

“Get behind the drake,” Bryon barked, grabbing Maia’s other arm as she stood there, woozy with pain. Kheir and he pulled her back, but her eyes fixed on that space across the cracked, plant-strewn hallway where Azrail stood robotically, where Jaro held his ground, teeth bared in a snarl as Samlyn faced him.

“It’s fucking gone,” Vawn blurted, his panic rising. “Where did it go?”

“To evacuate the children,” Kheir replied, but Maia spoke over him, struggling against her mates’ hold on her arms.

“I’m not leaving them,” she protested, but her next movement jostled the arrow in her chest and the whole world went white and red-hot. When her vision cleared, when she could feel her the tips of her fingers, the ends of her toes, the membrane of her wings, the itch of her skin across the arrow,when she could feel somethingotherthan all-consuming pain, she was already sheltered behind her mates.

“No,” Maia cried, trying to scramble beyond them, not understanding why her body refused to respond, why pain was making her slow. “They’re going to kill them—”

“They’re going to killus,”Vawn interrupted, snatching her wrist when she tried to move again.

A shock of brightness and strength coursed through her, and Maia’s eyes blew wide, pupils swallowing up her iris as her view of him shifted and snapped into place. She spared Vawn one long, significant look, her heart pounding. “Well, damn,” Vawn laughed, “that’s fiercer than I expected it to be.”

“What is?” Maia’s attention drifted back to the pale hallway where Azrail stood stock-still, empty-eyed. Jaro was backing up the other way as Scylla fixed her attention on him. She knew Jaro was Maia’s mate, knew hurting him would hurt her. Maia’s heart crashed.

“Your soul.”

Maia didn’t have time to reach for Vawn even if awareness of him bloomed through her, brushing the edge of her glade, fitting perfectly into a gaping hole she hadn’t realised was there. He was hers. No wonder she’d needed to find him so desperately.

“Don’t even think about it,” Bryon warned her. “Don’t let go of her, Vawn.”

Maia didn’t like that one bit. Not that Bryon knew she was already planning to run across the distance between her and the saints to save her mates. That Bryon wasn’t restraining her himself. She sank back into her soul and searched for pain, hissing when she felt it from all of them. Ark was unconscious but in pain even in sleep. Kheir’s wounds were healed but the pain was there all the same. But why was Bryon—

One brush of her soul to his and agony ruptured her, making her knees weaken. If Vawn hadn’t been holding her, she’d be on the floor.

“Bryon—” she gasped, turning to him.

“I’m fine,” he said in a rumble. “Eyes forward, princess. I’ll find us a way out of here.”

She began to argue, but they all staggered when the air throbbed, a dark power crawling into their lungs when they breathed. Maia had felt it before, but it took her too long to remember when. Not in the saints' circle or any time she’d been in Enryr’s presence, not even when she faced Karmen. She’d felt this by the lake when she was with Azrail.

Her eyes snapped up, but her stare was dragged past his stoic, unmoving form when people spilled into the hallway, trapping Jaro between them and Scylla. There were twenty of them, then fifty, a hundred. Shit, they just kept coming. How many were they? Their skin was grey and decayed, eyes dark, backs straight like any soldier, but they weredead.

“We need to get Az and Jaro out of there,” she said in a low snarl, saint power like a supernova inside her. “Now.”

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Maia didn’t stop to think, didn’t allow herself time to hesitate. She grabbed the arrow in her chest and ripped it out, reaching for Ark’s hawk at the same time and sending the living tattoo soaring over their heads at Scylla, saint of the earth.

An explosion of glass heralded the drake’s return, and a knot unwound in her chest, relief spilling into the hollow it left.

Can you distract the saints?Maia asked the drake, reaching out to their tentative connection. She flinched hard when Jaro let out a fierce growl in jaguar form and snapped his jaws at Samlyn, putting himself between him and Azrail.Quickly,she added, and tacked on,please.

The last thing she needed to do was insult a legendary creature.

It would be better to climb on my back and flee,the drake replied in a voice like gravel and thunder.But I would not leave my mate behind, either.

There was longing and pain in his voice. Maia might have asked if he had a mate and where they were, but Jaro snarled again, louder, a warning cry. Her soul reacted, rage crashing like an ocean within her. She threw the bone arrow aside and lookedat Vawn. “I don’t want to break your wrist, so I suggest you let me go.”

He held her gaze for a moment, for eternity, and then released her with a sigh. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”