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WE ARRIVE AT Penumbra with only a few minutes to spare, still rattled from what happened with Elijah and Zoe—and stunned by our encounter with Sel. Nick cuts the engine in the empty driveway and peers up at the mansion through the windshield.

“Windows are dark,” he mutters. “Every light inside, off. Looks like no one’s home.”

“I got used to it being busy,” Mariah murmurs, leaning forward to gaze up at the darkened fourth floor and the starlit sky overhead. “Full of awful people but still… full.”

“Did you message the others about Sel?” I ask.

Mariah nods. “Told them y’all had… an encounter.”

Nick’s hands grip the wheel. I shift in my seat. Neither of us has spoken about our meeting with Selwyn, but I can tell we’re both still shaken from the hurricane of emotions he surfaced within and between us with only a few easy words.

“We need to focus,” Nick says. “Let’s go.”

When Mariah, Nick, and I make our way around the back of the building by the light of the still-lit iron lampposts that line the brick-laid path, we do so as one, our steps aligning. But before we enter the gardens, I stop.

They pause ahead of me and turn back.

“What is it?” Nick asks.

I look at them both. “Mariah, if it’s a fight, a physical one—”

“I’ll run,” she says. “But I’m not going back to the car. I took Mikael down.”

“The King is not Mikael. He’s who Mikael used to kneel to,” I say.

She nods. “If he transforms, or I can’t hold him, I’ll tell you.”

I turn to Nick. “And if you can’t—”

“I can do it.”

“But if you can’t —”

“Trust me?” Nick says, stepping forward to squeeze my hand.

Love. Trust. Both a practice, I decide. “Okay.”

When we reach the gardens at the back of the estate, Erebus is alone. He sits on a stone bench on the patio that overlooks the maze, one knee crossed over the other.

“You know what they say,” he says as he stands. “Ten minutes early is on time, and on time is too late.”

I stride toward him, scowling. “Spare me.”

His eyes flick to my right, where Nick walks with me, then to my left, where Mariah has hung back as planned. “Bringing a human to a mage fight? Her tricks won’t work on me.”

I come to a stop before him with the cloth-covered crown resting at my hip. “?‘Unsettle your opponent early, so they never feel that they have the upper hand.’ You taught me that in our second week of training.”

He beams. “You do listen.”

“Let’s keep this simple,” I say. “Give me back my soul fragment.”

He claps slowly. “You uncovered the mystery.”

I ignore that and hold the crown forward. “If you return my fragment, we’ll return your crown—and remove its enchantment so that you can wear it once more.”

Erebus’s expression turns skeptical. “And how do you expect to do that? The Morgaines have gone to ground again.”

Nick steps forward. “I can remove it.”

Erebus narrows his eyes. “I’ve never met a Scion of Lancelot who could undo magic.”

“And they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” Nick says with a smirk.

With a sigh, Erebus turns back to me. “If Nicholas can indeed remove the enchantment, then you will return the crown to me… and I will consider our original, unfinished bargain completed.”

I suck in a breath. “That’s not what I offered.”

He spreads his hands. “But it’s the bargain before you. I find that owning a piece of your soul is much too beneficial to give it up this easily.”

“So you’re keeping it for your own amusement?” I ask. “You can’t need it for yourself!”

He walks closer. “Do you know that most humans with broken souls never find their way back to their original path? They falter. Stray. Become people they never wished to be as they subconsciously guard what has been wounded. But you, Briana Matthews…” He tilts his head as he gazes deep inside me. “You risked irrevocable injury to pursue your life’s mission. Perhaps risked losing even more of yourself for your troubles.”

“I know about the scar tissue,” I interject.

“Then you know what fascinates me. It is a rare being who keeps wading into the war of life with a fractured weapon. I find I am curious to see how much more powerful you might become with one hand tied behind your back. Perhaps I will only return the missing fragment of your soul when you are nearing your full potential. Then we shall see what heights you may still reach.”

Nick steps forward. “That’s not what we came here for—”

“You are not welcome in this bargain, boy ,” Erebus snaps. “This conversation is between kings.”

“You say that, but I have excellent eyesight and when I look around”—Nick casts his gaze wide across the empty stone patio, voice wry—“the only king I see here is Bree.”

Erebus’s face pulls away from human, stretching briefly into an angry shadow.

“Unlike you, she stands with a court,” Nick continues, “and unlike you, she could wear the crown in her hands without it burning her into a pile of ancient, feeble, forgotten dust.”

The King’s mouth snarls, a black abyss of claw-like fangs. “Silence.”

“I accept,” I say.

Nick’s head whips around. “Bree!”

“I can’t, won’t let him hold this over my head any longer,” I say to Nick. “He could ask for anything at any time. I won’t give him open access to the rest of my life. No one is owed that, remember? No one deserves my suffering.”

Nick’s lips press into a line as he looks between me and Erebus. After a moment, he nods.

“Then we are in agreement.” Erebus claps his hands together. “Now let us see if the arrogant Scion of Lancelot can be the second that his king requires.”

Nick eyes him before turning back to me. “I’m ready.”

