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EVEN THOUGH HAZEL and my father both insist that I eat a full meal, we set out for Penumbra in Valec’s nice SUV with more than enough time to spare.

But we’re racing against time on not one count, but two: the clock Erebus has set in motion and the one driven by Sel.

Everyone in our car is silent with tension.

Zoe insisted on driving, citing her nerves, and Nick took the passenger seat beside her. Mariah and I are in the back with the wrapped crown sitting on the floorboard at our feet. I’ve never been so thankful that the Morgaine enchantment around the crown—and around the crown shard in Nick’s chest—is still in place. We’re already hoping to avoid Sel’s attention. We can’t afford any extra trouble from demons we might meet on the road.

About halfway to the estate, Mariah clears her throat and turns to me. “Wild to think that your mom brought you to Hazel when you were a kid.”

I tap my knee nervously. “Every time I think I know what that woman was all about, she finds some way to surprise me.”

“Sounds like a fun lady.”

I smirk. “The best.”

“Slow down.” Nick’s voice sets us all on edge. “There’s something in the road.”

Zoe slows the car. “I see it too.”

“Could be a boulder,” Mariah says. “The mountains around here get rockslides.…”

“Could be a trap.” Nick says what we’re all thinking.

The car rolls to a stop, but nobody gets out.

We’re still about a hundred yards away, but even I can see the object in the road now. “It does look like a boulder,” I say, “but why is there only one? If it were a rockslide, wouldn’t there be others?”

“Maybe.” Mariah checks the phone her aunts let us borrow. “No texts from anyone else.”

“Do you even get reception out here?” I ask.

She looks chagrined. “Depends.”

Zoe scoffs and puts the car into park. “We gotta move it, so we may as well get out.” When she opens her door, the world sends cold wind rushing to meet our faces, driving away the warmth of the car’s interior. We’re on an empty, two-lane mountain road, with a rocky cliff face high on our right, a steep drop-off into a wide valley to the left, and a deeply packed forest beyond.

I move to open my own door, and Nick shoots me a glare over the back of his seat. “Any chance you’d stay in the car?”

“Nope,” I say.

“Right.” He nods to himself as he unlocks his door. “Why do I even ask?”

“Hope is good for the spirit,” I say brightly, and get out.

Mariah hesitates, but then I hear her door open too. The four of us stand in a line in front of the still-running car. The sun is still visible between the clouds in the sky over the valley, but it’s definitely starting its trek to the horizon. Up ahead, the road climbs up before it curves right to disappear behind the mountain. Road signs warn about oncoming traffic, falling rocks, and treacherously reduced visibility around the tight bend. We gave ourselves a couple of hours to get to Penumbra, and while we built in an extra hour of buffer, this boulder is already eating into it.

“I can help Zoe move it,” I offer.

Nick’s watchful gaze searches past the boulder, up to the cliffside on our right, back down the empty road behind us. “Make it quick?”

“Quick as we can,” I reply. Zoe and I stride forward together, both of our eyes scanning the boulder and the road ahead—and the curve, where another car could appear at any moment.

Zoe squats down near the boulder, and I mirror her on the other side. “Lift with your legs.”

I roll my eyes, finding awkward handholds around the hard surface. “Mm-hmm. On one?”

“Two.”

“Three.” We get it up in the air by about a foot before we have to drop it. It’s too smooth to grip securely. “Roll it?”

“Yep.”

This time, we both get on the same side, ready to push—until a hot, searing line of attention strokes down my cheek. I stand up abruptly, clapping a hand to my face.

“What are you—”

“Shh.” I cast my gaze around the road. “Someone’s here.”

Nick rushes to my side. “Which direction?”

The burning attention on my skin shifts to the back of my neck, to the other side, to my forehead. “I don’t know. We need to—”

The three of us turn our backs against the boulder as one, arms spread wide. Armor ripples up Nick’s body in a fluid wave. Zoe snaps a long, angry-looking mace into her right hand. I don’t dare call my root, just in case… It’s not him .

“Zoe!” a familiar voice shouts, and we all turn back toward the car—to find Elijah standing by the car with one hand wrapped around Mariah’s arm and the other clasped across her terrified face.

“Elijah?” Zoe calls.

“Let my sister go!” Elijah yells, fangs bared at me and Nick. “Let her go or I’ll hurt your friend!”

The three of us freeze in shock. At the violence in Elijah’s red eyes. The desperation in his ragged voice. The tight grip he has on the delicate joint of Mariah’s elbow.

