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“They hurt you.”

“I’ve been tortured before,” she told me casually, like she was talking about a vacation spot she often visited. “I wasn’t going to give them anything, especially not the future.”

I couldn’t summon any magic. Grace’s chains must have been interfering with my powers too.

“I have an idea,” I told her, plunging my hands into the sand, digging around the metal stake at her feet.

Slowly, the stake loosened. Regin’s people hadn’t done a very thorough job of securing Grace. They must have thought she was too weak—and too tied up—to free herself.

Finally, the stake broke free of the ground. I unraveled the chain until Grace was free of it. I set it down quietly on the sand, then took her hand and tried to teleport us away. Nothing happened, except I suddenly had a raging headache.

“It’s the lights,” Grace said as I clutched my pounding head. “They neutralize magic.”

Well, that explained my inability to do any magic whatsoever. If it was the lights that were blocking my magic—and not the chains—then I had to rethink my options.

I couldn’t destroy the lights. Even if I could figure out how to do that, it would make far too much noise. And there were too many of them. If I started breaking things, people would notice, and then we’d never get away.

“Ok, let’s put some distance between us and those lights,” I said to Grace.

I wrapped her arm around my back, leading her toward the cover of the forest. It was slow going. With every step, the soft sand collapsed under our feet, and Grace was operating way below a hundred percent. She didn’t even look like she was at twenty percent.

“They wanted you to show them the future? Ava’s been trying to see that too,” I commented. “I thought she wanted to find a way for the demons to come out on top of the gods and defeat the Guardians. But she and Regin and the others are working with the Guardians.”

“No, they’re not,” said Grace. “The Guardians have nothing to do with what’s going on here. This is all Regin’s plan.”

“So the Guardians aren’t behind this?” I asked. “Everything that’s happened—Bella’s and Stash’s curses, Regin seizing worlds and stealing Nectar and Venom—it’s just a few gods and demons trying to gain power over the others?”

Grace nodded. “We’ve never needed the Guardians to be self-destructive. We’ve excelled at that very well ourselves. When you consider yourself infallible, it’s just too easy to make mistakes.”

So the civil war we were currently teetering at the edge of was caused not by the Guardians’ schemes, but by the gods’ and demons’ greed—and their thirst for vengeance.

“We have to fix this,” I told Grace. Just a few more steps, and we’d be safely under the tree cover—and, hopefully, out of range of those magic-killing lights. “We need to save the alliance before we destroy ourselves.”

One of Regin’s soldiers turned and saw us limping toward the forest. “Stop!”

His shout drew the attention of the other soldiers. They rushed toward us, weapons drawn. I tried to carry Grace, but without my supernatural strength, I wasn’t strong enough. Faris rushed in to help me, but he didn’t have his magic either. Even together, we couldn’t carry Grace fast enough. The soldiers were almost upon us.

The tree branches rattled, and three figures burst out of the forest. It was Aerilyn, Thea, and Khalon. I’d sent them a message, telling them we were going to confront Regin and Ava and their allies. I’d asked for their help. I hadn’t actually expected them to show up.

“You came,” I said uncertainly. There’d already been so many betrayals.

“We came,” Thea said as Faris led Grace away.

“Ava must be stopped,” Khalon added, his determined eyes locking on to his mother.

So they really did care about Bella. I was glad. It really sucked when you couldn’t even trust your own parents.

Khalon was living that nightmare firsthand right now. He, Thea, and Aerilyn closed in on Ava.

“Watch out. Those lights on the beach block all magic,” I warned them.

Khalon slid me a dark look over his shoulder. “Don’t worry. I brought a sword.” His attention snapped back to Ava.

She rose to her feet, a controller clutched in her hand. When she pressed it, a hole opened up in the beach, and an elevator pushed Stash out of the ground. Ava—or, more likely, Alessandro—must have snatched him from the demons’ prison.

“Kill them,” Ava ordered Stash with a cold smile.

Those lights obviously didn’t neutralize all magic because Stash’s curse was still in full effect. And from the telekinetic lightning storm sizzling and crackling all around him, I was pretty sure he still had all his powers.