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Slowly, she felt herself separate from her body. She watched as the creature knelt above her. Shadows rippled around the stone altar, coming off the demon in waves as it reached a hand up, sinking clawed fingertips into her chest.

She watched as her body convulsed and tendrils of shadow filled her veins, moving out from where the creature’s hand was. The darkness bled up her throat until she felt it caress her mind, her memories.

For a terrifying moment, she was back in the cottage in the woods as the witch entered her mind and tore her memories away. The memory assaulted her senses, and she felt herself tremble above her body, nearly descending back into it.

No,she thought as terror rippled through her senses.I’m not in that cabin. I’m no longer helpless.

But the demon didn’t flip through her memories. Instead, it moved around them to the deepest recesses of her mind, to a corner she hadn’t even known was there. Where there was a single box of shadow that was encased in bands of twining silver.

There,the Everdark purred.

His voice was everywhere and nowhere all at once.

The searching darkness formed a key before her mind’s eye. A single dark key with an onyx stone. In a flash, the key was before the box, entering the lock. With a single click, the box opened.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Both she and the Everdark’s magic waited in silence, eyeing the dark box that had creaked open. Then a shaft of shadow lashed out, and a torrent of magic burst forth like a dark tornado. It lashed onto the Everdark, clasping the shadows and forcing it back, back,back.

Suddenly, she crashed back into her body.

A power unlike any she’d ever known swelled within her. Inky tendrils extended out from that recess of her mind, filling her thoughts, her chest, her entire being until it was all she was.

Then the magic of the Everdark was forced out.

There was a flash of motion, and she blinked, finding herself atop the demon. The creature lay on its back, the stone altar cracked beneath it. Her fingers were wrapped around its neck. And at the tips of her fingers were long, sharp nails the color of night. There was a strange heat behind her eyes as blackness swallowed them whole. She felt her canines sharpen and let out a low growl.

Welcome, granddaughter,came the voice of the Everdark.A princess of fae and demons.

As the demon magic swelled inside her alongside the shadow fae power and the earthen magic of the enchantresses, she knew what the Everdark said was true.

Like her mate, she was a demon now, too.

And that demon would be what saved both him and Shadowbank.

Chapter Twenty-Three

ARABELLA

As Arabella rose from the stone altar, she felt the Everdark’s impenetrable dark receding, slipping into the cave walls.

You are the key, the Everdark said into her mind.To open the gateway.

“What?” she asked over her fangs.

Only a greater demon or a being with greater demon blood can open the gateway, and only for its own kind to go through. I could not let the shadow fae out because I am not fae. But one of my offspring can open it for the fae, he said.Only the royal line is strong enough.

In an instant, she understood why the shadow fae had never been able to leave the Abyss even with the help of the Everdark. And since she was human, fae, and demon, she was the only one who could open the gateway to let Hadeon, Jessamine, Breckett, and the shadow fae through.

“Where’s the gateway?” she asked, needing to confirm whether her suspicions had been right. As she spoke, she could feel the Everdark’s voice grow strangely quiet, as though slipping into some faraway darkness.

Follow the map.

Then the Everdark was gone.

She ran a hand over her neck. Where was he going? Had he become tired from awakening her magic?

Before she could dwell on it long, Arden appeared in the cavern.