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A few minutes later, the promised troops started arriving. And they didn’t stop coming. Calli’s house suddenly felt really small. And the soldiers were eating all of her desserts. BeforeIcould eat all of her desserts.

“I’ll start transferring them to my castle right away,” I promised Calli.

And install really big pizza ovens there while I was at it. Yum.

“Mycastle,” I repeated. “I like the sound of that.”

“Of course you do,” Faris told me, and for once he actually looked pleased with me. “Ruling is in your blood.”

I only hoped backstabbing wasn’t in my blood too.

Aerilyn stepped into the room. “So, your army’s here, Leda. And it looks like I’m one of your new minions,” she joked, sitting down beside me. “Oh, and by the way, the troops are hungry, and we’re all out of food.” She snatched a cookie off my plate.

“We are out of food because you guys ate it all.” I slapped her hand away when she tried to steal another cookie from me. “Stop it.”

Aerilyn sighed. “Stop being so moody.”

“Yeah, well, I tend to getmoodywhen people steal my cookies,” I said.

“Sierra is stealing your cookies too,” she pointed out and grabbed another cookie.

“Sierra is three years old.”

Aerilyn frowned. “What’s your point?”

“I guess you just made it for me,” I said and took my cookie back from her.

“Leda!” Tessa called out, rushing into the room. Sunfire was with her. “Great news. Lucian managed to decipher the map we stole from the Night Prince.”

We all clustered around the map she’d set down on the coffee table. It looked just as I remembered—and yet different than I remembered. Like before, all the worlds with Immortal grave sites were represented with circles and tombstones. But before they’d been completely detached from one another. Now the path to them was clear.

“The gravesites are all on worlds connected to this one.” I pointed at the star pattern of worlds. “All roads start here.” A circle sat at the center of that star, the world connected to them all.

“Midnight,” said Grace.

“The home of my brand new castle,” I said.

“The perfect location from which to oversee the exploration of the Ancient Lands.” Nero came up behind me. “That’s convenient.”

I glanced back at him. The two of us exchanged wary looks.

Faris watched us. “What’s wrong?”

I sighed. “I don’t trust coincidences. Particularly the convenient ones.”

PART III

THE FINAL BATTLE

CHAPTER 24

THE BUBBLE

My army consisted of gods and demons, as well as soldiers from the Legion of Angels and the Dark Force. They all trained, ate, and lived under the same roof. That led to more than a little drama in the halls of Midnight Castle, but at least no one had killed anyone else. Yet.

I’d like to think that was all thanks to my many speeches on the joys of harmony and working together to prevent the extinction of all gods and demons, but it probably had more to do with Nero. People were afraid of him. And that kept them on their best behavior.

For now. Gods and demons had been sworn enemies for millennia. They didn’t like each other, didn’t trust each other, and definitely didn’t enjoy working together. I’d divided my soldiers into two sets of teams: teams in charge of defending the castle, and teams tasked with exploring the many gravesite worlds connected to this one.