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WE FIND VALEC at the outer border of his ward and pause to watch him work. His fingers glide up the translucent golden surface of the ward, leaving a thicker layer behind that melts, then solidifies before our eyes.

Nick’s arms circle my waist from behind, and he drops a kiss on my shoulder. “I’ll look into breakfast.”

I nod and squeeze his wrists before he lets me go.

“Hazel invited us to her place for breakfast,” Valec calls to us without turning away from his barrier, having heard Nick’s comment even at a distance. “And the Lounge is out of food, so Sir Lancelot’s gonna have to eat bar peanuts for now.”

I hear Nick chuckle as he walks inside, leaving me and Valec alone.

“He’ll survive.” I walk closer to the cambion, admiring the ward as I approach.

“You sure ’bout that? That boy looks like he needs at least four protein shakes a day. Mebbe five.”

I roll my eyes but smile. If Valec is joking with me, then maybe he’s not too mad to talk.

I stride up beside him but keep a safe distance as he continues to work. When he doesn’t speak, I decide I won’t either. Instead, I shuffle along behind him as he patches the ward, occasionally murmuring something I can’t quite make out.

Finally, he speaks. “I was raised thinking that cambions like me couldn’t cast wards.”

That surprises me. “Said who?”

He shrugs. “Well-meaning folk.”

“But why would the Merlins be able to, and you couldn’t?”

“Merlins are descended from a great sorcerer and their wards are, allegedly, protective.” A pause. “I am the crossroads child of a Shade.”

My eyes widen, remembering a scene from a memory walk long ago. A scene that appears clearly in my mind, because the women within it are long dead. A young woman named Pearl and her newborn baby with amber eyes that glowed like the sun. “Your father was…”

He turns, dusting his hands off. “A Nightshade of the Shadow Court.”

“Wow.”

A wry expression overtakes his face. “I just told you that my father is not only evil but one of the world’s most ancient evils, in service to the being that devoured part of your soul, and all you’ve got is ‘wow’?” He shakes his head. “This generation is doomed, I swear.”

“Okay, I can say more than ‘wow,’?” I protest. “I can say, ‘Holy shit, Valec, that seems like a really messed-up legacy to walk around with. How are you holding up?’?”

“You could say that; you’re right.”

“Not gonna, though,” I say, turning back to the ward. “In case that’s rude.”

He blinks. “You’re truly something else, Briana Matthews.”

I peer at him out of the side of my eye. “Does what you did to try and find me have to do with your father?”

He takes a slow, deep breath. “Put myself back on the radar of one of his fellow Court members when I’ve done everything I could in the last hundred years to distance myself from each and every Shade on this plane. When the only reason I can do this”—he nods toward the ward—“is because I cut contact with the Court entirely.”

I consider this. “How do you know that’s the only reason you can use root?”

“Because root is about uplifting life not death,” Valec says. “Even though we walk beside death to access it and honor the ones who came before, the workings are for the living. Not the undead. I’m lucky the ancestors even let me do this much, and forge the occasional weapon for defense. Not like I’m really built for ‘good,’ so to speak.”

“Ah.”

He narrows his eyes. “You don’t believe me.”

I smile. “Nah.”

He huffs in frustration. “I’ve been around quite a bit longer than you, powerhouse.”

“True,” I admit, then shrug. “But someone once told me that while we know ourselves best, we don’t always know what we’re capable of doing or becoming. And I think that’s a pretty nice way to look at it.”

“Since when did you get wise?”

“Since a demon ate part of my soul, I guess.”

A laugh bursts out of him. He shakes his head, smiling. “Whew… shit.”

I smile back at him, happy to have made him laugh even for a moment, before I sober. “I’m sorry for putting y’all out like I did.”

He waves a hand. “You didn’t do that. We did that. Because we care. And I shouldn’t have made you feel guilty about it.”

“But I made a choice, and I have to live with it, like you said.”

“If I trust you, and I do, then I gotta trust you to make your own calls. I’m not living your life, you are.” He crosses his arms, tucking his chin into his chest. “I put you up on a pedestal, Bree. Saw you as someone who can walk between worlds, you know? Do the impossible thing I’ve been chasing my whole life. And that’s not fair. That’s the stuff that got you all mixed up in the first place. I’m sorry.”

My throat tightens. “I didn’t come out here expecting an apology.”

“But I owe you one anyway.” His shoulders rise and fall in a heavy sigh. “And if I may, I’d like to amend your little saying.”

I glance up. “How so?”

“While we know ourselves best, we don’t always know what we’re capable of doing or becoming”—he pauses, thinking—“ and we can always choose new paths if we need to.”

I swallow around a lump. “Rules can change.”