“Elijah,” I murmur. “What are you doing?”

“Making sure my sister is safe!” By the look on Mariah’s face, Elijah must have snuck up on her without making a single sound. She lets out a muffled scream, and he twists her closer to his body, snarling in her ear, “Shut up!”

I lunge forward—and Nick pulls me back. “Wait.”

“Let her go, Elijah!” Zoe drops her weapon, letting it spark to dust on the road, and blurs toward her brother. She stops halfway between us. “Nick and Bree aren’t hurting me!”

Elijah’s flashing eyes dart between me and Nick. “But your voicemails, your texts—”

“Why didn’t you call me back?” Zoe shouts.

“Penumbra was blocked off, so I was in the mountains looking for you! The messages all came through at once when I got home. In the last one, you said you were heading back to Penumbra!” Elijah yells, face uncertain. “The old man wasn’t home, I knew something went sideways with Mikael, and… you sounded scared.”

Something like embarrassment colors Zoe’s features. “Just let Mariah go, Elijah.”

Elijah hesitates for only a moment before releasing Mariah. He speeds to the middle of the road to meet Zoe, and the siblings wrap each other in a tight hug.

I breathe a sigh of relief while Nick shouts to Mariah, “Get in the car!”

“Don’t have to tell me twice!” she yells back, and climbs into the SUV, slamming the door shut and locking it behind her.

We’re standing just close enough to hear Elijah mutter into his sister’s shoulder, “The old man left and didn’t come back, didn’t tell me where he was going. I lost contact with you and Bree, and then… there were rumors of a new player,” he says. “Someone too dangerous to do business with. Someone on the hunt, willing to hurt cambions. I thought the Merlin you called about might be going after you—”

“Kane’s not after me,” Zoe says. She pulls away from her brother, tipping her head in my direction. “He wants Bree. It’s just like the old man said. An unbalanced cambion that sent himself over the edge.”

Elijah eyes me, then Nick, then looks back at his sister. “The old man—”

“Can’t be trusted,” Zoe says sternly. “He lied . To us. To you.”

Elijah’s brows draw together in confusion. “No, he…”

“He lied , Elijah!” Zoe snaps. “We’re on our own now. It’s you and it’s me, and that’s it.”

Elijah looks as if he wants to argue, but before he can, both of their heads snap to the far side of the road—and to the shadowed curve that disappears around the mountain cliff.

“What is it?” I step closer. “What do you hear?”

Fear returns to Elijah’s eyes until it makes them flash back and forth between crimson and brown. “Zoe…,” he whispers.

Zoe tucks her chin to her chest. “I hear it.”

“But we can’t,” Nick says, shifting his stance until his back faces the long drop-off into the valley and he can more easily see the road in either direction. We both turn to check on Mariah—she’s in the car, eyes wide, a hundred feet away—before peering back into the darkness, where the cambions have sent their full attention. “Tell us what’s going on, please?”

Zoe listens for a moment, focusing, then her eyes widen. She and Elijah go stock-still.

Heart pounding in my chest, I reach for her arm. “Zoe, what’s—”

Without moving her head, her eyes find mine. “He’s warning us.”

My heart stutters still in my chest. Then begins again—faster.

Selwyn.

“What’s he saying?” Nick asks, voice low.

Zoe listens for a moment longer, then turns back to her brother. The twins unite in a long look that I can’t decipher. A look that isn’t meant for me or Nick or anyone else.

Then, Zoe’s eyes fall shut. “I’m sorry, Bree.”

I know what she’s going to do, what they’re both going to do, before they do it.

I hazard a guess anyway. “He won’t hurt you if you go?”

Zoe nods stiffly.

“You’re cambions,” Nick mutters, eyes filling with understanding, “so you’re a threat.”

Zoe nods again. When she turns to me, her eyes glisten under the moonlight. “It’s just… it’s just me and Elijah now, so—”

“Go.” I meet Nick’s gaze. “He won’t hurt me and Nick.”

Elijah and Zoe both jolt where they stand, as if electrified by an invisible circuit.

“You sure about that?” Elijah asks, looking between us. “Because he can hear you. And he just said, ‘That remains to be seen.’?”

Nick’s jaw tightens. “Go. Both of you. We’ll be fine.”

Elijah has to pull Zoe away. He salutes me, face apologetic, as he draws his sister back toward the car. “Bree, I’m sorry about—”

“We’ll be fine,” I say to them both with a soft smile. “See you ’round, Elijah.”

