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“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded of me.

He raised his fist, clearly intending to decimate my shield under his might.

But then he winced. I saw something glowing beneath his shirt, near his heart, and then he was clutching at it and stumbling backward.

He cursed, then eyed Ariana. “Use the Echo Coin. Come to me. Do not anger me further than your sorcerer already has.”

With that, he disappeared in a cloud of teleportation.

I dropped my shield, and the moment I did, Ari slapped at my chest. “What the hell was that, Kai?”

V and Nyx ran into the fray then, all three of them gathering around me.

“That was me doing what needed to be done, sweetheart.”

“What are you talking about? Do you realize what you just did?”

“All too well.”

I called the results of the secret spell I’d enacted forth, and then a vial of blood materialized, hovering in front of me.

V choked. “Motherfucker, is that his? You actually took his blood?”

I nodded. “The rest was just a distraction. Well, also a deterrent. I just demonstrated that he’s not above being impacted by the magic of lesser beings. It will have him thinking twice about daring to threaten any of us again, or to use us against Ari in a bid to control her.”

Ari gazed out at me, not sure what to make of it for several moments.

“Kai,” she breathed finally, reaching out and taking my broken wrist carefully in her hand. “You were hurt and it could have been so much worse.”

“It was worth it.” I gestured at the vial of blood. “We need this to test against the Rift Mark, to rule him out as the threat that it warned of, and to also determine if there exists another True Celestial actually walking the mortal plane instead.”

“Wow,” Nyx uttered. “That’s a hell of a strategy you just put into place there.”

A groan escaped me as Ari’s power surged through my wrist, as she healed me.

When she was done, I smirked out at her. “Time to take back control, sweetheart.” I eyed the vial. “And it starts with this.”

21

~Ariana~

I frowned as I arrived at the location that I’d tracked Cassius to.

The home belonging to Grandfather and Gramps.

What on earth was he doing here, of all places?

I’d told the boys that I’d needed to head out to smooth things over, so that the first training session with Cassius wasn’t absolute and total hell. Fortunately, Kai had been so focused on his lab work now that he had Cassius’ blood that he’d accepted that. And Vorzyr had been the same as well, although his interest I suspected had more to do with what he’d seen in that vault. The memory had revealed theoriginof his bloodline’s Celestial corruption, but it hadn’t revealedeverything. Now that they had the blood of someone fresh from the Celestial Plane—someone intrinsically linked to it—there were answers to be found beyond just testing it against the Rift Mark. There werecomparisonsto be made,truthsto uncover.

Nyx was back with Crossborn. He didn’t have classes until tomorrow morning so he was attending a meeting that he’d been summoned to. It wasn’t being held at the Guardian Compound. After what had happened, they would be convening inside the Chief Sanctuary Zone where I’d erected a ward. I’d sent a bit ofmy magic over to Gramps so that they could pass through. They would be safe there. No one else could enter at this point in time with the way it had been set up. It would be extended to others over time, but fortunately that wasn’t yet.

I sucked in a centering breath.

In the brief moments that I was away from the boys lately since the Compound attack, the warning from the necromancer, Sylas Morgrave, had been playing on my mind.

“Death circles you. But it can’t… it can’t be allowed to come to pass. The world needs your Light. Without it… darkness comes for us all.”

I hadn’t told the boys about it.