His eyes flash red. “Picked up a little demon talk on your walk ’round the dark side?”

“Seems so.”

He studies me. “I turned my back on my people once too. Gave in. Why I did it is my business and a story for another day, but why did you? Why’d you burn your ancestral stream, really ?”

“I failed. I was… failing,” I say. “Everyone. Everywhere. At everything I did. I tried to do what my ancestors asked me to do, tried to be what they needed me to be… tried to be what the Legendborn told me I could be, tried to defy the Regents, tried to harness Arthur, and look what it all got me? My best friend is in a coma, Selwyn is gone, my dad doesn’t even know where I am—”

“Slow down, slow down,” Valec says, holding his hands out to grasp my shoulders. “You had to fail, Bree. You had to fall.”

“Why?” I exclaim.

“Because you had to rise .” He steps closer. “A true leader has to know every side of her battle: the wins, the losses, the enemies, the allies, the good, and the bad. And she has to know who has her back, without the titles and legacies.”

“Do you have my back?”

He smirks. “Always, powerhouse.”

The tension in my shoulders breaks apart, crumbles, and it feels like I can breathe again. Like every minute with these people who were looking for me gives me back a bit of myself.

Valec’s arms drop and his smile turns sly. “How about that boy who just went inside?”

I frown. “What about him?”

“I like him.” Valec shrugs. “ He’s got your back.”

“Probably some other parts of you too,” a new voice says, “if you let him.”

Valec laughs. I look over his shoulder to see Zoe leaning against the exterior door with a wide grin on her face. “How long you been standing there?” I demand.

“Just a couple seconds.” She blurs over to us and tosses a handful of peanuts in her mouth and waggles her eyebrows. “Long enough to call you out for not going to bed last night.”

Valec crosses his arms, smirking. “See, I wasn’t gonna say anything.”

“Why not?” Zoe asks. “ Somebody has to keep Bree on her toes.”

“You’re right,” Valec agrees solemnly. “I lied. I was gonna say something .”

“See?” Zoe says to Valec. “You should have seen them at Penumbra—”

“No.” I point between the two of them. “You two getting along is a cursed combination. Make it stop.”

Valec snickers. “Nah.” He regards Zoe, who looks up at him with wide, hesitant eyes. “Besides, I have a feeling we have a lot we could talk about, huh, kid?”

Zoe wrinkles her nose but nods. “Yeah, I guess.”

“When you’re ready,” Valec adds.

She shrugs and looks away. “Yeah.”

Valec turns back to me. “After we’re done giving the powerhouse here a hard time about her white boys, that is,” he says—and they both collapse with laughter.

I roll my eyes, but don’t fight the amused smile curling my lips. “Cursed. Combination.”

“Honestly, Davis seems all right,” Valec says as he recovers. “But he’s bonded to the Kingsmage, and that Oath ain’t nothing to play with. Ain’t no way to break it either. Question is, what’s Kane think about you and his bonded canoodling like teenagers?”

“What—” I sputter. “We are teenagers!”

Zoe butts in. “So you admit to the canoodling!”

I am saved from responding by the pulse of my bloodmark. The loose laughter leaves their bodies in simultaneous whooshes as both cambions’ eyes drop to my chest and the blazing red branches. I rub at my sternum in frustration.

Valec’s humor disappears. “Bloodmark botherin’ ya?”

“Yeah,” I reply. “That’s what I came out here to talk to you about, actually.”

“Can’t do anything about that mark,” Valec warns.

“No, I know, but”—I shift my weight—“I want you to take another look at what the King did to me. I’m not done fighting. And I need you to not be done fighting either, Valec.”

He rubs a hand over his jaw. “Take another look, huh?”

“I need to know everything I can about what he did to my soul, even if there’s a chance I can’t restore it to whole,” I say. “We have his crown. We know his true identity.” I throw my hands up. “I have to believe that something can still help us. It can’t end like this. I won’t stand for it.”

Valec sighs. “There is one thing we could try—no promises. Something Hazel might be able to do, but it’s gonna take both of us.” He eyes me warily. “And it might not work, because of… of what I told you about me.”

I put all my confidence in my gaze. “Let’s do the impossible.”

Valec exhales. “Well, when you put it that way…”

I take a hot shower and change clothes while the others get ready to leave. An hour later, when we pull up as a caravan to Hazel’s house, she and Lucille greet all seven of us at the porch: me, Valec, Zoe, Nick, William, Lark, and Mariah.

William whispers to me that he had been with me the last time I was here. That Alice is here now, safe from the Order.

Alice.

I freeze at the name. My best friend, close to death—before I left her behind. A new fear flashes in my mind: What if I see her and don’t feel what I should?

