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Irithys grinned, the first true smile Lidia had seen from the Sprite Queen. “We didn’t. They reached me yesterday, and we talked long into the night.” A fond smile at the three sprites, who turned raspberry pink with pleasure. “We were still awake when Bryce Quinlan and Hunt Athalar’s video went out. We raced down from Ravilis, hoping to help in any way we could.”

“We arrived in the nick of time, it seems,” Sasa said, nodding to the smoldering ruins.

“We wouldn’t have wanted to miss all the fun,” Rithi added with a wicked smile.

Irithys’s smile was more subdued as she studied Lidia. The queen’s flame set Lidia’s own sparking in answer. Dancing over her fingertips, her hair, in joyful recognition. “I sensed the fire in you the moment we met,” the queen said. “I didn’t think yours would manifest so brilliantly, though.”

Lidia sketched a bow, but refrained from telling the queen about the antidote just yet, how it would make Irithys’s flame even more lethal. Later—if they survived. But right now … Lidia smirked at the queen, at their gathering enemies. “Let’s burn it all down.”

Because ahead of them, dozens strong, an entire line of war-machines headed their way. Missile launchers groaned into position. All aiming for where they stood.

“With pleasure,” Irithys said, and even from a few feet away, Lidia’s skin seared with the heat of the queen’s flame. “We shall build a new world atop their ashes.”

Rithi, Sasa, and Malana turned blue, matching their queen’s fire with their own. The four fire sprites unleashed their power on the war-machines and the Vanir powering them. Lidia’s white-hot flames joined theirs, twining and dancing around it, as if every moment of recognition until now had built toward this, as if her flames had known theirs for millennia.

And as one flame, one unified people, as Bryce Quinlan had promised, their fire struck the enemy line.

Machines ruptured. Lidia staggered back, back, back with the force of it, still unfamiliar with the fire in her veins, after it had been so long suppressed.

But the sprites kept their fire concentrated on the machines and their pilots. And as Lidia hit the ground, as the missiles exploded upon contact with the flames, she cast the last of her power upward. To shield the allied forces fighting behind them and the fire sprites now ahead of her from the shrapnel, which melted until it became raining, molten metal.

It hissed where it hit the earth.

Irithys blazed like a blue star, shooting from machine to machine, leaving burning death in her wake. The three other sprites followed suit. Where they shimmered, imperial forces died.

And as the enemy melted at their fingertips … for a moment, just one, Lidia allowed herself to kindle a spark of hope.

* * *

“I’m okay,” Tharion panted, blood leaking from his mouth. “I’m okay.”

“I call bullshit,” Ruhn said, kneeling beside the mer, fumbling through his pack for the vial Lidia had mentioned. The mer would be dead already without the antidote in his veins. But if Ruhn didn’t do something to help Tharion now, he’d surely be dead in a few minutes.

“Get him into a sitting position,” Actaeon was saying to his brother. “Get his head above his chest so the blood doesn’t go out too fast.”

“We have to help her,” Brann said. “She’s out on the battlefield—”

“You guys aren’t going anywhere,” Ruhn said to the boys. He found the clear vial and knocked it back. “Help me get Ketos up. We’ve got two seconds before those shithead guards come back, maybe with Rigelus in tow—”

They didn’t have two seconds.

From the stairwell at the far end of the hall, the two angels who’d held the boys captive emerged. No sign of Rigelus, thank the gods, but right then, whatever was in that potion hit Ruhn’s stomach, his body, and the world tilted, surging, blacking out—

A moment, long enough so that when his vision returned, it was to see the two angels reaching for their guns.

Ruhn exploded.

Starlight, two beams of it straight to their eyes, blinded them. Just as Bryce had done to the Murder Twins. Twin whips of his shadows wrapped around their necks and squeezed.

“What the fuck,” Brann said, but Ruhn barely heard him. There was only power, surging as it never had before. His mind was starkly clear as he willed the shadows to begin slicing through angelic flesh.

Blood spurted. Bone cracked. Two heads rolled to the ground.

“Holy shit,” Brann breathed. Actaeon was gaping at Ruhn.

“The mer,” the kid said, whirling back to where Tharion had passed out again.

“Fuck,” Ruhn spat, and put a hand to Tharion’s chest to staunch the bleeding—