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My back hit a wall, but Anna continued to glide toward me, illuminated eyes focused on me like daggers.

Horrifying wasn’t a strong enough word, but my words had disappeared along with my bravery.

Even in this state, she was somehow more captivating than anything had a right to be.

The furniture rattled as objects fell to the ground and broke.

“You think I long for the pendant that holds the last of my powers so I can return to Zef and the golden kiss of ascension, but you couldn’t possibly be more wrong.

” Her face and the room were only illuminated now by a single soft light.

“Zef is a liar and a thief whom I want nothing to do with. The second I get the rest of my powers, I will be strong enough to take control of Tartarus and that is exactly what will happen, right, Father?” Her eyes skewered me to the wall .

“Yes, and I will finally get to retire,” he answered.

The corner of her lip lifted. The lights brightened and steadied but the rumble from outside grew closer.

She lifted her dainty hand up to the pendant.

Icy wind rumbled through the room, flinging my hair about until it whipped into my eyes.

Her own eyes rounded to an awe-filled expression as her fingertips touched the white-gold vine of the pendant.

It began to emanate a pale pink that matched the glow of her eyes as it hung from my neck.

I wanted to stop her from taking it, I needed to stop her, but I couldn’t. All my limbs hung lifeless as

I watched her fingers touch it.

“No,” I whispered when they landed on the inscription. FEUHN KAI GREEYTH—eternal love and friendship. Cal’s scream filled my head, and I let out a gasp.

“No!” I shouted, snatching the pendant from her grip.

Eternal love and friendship—I meant every word of that promise to Cal.

I wouldn’t let Anna get the rest of her powers.

Suns only knew the fresh hell she planned once she had it.

She hated Zef. What if she hated Cal? What if she tried to hurt her?

It didn’t matter that I was dead—I was still going to protect Cal and I would do everything in my power to make certain Anna never got the rest of her powers.

It was up to me to keep everyone safe from her and to make sure I didn’t end up tied to a heathen queen in Tartarus.

“Fine. If you want to do it the hard way, then,” she said, letting out a heavy sigh and rolling her neck.

Oh fuck.

“But he must give you the pendant of his own free will,” Kaohs announced.

“What?” Eletha, Anna, and I said at the same time.

“It takes more than power to rule the Underworld, my dear. You must prove to me that you have what it takes by get- ting Prince Aurelius to willfully give you the pendant.”

“Ha!” Walter barked triumphantly. Kaohs shot him a look as Eletha hit him in the arm. “What?” he snapped at her. “As I already told you, he’s my friend. I have his back. ”

“I don’t care,” she volleyed. “I have my sister’s back.”

The room shook again, and the rumbles returned. I looked to Anna, expecting another outburst. She was pouting, her arms crossed as she stared at the floor. “Anna! Call off Toast!” Eletha barked in her sister’s direction when the rumbling grew even louder.

“Toast?” I muttered to myself. What the fuck was a toast? “Fuuuuck. He’s already made it past the library,” she grum- bled as she stomped to the door, pausing for a moment to turn in my direction. “This isn’t over. You will give me that pendant one way or another, I promise you.”

“I—” I began, but she walked out the door. Another rumble shook the walls, nearly knocking us all down. “What is she doing?”

“Toast is her pet lyndwurm,” Walter whispered. “Anytime she uses her powers, he likes to check on her.” A pet lyndwurm may actually have been the coolest and most terrifying thing I’d ever heard.

Kaohs let out a long and heavy sigh. “My soul is tired.” He stood from his chair and walked to Eletha as though he was thanking the hostess of a party he’d attended.

“I am retiring early tonight. These topics have weighed heavily on me.” She nodded sympathetically and squeezed his shoulder.

He turned back toward me and my spine stiffened.

Gods knew what else he could shock me with tonight.

Ignoring me completely, he looked at the damage in the corner of the room and nonchalantly raised his hand. With a small flick of the tip of his pointer finger, the corner restored itself completely as if nothing had happened, leaving no trace but for a few disheveled items.

I fought to not drop my jaw, knowing the amount of power it took to do something like that so carelessly. Tearing things down was much easier than rebuilding. He was a god. Of course he could do cool things like that.

“Good night,” he said, leaning in to kiss Eletha on the cheek before leaving. “See you on the field tomorrow,” he said to me .

“Huh?” I said, confused.