Hazel doesn’t let my stricken expression set in. Quickly, she invites me to walk with her to the back room where Alice is resting. I hesitate for only a moment, because it reminds me of another day, another moment, when someone I loved with my entire being was lying alone and still in an otherwise empty room. Except that time, the person was my mother, and she was dead… and I wasn’t allowed to see her body.

Hazel and Mariah step beside me, taking my hands in each of theirs. “It’s all right, Bree,” Mariah says. “Let us be brave with you.”

I swallow around a hard lump in my throat. “Okay.”

They walk me into the room together, and then I see her. The fear that held me back dissipates as soon as I see her sleeping face, and I am at her side in two strides, holding her hand.

“Alice…,” I whisper. There is something tight in her expression. “What’s happening to her?”

Mariah comes around to the other side of the bed. “She’s in a type of purgatory, as far as we can tell. Not quite dead, not quite alive.” She frowns. “I visited her there. She’s fighting her own death. If I were to guess, I’d say that she’s replaying the moment she thinks she failed you. The moment when she could have made a different choice to help you… and to help herself.”

“She didn’t fail me,” I whisper, voice cracking. “I failed her.…”

“None of that,” Hazel murmurs. “The ones we love don’t think in those terms. They give us grace when we fall.…”

“So that we can rise,” I whisper.

She nods. “Seems you and Ms. Chen are cut from a similar cloth.”

“We grew up together.”

“Same high standards, same sense of justice,” Hazel says. “Same love for each other. The kind of sisterhood that has you throwing yourself in the way of a demon, just to protect the other person from more harm.”

“I didn’t—”

“Didn’t you?” Hazel asks. She comes closer and presses her lips to my temple. “I’m gonna finish making breakfast with Lu. You sit with her as long as you like.”

Mariah watches her aunt leave. “I can go—”

“No,” I murmur. “I… could use a little of that extra bravery… if it’s still on offer?”

Mariah grins. “You got it.”

Thirty minutes later, Mariah and I emerge from Alice’s room together. She rubs my back and excuses herself to go help her aunts cook. When I look up, I see William has already made himself available in the kitchen—and so has Nick.

“You cook?” I call.

Nick flashes me a grin. “I can cook.” He glances back at Hazel over a deep dish of sausage gravy. “But not like this.”

“I know that’s right,” Lu mutters behind him.

“You make food is what I’m hearing,” Valec drawls. “There’s a difference.”

The room bursts into warm laughter—until suddenly the cambions stiffen, tilting their ears to the door.

“You expecting somebody else, Haze?” Valec asks.

She shakes her head.

Valec, Lark, and Zoe blur out to the porch and the gravel drive beyond it, leaving the porch door swinging.

Nick is at my side in a blink, hand wrapped around my wrist. “If there’s a fight, we need to get you out of here.”

“No,” I say. “Not running.”

He bites back a response and nods once. “Then we need to be prepared.” He looks to the others in the room just as I do. William is already ushering both Hazel and Lucille into their bedroom, armor rippling into place over his forearms, while Mariah walks to stand beside us, her hand on the Heart at her chest. I open up the root furnace in my chest, let the flames lick down my biceps and elbows.

If Erebus wants to take me back, I’m not going to make it easy.

“Bree!” Zoe calls. “You better get out here.”

Nick’s fingers tense around my wrist. “Let me look first.” Not a question, but I nod anyway.

He dashes to the porch door, opening it slowly to exit. It swings shut behind him. Then, a moment later: “Bree, it’s…”

“Is it safe?” I call.

He hesitates before answering. I blink at Mariah. What could be out there that has rendered all three cambions and Nick totally speechless?

“It’s safe,” Nick finally shouts. “Just… come outside.”

I draw my flames back but keep them simmering behind my sternum. Mariah and I approach together, and I ease the front door open, unsure of what I’m going to find on the other side.

Nick is blocking the doorway, his broad shoulders filling my view. “What is it?”

He glances back at me, then steps away to reveal the new car that has pulled into the driveway—and its new occupants. “That’s Sel’s mom.”

I take in the tall, black-haired woman in tactical gear standing with her hands up by the driver’s side of an SUV. I freeze. The same woman had been at Eclipse when Elijah and Zoe took me to meet Daeza. She’d spoken to me oddly, as if she’d recognized me even as I didn’t recognize her. She’s Selwyn’s mother?

“And I’ve never met him before, but,” Nick continues, nodding to the passenger side, “I think… I think that’s your dad.”

The middle-aged Black man standing by the passenger side of the car is gripping the top of the door as he eyes the cambions around him. Then, he looks up, and our eyes meet—and my heart stutters in my chest when he smiles and offers a weak wave. “Hey, kiddo.”