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“What the hell?” Aiden hissed, eyes darting to the door of the grocery.

If anybody saw...

They did.

The wall of ice was melting. Everybody had seen.

And they were all gasping. Twitching. Curling inward as golden light threaded over broken skin and shattered limbs.

Healing. Hurting. All at once.

Aimee pressed a hand to her racing heart. This was fine. Everything was fine. Her cousin had just casually healed a building full of people, flinging time magic around like she had a death wish—but it was fine.

Taly approached, picking her way through the field of bodies. She looked wired, like she hadn’t blinked in hours. Gore streaked her leathers, dried blood spattered across her jaw andneck. Aether crackled around her in uneven bursts—little pops of gold at her fingertips, her shoulders, the edges of her hair.

Aimee watched as her cousin smiled—sharp and twitchy and far too pleased.

“You need guns,” she said, her eyes lit with something electric—like she was running a fever made of lightning. “Lucky for you, I’ve been collecting them.”

Then that veil of aether coating her skin pulsed, and a silver revolver landed at Aimee’s feet.

Beside her, Aiden barked a curse, grappling with the compound bow that dropped onto his head.

“Go that way,” Taly said, pointing down the street. “I left Kato at the Swap. He’s probably very mad at me. Tell him I’m not sorry,” she added and turned to go.

“Wait!” Aimee called after her.

Taly paused, skin still glowing with that strange radiance. In the gray, pre-dawn light, even beneath the gore, she looked like the first rays of a long-awaited morning.

“What are you doing?” Aimee asked again.

She had no glamour, she… she was going to get herselfkilled.

“What does it look like?” Taly smiled over her shoulder and patted her gun. “I’m saving the fucking day.”

Chapter 71

Humans called it déjà vu. That feeling that you’d seen or done a thing before.

With a yell, Skye sliced his sword up across the dead man’s belly. Black blood sprayed his face.

He’d been here. Done this. He’d already killed that shade and the next, and he knew where the blade would come from.

He ducked before he saw it, body reacting to a memory he hadn’t lived. The wound that wasn’t on his shoulder—the one herememberedtaking—gave a phantom pang as he swept the shade’s leg, driving his sword into the monster’s chest.

It started with an attack on the southernmost perimeter. A large group of shades broke through, advancing toward Ryme. Ivain summoned the Gate Watchers, along with every contingent of mages the noble Houses had volunteered for the day, hoping that if they struck hard and fast, they could keep the fighting from ever touching the city.

From the battlements, Eula shouted orders to the line of casters. The same explosions that shattered the aerial ward shield had also crippled the wall’s enchantment matrix. Gray smoke rose from the stone, the glow of magic still sparking as it faded. It would be easy to climb now, but the casters summoned vines to sprout from the ground beneath the wall, their ends sharpened to deadly, venomous points.

Fire and ice rained from above, trailing brimstone and vapor. Where they hit, dirt exploded.

Fighting on the ground, Skye could barely see through the chaos. Dust and blood blurred everything, but it didn’t matter. If the shades got past them, the city was done.

A behemoth of rotting flesh brought down a bone-breaking blow. Crossing dagger and sword, Skye cleaved the shade’s fist off at the wrist. He didn’t know how to describe it—the sense of what came next. He just knew things. Like when to swing, when to duck, where the next blade would be.

The world felt out of sync, like a song restarting on the wrong beat. He could feel the moment before it happened, like an echo chasing reality.

A shade with the shattered skull of a grendel welded to its shoulders lunged from the forest. Skye slammed his boot into the creature, hard enough to cave its chest.