I don’t know if either statement is true. But they feel much better than goodbye.

Zoe gives me one last look filled with remorse and worry, frustration and fear.

And then they’re both gone, speeding down the road toward a vehicle I assume Elijah parked far out of sight.

Nick and I circle the boulder and turn to the empty road ahead of us—and wait.

The winter wind slices through my coat, lifting the loose curls on the top of my head up and away from my face. The scent of a summer storm fills my nose right before Nick’s aether armor brightens, then darkens into a deeper blue. Without needing to recast it, he manipulates his armor into a more solid, thin construct that will make it easier for him to be agile. To move and run and dodge. But I don’t get the feeling that he plans to do any of that. Not really.

My heartbeat is a living thing in my throat while my root pulses like an echo beneath my breastbone. I could call it to my upturned palms in an instant. Harden a protective dome around us with a thought. But I don’t plan to do any of that either.

The clouds shift overhead to reveal the bright crescent moon hanging low in the sky.

And still we wait.

Selwyn was close enough to hear our conversation with the twins—which means that now he is simply toying with our senses. Withholding his presence, on purpose. Watching us as we watch for him. Studying us. Letting our adrenaline build until it overflows, bleeding out on the dark asphalt like a carpet unrolled for a king.

Then—a cheery whistle splits the silence.

With the cliff on one side and the vertical stretch of mountains on the other, there’s no way of knowing where it’s coming from. It bounces from one side of us to the other. Nick shifts his weight, dipping his chin low against his chest.

In the distance, a dark figure appears around the curve.

Selwyn ambles toward us, whistling, in a long dark coat. Glowing green aether writhes around his hands and arms where they sway loose at his sides.

“That’s new,” Nick murmurs.

The figure’s pace does not slow, although Sel must have heard Nick’s voice in the night. The sensation of his gaze scalds my skin, and my shoulders draw up to my ears without my permission. I have to force them back down. That level of intensity in his gaze must be new, too. I can’t imagine ever getting used to it, but then again, maybe I did?

“Sel,” Nick says, voice even and quiet at my shoulder. “We should talk.”

Sel doesn’t stop walking, but he stops whistling. He tilts his head to the left, as if considering, but then the bright cheerful melody resumes as he continues to close the distance between us in even, leisurely steps.

“You don’t want to hurt Bree,” Nick continues, voice calm. “I know you don’t.”

The whistle rises until it pierces the air.

“Let her go,” Nick urges. “Let’s talk, just you and me. Bree has to be somewhere important, and there isn’t much time.”

Sel doesn’t stop. With every step he takes, the sensation of his eyes against my skin grows hotter, brighter. “Please, Sel… let us go. Just for right now.”

At my voice, he stops. Then, without warning, he is a dark blur against the shadows of the rocks, coming to a stop mere inches away.

This person is like nothing I imagined when I thought of “the Merlin boy who made me feel guilty.” He is… all fire and anger, from the curling grin and long fangs to the glowing hands and black-tipped claws. His magic is a sour, burning wave against my face, so sharp that I have to shut my eyes tight against it. Terrifying and beautiful, all together, all at once, and everything inside me tells me to run—but I can’t.

“Hello, Briana.”

Nick’s aether blade erupts to life between us, a thin, sharp divide separating Sel’s chest from mine. The silver-blue light of Nick’s sword illuminates Sel’s smiling face and the dark veins spreading from his glowing red eyes.

“Hello, Nicholas,” Sel purrs without looking away. “Thanks for the light. I do want to get a good look at her.”

Nick’s blade hand is steady. “Selwyn—”

Sel’s eyes flick to Nick. “Your hair is too long.”

Nick fires back, “No time to get it cut.”

“The stubble?” Sel asks. “Really?”

“It’s been a long few months.”

“You have no idea.” Sel’s eyes snap back to me. “Drop the sword, Nicholas, or I’ll break it.”

“I don’t want a fight,” I say.

“There will be plenty of time for us to fight later.” Sel’s eyes trail over my face, my cheeks, my brow. “Why fight now, when you are as glorious as I remember? As powerful? More, even. I would rather enjoy simply… perceiving you.”

“You can try to consume my root a second time,” I warn, raising my chin, “but you should know that I won’t make it easy.”

He leans closer infinitesimally—throat pressing against Nick’s blade—and I suck in a breath. Black blood beads along the silver sword where it cuts into his pale skin, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care. “Please never make it easy.”

Our gazes lock together. His, a hot blaze against my face and my lips, sends a shudder down my spine without my permission. My mouth works open and closed.

