Page 3

W hen I reach our family lodge, its ivy-ridden exterior looms cold and still. No lights, no movement.

“Mom? Jax?” I call, wondering if they might have gone down to the basement. I can’t imagine why they would have, when our ten-foot dining table would have done fine for an at-home treatment.

The lights are also out in the house of my aunt, uncle and three cousins, which stands next door to ours. But that’s to be expected: they were all deployed, along with my younger sister Brynn, as emergency reinforcements to Bloodbane Coven three days ago after a clearblood strike.

The heavy tapestries lining our entryway seem to absorb what little moonlight enters, their embroidered scenes of ancient mage battles fading into the gloom.

My gaze drifts briefly but inevitably to the single photograph perched on the mantel—my father’s face frozen in time, his sharp cheekbones casting shadows across features so similar to my own; his gray eyes holding secrets I’ll never know.

He left for Tarnhollow—a fledgling clearblood coven five hundred miles east of Darkbirch— thirteen years ago, when I was ten years old.

It should have been a routine reconnaissance mission, but he never returned.

Bloodbane and two other neighboring covens helped us send trackers, but the only answers we ever got were rumors which reached us of pyres burning in Tarnhollow’s square.

For years, my mother came to this exact spot every evening and stared at his photograph.

She never said it aloud, but we all knew she was waiting.

If I’m honest, I waited too. Even after we stopped lighting the spirit-lanterns, and when the bond-ritual scars on my wrist stopped aching, the magic gone cold.

Some nights, I still dream of smoke curling against a distant horizon, and wonder if his spirit chose the afterlife over us—or if the clearbloods found ways to ensure he couldn’t return to us even in subtle form.

I exhale. Either way, it doesn’t matter anymore.

I tear my eyes away from the picture. Focus.

Jax.

My mother must have taken him straight to the infirmary, which means his condition is worse than I thought. Isander probably escorted them both there.

I glance at my watch. It’s still several hours before sunrise.

I stop by my bedroom and briefly glance around at its sparse interior.

I’ve barely spent any time here since I moved into the academy’s dorms. I grab my old snakeskin whip, tipped with a silver blade, which stands in a white-porcelain vase behind the door, then hurry back out of the house .

Darkbirch is always wild, but when the sun sets, the creatures we harbor shed the last pretense of civility.

The infirmary path stretches before me, a ribbon of dirt cast in flickering lantern light. Ten minutes. That’s all it should take. But the woods in this area are hungry, and twenty steps in, I already hear the pound of paws and the wet rasp of something breathing too hard, too close.

I turn slowly.

Red eyes float in the dark. Teeth glint like shards of glass.

Soren.

My whip uncoils in my grip, its silver blade catching what little light there is. “Watch your step,” I snarl.

The wolf freezes. Massive and muscle-bound, his hackles bristle like daggers along his spine. Moonlight glints in the strands of saliva dripping from his jaws. He hasn’t backed down—he’s just weighing the cost of disobedience.

I let the whip crack. The sound splits the air like a gunshot.

For a heartbeat, he hesitates. Then, with a growl that shakes the leaves overhead, he vanishes into the trees. Probably to tear out the throat of the first animal he finds, or possibly even his mate.

I pick up my pace, pretending not to notice the trio of incubi lounging in the oak branches above. Their barely-there attire—more suggestion than fabric—is designed to tempt ruin. One blows me a kiss, the air thick with jasmine and sin, and something darker that curls low in my spine.

About a minute later, a voice like velvet brushes my ear.

“Darling, you’re wound tight.” He emerges from the shadows in a slow ripple of moonlight and heat, a dark fae sculpted from illusion and intent.

His fingers sketch circles in the air, and the space beneath them shimmers like disturbed water—half-magic, half-invitation.

Then his lips brush the shell of my ear, feather-soft, daringly close. “Let me… loosen you.”

I sidestep his advance with a glare. Honestly, it’s like walking through a supernatural frat house out here.

I heave a sigh when the infirmary finally looms ahead.

I close the distance rapidly and shove open the heavy oak doors.

The air hangs thick with the scent of crushed yarrow and something metallic.

I push through the cluster of eight defense officers crowding Jax’s bed, their uniforms creating a wall of black leather and crimson insignias.

Our defense academy’s head, Corvin, looms at the top of the bed, his scarred hands clutching the bedframe. My mother’s fingers work methodically, smearing yellow ointment across Jax’s temples. My brother’s face twitches violently, veins standing out like blue rivers beneath his too-pale skin.

My mother notices me enter and looks up. “What the hell happened to you?” she snaps before I can utter a word. She finishes applying the ointment and turns to me, hands on her hips. Her cold blue eyes rake over me.

I grip the bedrail. “We were almost out,” I say.

“Then this armored bastard—Mazrov—dropped from the upper level. Jax was moving despite the torture injuries, but then… suddenly he was on his knees and it seemed Mazrov did something to him. But I don’t know what.

And then someone called Mazrov off. Said he wasn’t ‘strong enough’ yet to take me on.

” My nails dig deeper into the wood. “What’s wrong with Jax? ”

A dry swallow. A flicker of her tongue over her lips. My mother—rarely nervous—stands too still, her fingers curling into loose fists before forcing them flat again .

“His symptoms are… strange,” she replies. “Mental fracturing. Temporal disorientation. But what’s most concerning is his aura. It’s… weakened.”

I stare at her. What? Our aura is what defines our identity as magicals. More than identity, it is our lifeblood. Without it, we are ash.

“Esme, you need to tell us every single detail you can about this.” Corvin steps forward and I have never seen his dark eyes so serious. His thin lips set in a hard line.

“I saw the man’s eyes,” I say. “They were bright blue, but I saw fire. That’s the only way I can think to describe it. There was… fire in his eyes.”

The air in the room turns to ice. No one seems to breathe. No one moves. My mother’s face is a reflection of the expression carved into every other face in the room: pale, wide-eyed, disquieted.

“Are you sure, Esme?” Her voice is barely a whisper, but it cuts through the silence like a blade.

I don’t blink. “I told you exactly what I saw… What does it mean?”

Corvin’s gaze snaps to my brother’s prone form, his brow furrowing so deeply it shadows his eyes. His jaw clenches—once, twice—before he turns on me with a predator’s stillness.

“You’ll be wanted at a council meeting.”