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“Is it this?” Tess asked, holding up a bright red bloom with petals.

I shook my head. “No petals… it’s more… elongated and spiky.”

She nodded as she returned to the flower patch and kept searching.

The flowers were growing densely together and it was difficult to see them all individually. I found I had to kneel in order to push some out of the way to see what was growing beneath. The edges of the forest were decorated with shocks of blue, purples, reds, and yellows. Summer in Prins was beautiful, but the same chill Tess had sensed earlier from the oncoming storm was settling deep in my bones.

“This?” Puck asked, a long red flower in his grip.

“Yes!” I exclaimed, standing despite my knees protesting from all the kneeling. “How much did you find?”

“There isn’t much,” Puck confessed as we approached, kneeling down to where he had plucked the flower. “Did he say how much of the flower and its leaves he needed?”

I shook my head. “We should take all we can find and make it quick.”

My gaze met the horizon as the sun was beginning to set, disappearing behind the tall pine trees and casting the sky in an eerie yellow glow against the storm clouds.

Puck nodded at me in agreement. We didn’t want to be caught sneaking around in The Shadow after dark, but it appeared that’sexactlywhat we were going to have to do. Wewere lucky to have left at first dawn this morning, but it still hadn’t been enough time with having to backtrack across the realm multiple times.

Lightning struck a nearby tree, and it cracked and moaned, falling to the forest floor a mere thirty feet from us. Tess and I hurriedly helped Puck pick all the red stems and leaves we could find before stuffing them into Puck’s pack.

“This will have to be enough,” Puck declared, “nightfall is almost upon us. We’ve run out of time.”

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Tess agreed, starting towards the streets of Dragon’s Hollow.

“What the—” Puck spoke, but the three of us stopped in our tracks as we saw what awaited as at the entrance to the training field.

No.

No, no, no.

This couldn’t be happening.

We didn’t have the antidote yet.

Where the cobbled streets met the tall grass of the training field was a pack of Noctani. Their hair was dripping with rainwater as if they had been prowling the streets for some time in the storm. At their lead was a shock of blond hair, and my tongue was thick and leaden in my throat. I swallowed back the horror that threatened to choke me as I took a step backwards.

I didn’t want to see him like this.

I wasn’t ready to face him yet, not that I was sure I ever would be. He had the ability to steal my magic—and by the looks of it—we were outnumbered. My vision wasn’t clearbeneath the heavy rain that spit from the sky, but it appeared as if there were at least six or seven of them.

I hadn’t wanted to face Nik until we had the antidote in hand.

It was too soon.

We needed to escape him, because killing him wasn’t an option. Isaac wasn’t with them, and that fact brought with it only a small amount of relief. Over Nik’s shoulder I could see Antonia Finch, our old art teacher. She was the only one left from the Shades that had stalked us in the mortal realm and tried to bring us back to Istmere for Donika.

Fletcher, his brother, and his men were all dead.

Ms. Finch’s eyes were an endless depth of black, and tears stung the back of my eyes at the sight. She hadn’t wanted to fight for Donika, but she had ended up Noctani in the end; despite her best efforts. She was too weak to stand up for herself, her only options were to obey Donika—or lay down and die.

I swallowed hard, taking another step back. My gaze darted between Puck and Tess, and they glanced back with equally bewildered expressions.

I couldn’t fight Nikolai.

I couldn’t.

“What do we do?” I asked, panicked.