He grins. “Got you.”

“Got who?” I whisper.

His grin widens, recognition and satisfaction sparking across his face. “I will never forget our first meeting.” He edges closer, voice pitched like a low wave. A rush against my ears and chest and legs that threatens to tow me under. “The wildness in you. The fury. The indignance .”

“She doesn’t know your first meeting,” Nick says in the quiet space between us. “She doesn’t know you.”

Sel rears back, alarm skipping over his features. “Is this a trick? Briana can’t be mesmered.”

“Not a trick and not a mesmer,” Nick says. “This is why you need to let us go.”

Sel growls, lip curling. “Is this what my mother meant when she said that I could not give Briana what she needs?”

I flush—and so does Nick.

Sel ignores us both as he searches my face. “You are missing part of your life? Unacceptable.” He eyes the sword between us. “Remove your weapon, Nicholas.”

“He’s angry,” Nick informs me in a careful voice. “But I don’t feel murder in him. Your call.”

I weigh my options. “Drop the sword.”

The sword dissipates between us, bright silver dust falling to our feet. Nick rises out of his fighting stance but stays put beside me. “Did you throw that boulder into the road?”

“No. That cambion from Asheville did.” Sel looks over my shoulder. “It was a helpful obstacle. Now we have time to chat.”

“We really don’t,” I say.

“How did you find us?” Nick asks.

“Again, the cambion.” Sel sighs as if bored. “I tracked Bree’s root signature to a home and thought I might surveil it from the woods. Listen in from the outside. But then he played a voicemail that included your name and drove off in a rush. I followed.”

My stomach sinks. Zoe’s calls to Elijah led Sel right to us.

Sel’s mouth turns down in mock concern. “Good thing Elijah’s very worried sister called and left that final extremely frantic message. If she hadn’t, I might not have found you for another day. Maybe two.”

I cross my arms. “Your mother said you haven’t fed.”

The mockery leaves him, gone as if it had never been. “Came to see you, did she?”

“Yes.”

His head drops back with a groan. “Always protecting a Matthews girl ,” he drawls, voice turning biting. “It seems that mission is her eternal fate—and her eternal failure.”

“I don’t need her protection,” I say.

His head snaps forward. “You used to need mine.”

“I was a different girl then.”

Sel’s voice turns raw, a brief unmasking. “And I was a different boy.”

“You are still a Kingsmage,” Nick says quietly, unfazed.

Sel blurs in front of him in a blink, eyes flashing up at the taller boy. He bares his fangs, words spiking between them in a hiss. “And what good is that? A Kingsmage without a king.”

Nick’s gaze is steady. “I was never your king, Sel.”

Sel sneers. “A bonded brother, then? Trapped with a monster?”

“You were never a monster,” Nick replies evenly. “And we were never brothers.”

“What was I, then? And what does that make me now?” The register of Sel’s voice slips lower and lower until it becomes a rumbling growl. “If not a willing and unwilling sacrifice on a false god’s altar ?”

“You are a Kingsmage. You can still be a Kingsmage”—Nick’s eyes travel to me, then back to his bonded—“if you want to be.”

“In name only!” Sel roars. “Never to be tied to my duty in truth or in magic! No. There are so many things that I can never be, things I never was, things I cannot become, even now in the wake of yet another one of my mother’s glorious failures.”

“You aren’t a failure!” I say.

He smiles, harsh and slow. “And how would you know that, gorgeous girl? How could you ever understand what failure looks like? What it means to fall ?”

I inhale a shaky breath. Swallow. “I know what it means.”

“Oh?” he says. “In your time away from the Order, do you now comprehend how much of a problem I am? Especially when they find out my mother couldn’t fix me.”

“You aren’t a problem to be fixed,” I grind out.

Sel steps back a few paces. “Nicholas thought I was.”

“No, I didn’t.” Nick shakes his head. “The Oath between us wasn’t—isn’t— right . It shouldn’t have been forced on either of us. The Oath, my father, the Order, the Regents.” Nick groans, eyes imploring Sel to understand. “All of it is the problem, Sel! I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like that problem was you.”

Something unreadable passes over Sel’s expression. “Did you ever wonder why the Kingsmage Oath binds us by our fear and by our rage? Those two emotions, specifically?”

Nick does not answer.

“I have given the question long hours of contemplation,” Sel continues. “And I have concluded that fear and rage are not so different. The passage between them, so very slippery. We both held much of each, didn’t we? Even before we were bonded.” Sel turns to me, raising his hand to his mouth. “Can I tell you a secret, Bree?”

