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“You have everything you need,” Troy said. “You know where all the rings are. So let’s go. Let’s go get them.” He cracked a mischievous smile. He was so unlike his father.

I sighed. Now I was the boring one. “We can’t. Not without backup. It’s too dangerous.”

“Too dangerous?” He started strutting around the room, his hand on his chest in mock solemnity. “I thought you were the great Sierra Pandora Windstriker, the most powerful person who ever lived. And you’re scared?”

I rose to my feet—and to his challenge. “I amnotscared. I’m smart.”

He snorted.

“Smarter than you, Fireswift.” I smirked at him. “And stronger. And as the strongest one here, it would be my responsibility to look out for all of you. It would be my responsibility to keep you safe.”

He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t ask for your protection.”

“But I would be duty-bound to give it,” I said. “No, we can’t go after the rings ourselves. We need backup. More soldiers. A full show of force.”

“You’re so boring.” Troy looked disappointed. “You’re scared of some unknown person and a few pretty rings.” He snatched my drawing and tossed it aside.

I caught it as it fell. And as my fingers touched the page, a deluge of images flashed through my head. A ballgown. Gems. A gloved hand. Lace.

“Sierra!” Eira called out. “What is it? Are you all right?”

“I’m having a vision.”

The woman in my vision slipped off her glove and tossed it aside.

“What do you see?” Eira asked me.

The woman lifted her hand to her face, and then I saw it.

“It’s her,” I gasped.

“Who?”

“Princess Lavinia.”

“Who?” Eira said again, even more confused.

“Someone from a long time ago. My parents stopped her from becoming Queen. And now…”

I watched Princess Lavinia put on the rings.

“And now she’s back. She’s the one who sent that djinn after the ring four years ago. She’s the one collecting all sixteen rings.”

“Why?” Eira asked. “What does she want with them?”

“She wants to be powerful. But her people are immune to normal magic, the magic of the Immortals, gods, and demons. So she’s going to use the rings…” I shook my head. “…somehow, I don’t know how…to gain ancient, raw, primordial magic.”

“And then?” asked Eira.

My vision faded out. I looked at Eira and declared, “And then she will take her revenge on all of us.”

CHAPTER 5

SIXTEEN

When I returned home the next morning, I overheard my parents talking in the living room. They were discussing my adventure in the Immortals’ library. Cadence and Damiel must have told them all about it. I waited just outside the closed door, listening.

“Sixteen rings,” Dad said. “With sixteen magic abilities. On sixteen origin worlds. Guarded by sixteen original supernatural monsters.”