“I heard you’re playing the red keys. I hope you’re a good rider and a better fighter.” He shrugged, sending a wink in my direction. “If not, Anna will get her powers a lot sooner than anticipated.”

“I’m tired of you acting like you don’t care about me.

It’s grown old.” Walter and Eletha had been bickering ever since we had left the room.

It was apparently a long way to our rooms, and I had just begun a serious internal debate involving whether an ice pick or a rusty iron stake through the head would relieve me of the miserable walk faster.

“I’m not acting, Walter. I don’t care about you. And you know what’s gotten old? You being a hypocrite and saying I don’t care about you after you were the one that left me in Unseelie.”

“For the last time, I didn’t leave you! You left me to come back to Daddy,” Walter replied.

I cringed at the daddy comment. That wasn’t going to go over well. Figures I had left both my ice pick and my rusty iron stake at home. I wondered if anyone had ever tried to dislodge their brain with a button. I silently eyed the dagger on Walter’s belt longingly.

“I was summoned! And I was only even found because your big mouth told Mendax, that smoggy prick!”

“He was protecting both of us from making a huge—” “Mistake? Marrying me was going to be a huge mistake,

huh?”

“Give me your dagger,” I pleaded.

Walter scowled at me and continued fighting with the demigoddess. We paused in a long empty hallway. More shouting. More hallways.

“Ouch!” a muffled voice grumbled. “Eli,” Walter barked.

I snapped my head up to see a large iron door. At the edge of it lay a mildew-ridden lump of fabric that, after stepping on it, showed itself as the haggard, dirty man I had been seeing around. He was the drunk Anna had busted the walls in on.

“My apologies, sir. Do you happen to have an ice pick on you by chance?” I offered a hand to the sleepy-looking man, noticing he had one brown eye and one blue. It was striking.

“Get away from there,” called Walter, sounding like a tired father.

“You are as stupid as you look like you should be,” Eletha snapped, suddenly at my side.

She proceeded to shove me away from the door, which was bolted with a domineering horizontal bar, and the man lying under a moth-eaten coat.

“How many times must I tell you to sleep somewhere else, Bexley? Why do you insist on being in my way every day? Worthless man,” she hissed at him.

He slumped farther under his coat, seemingly too drunk to focus on the terrifying Shepherd.

“This is why everyone thinks you’re a bitch,” Walter mumbled under his breath. Unfortunately for him, we were all shifters with infallible hearing.

“And that right there is why I tell everyone you’re a little bitch,” she yelled across the hall. “Oh, he’s my friend, he’s my friend,” she mocked. “If you’ve got his back so hard, then why are you about to let him skip his little ass into the tiers, hmm?”

“The tiers?” I repeated.

“Dumb fuck,” she mumbled under her breath, but again, we could all hear. Not that she would have cared. She raised a pointed finger to the words inlaid in the iron circle on the door.

The Ten Tiers of Tartarus

“Someone really likes Ts and getting spit in the eye around here,” I grumbled, letting her guide me away.

“I do have his back, and I wasn’t about to let him skip into the tiers, for stars’ sake. It’s locked,” Walter said.

“I don’t really think I skip,” I interjected.

I didn’t think—I knew. Skipping was for happy, frolicking fae that weren’t dead and wishing to be more dead so they didn’t have to listen to the grating sound of banshees in love yelling at one another.

No, I was definitely not skipping. “If I opened that door, would it kill me? How far of a drop to the tenth tier?” I asked flatly.

The cacophony of squabbling stopped.

“You wouldn’t make it to the tenth tier,” Walter said. “Don’t let Kaohs and his talk of passing through and getting to the Elysian Fields get into your head. Only a handful have ever made it out. With the help of the Fates, it literally customizes itself to what would test you the most.”

“Yeah, he’s right. Dad just likes to watch the entertainment of the tiers.

No one makes it out without being super fucked-up afterward.

Right, Bexley?” Eletha nodded at the drunk man as Walter nodded in agreement.

Both Walter and Eletha, apparently finding common ground around my being a skipping dumb fuck, guided me away from the door as though I might accidentally scamper through the massive iron hatch.

“And you won’t really die. You’re already dead,” Walter reasoned.

“But you’ll wish you were,” Eletha added. “And you’d be trapped and lose your memento, vanishing as if you never existed, which if you ask me, is far worse than any death.”