Nick and I share a glance before I answer. “Yes?”

He continues in a stage whisper. “Nicholas is not as tooth-achingly sweet and good as everyone thinks he is. He has his own demons. Pun intended.”

Nick’s eyes grow stony. “I’ve never claimed to be sweet or good.”

“You never had to!” Sel straightens, spreading his hands wide, sending small streams of green aether through the air. “It was just… assumed. A benefit you were given. A benefit I myself gave you, even though I knew better.”

“Sel, listen,” Nick says exasperatedly, glancing at the moon overhead, “Bree and I have to go. We need to get to Penumbra. It’s critical—”

“Nicholas Davis and Selwyn Kane.” Sel ignores Nick’s attempt to redirect him. “The sun and the moon. You are the warmth and the light and I am the bitter deep cold, or so it has always appeared. But we know the truth, don’t we, Nicholas?”

Nick and I both go still as Sel approaches us. He comes to a stop where we stand shoulder to shoulder and leans in until his head hovers between ours. But as Sel brings his mouth close to Nick’s ear, his crimson gaze slides to mine. In a low whisper, meant for the both of us, he asks, “Does she know that the moon lives in you, too?”

As Sel draws back with a satisfied smirk, he reveals Nick’s shuttered expression. I don’t think either Sel or I expect Nick to respond to the taunting question, but he surprises us both.

“She does,” Nick whispers. “Just like she knows the sun lives within you.”

Sel’s seething anger sends him into terrifying stillness.

But not for long.

A sly grin reveals the dark tips of his fangs. He speaks to me this time, while his words are for Nick. “Did Briana tell you that she kissed me?”

Breath leaves me in a rush, my face flaming. I know that Nick is aware of what happened between me and his Kingsmage, but to me, this news is still fresh. Still information that I don’t possess. It is, however, a memory that Sel does not mind sharing.

“No?” When Nick doesn’t answer him, Sel’s expression turns triumphant. “Well, she did. Pulled my face right down to hers, and I let her.… Oh , how I let her —”

“Stop,” Nick commands. “I know what you’re doing. It won’t work—”

“She tastes like heat and danger and honey and”—Sel shudders—“ power . Addictive, even without her root.”

When Nick doesn’t reply, Sel’s brows lift. He looks between us, eyes narrowing, until he finds what he’s searching for.

“I see. You two have become… reacquainted. And recently, too.” He pounces on the idea of it, claws out and gleeful. “Does it make you jealous, Nicholas? That Briana kissed me while you were so very absent?”

Nick surveys him. “Do you want me to be jealous, Sel?”

Sel rears back, his laughter a breaking sound against the mountain. “All I am made of is want, now. I find I am insatiable—and I find I do not mind it.”

“What do you want?” I step forward. “It’s not just me.”

He lets me come to him. “Haven’t you figured it out yet, mystery girl?”

“No.”

“I want what every demon wants, Briana.” When he reaches for my hair, pausing to give me enough time to pull away, I don’t move. He tugs on one of my black-brown curls, drawing it down only to release it and watch the recoil. “Chaos.”

“Chaos will have to wait,” I grit out.

Root flares along my wrist and up to his elbow, and his eyes widen in delight. “An aperitif?”

Quick as a snake, he catches a hint of the flame and brings it to his nose. His eyes fall shut as he takes a slow, savoring breath of my magic—and frowns. His eyes snap open. He looks back at me accusingly, sniffs again. “Something’s wrong.”

I glare back. “I’m aware.”

His eyes flick to Nicholas. “Her magic is altered. She has been altered.”

“That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you,” Nick says with a sigh. “We need to get to Penumbra.”

“What will you do at this Penumbra ?” Sel asks.

“Reverse it, if we can,” I say.

Selwyn regards us both, then casts a long gaze at Nick. “Don’t let me stop you.”

“This conversation isn’t done,” Nick says. “We’re not finished.”

“No, we’re not done,” Sel agrees. He inhales again, seeming to brighten from the inside. “But this conversation has been… delicious.”

“You’re just going to let us go?” I ask warily.

He shrugs. “For now.”

“And what will you do when we’re gone?”

“Maybe you’re right, Briana Matthews, and I am not a problem to be fixed.” His eyes flare, red flame leaking from their corners. “But perhaps I should become one.”

Before we can say another word, he turns on his heel, whistling an easy tune as he strolls back up the road and into the night.