I pull back the cover on the crown, then set it down on the bricks between us. A hint of blue crosshatched aether sparkles over the black metal in the lamplight. The old relic looks almost innocent here, but the open hunger in Erebus’s eyes reminds me that it is anything but. Like him, the crown has not been harmless for the past fifteen centuries but dormant. Never powerless, but always hidden. Protected. The crown’s true power has been locked away for so long, it might be easy to mistake it for something other than what it can be. Something less than what it can do.

Suddenly I feel an unexpected kinship with the ancient artifact—and wonder what we might both become after this moment of claiming.

Nick circles the crown, his eyes narrowing, then flashing a deep, deep blue. He kneels with both hands extended over its broken spires.

I hold my breath, hoping that this will work. Unsure what we’ll do if it doesn’t.

Then, one strip of aether at a time, the Morgaines’ crosshatched glowing enchantment begins to peel away.

Erebus’s eyes widen, grow redder with every passing moment. “Incredible.”

Nick grunts softly with the effort, his shoulders riding up to his ears as his fingers curl down.

As the layered lines of Morgaine magic pull back, the black color of the crown seems to deepen. Lightning flickers across Nick’s eyes, seeping from the edges in jagged sparks as he pulls the near final strip of power away.

There are only two glowing blue bands left, each stretching from one edge of the crown’s circle to the other, forming a glowing X .

Nick glances up at me. The signal.

Then, in a burst of speed, Nick blurs twenty feet away to the far side of the patio.

“It’s not finished!” Erebus shouts after him.

“I’m aware.” Nick grins.

“Now!” I shout.

In an instant, black-and-gray shadows lift from Erebus’s skin. He snarls at Mariah over my shoulder, “I told you, this won’t work—”

I ignore him, clapping my hands together. Contain.

A shimmering purple sphere encloses me, the crown, and Erebus.

“Your barrier can’t hold me either, Briana.” Mariah’s magic pulls shadows from his skin and clothing, lifting them away from his hair and from his cheeks until it looks like he is bleeding black swirls of air. “Neither of you is strong enough.”

“Not trying to hold you,” I whisper. “Just want to remind you what you’ve taken.”

I hear Mariah’s final gasp of effort—and the curling black wisps tugging at Erebus’s body explode all at once around him, filling my sphere with a thousand ghostly bodies. Erebus’s victims. Apparitions of his violence.

The crowd is churning, hovering on transparent legs, mouths snarling at the demon in the center of my sphere. I recognize some of the faces from my ancestors’ blood walks: a young white man wearing fifties clothing and a Black man Emmeline saw in New Orleans in the thirties. The thin man from the British Museum, Bianca’s warlock lieutenant, Lawson, and so, so many others.

A multitude of genders, of races, people of different heights and shapes, people wearing modern clothes and dated clothes from across the country—no, across the world. And their glowing red eyes are filled with anger—but not toward me.

“You killed all these people…,” I gasp.

“Yessss,” the Shadow King growls from a mouth of smoke. His crimson eyes burn in his true form—a winged creature with curved claws and black limbs made of darkness and mist. He is Erebus no more, because the ghost of the real Erebus stands a foot away from him, a young boy tethered to the King’s body by a thick thread of smoke.

“And there are many, many more missing, Briana. Nearly twenty centuries of bodies I have devoured and consumed until I could walk in their skin, live in their lives, see as they saw, and experience all the ugly, sour, selfish flavors of humanity. And do you know what I have learned about humans in that time? In all your messiness and your striving, in all your choices and truths and lies?”

My voice comes out in a breathy tremble. “No.”

“I have learned that you are nothing without your desires. Any power you have is driven not by what is right, or what is fair, or what your neighbor wishes, but what you want . What your will and intention make manifest.”

“That may be true,” I say, “but you need us, don’t you?”

“A comforting lie,” the King whispers, “but a lie nonetheless.”

I meet his furious eyes. “You can’t be you without all of our messy humanity. And I think you know that. You know it—and you hate it.”

He snarls, his mouth of fangs wide and snapping.

Behind me, Mariah moans, and the King clacks in satisfaction. “She is tiring. She can’t hold me forever.”

He extends a clawed hand toward me—and my bloodmark flares to life. The scent of it fills my sphere—oud and sap, myrrh and incense. Erebus’s scent, not the King’s charred spice and embers. “Looks like you’re getting tired too.”

He snarls again, and the bloodmark flares, rippling across my skin and turning bright and burning. It takes me to my knees. I shut my eyes against the light—and remember my mission. Remember who I am. Who I can become, if I want.

I see Vera in my mind’s eye. Her white dress and bare feet. Her smile and wry expression. I can’t tell if it’s a fantasy or if she’s real. But I reach out for her, raise my arm so that it stretches between me and the demon who haunts us—and feel a thick thread form between my fingers.

My eyes snap open to find my arm extended toward the Shadow King, but my hand is empty.

Except it doesn’t feel empty. It feels like I’m holding something hot and pulsing. Something that belongs to me.

“Bree!” Mariah calls. “I can’t—” Her grip on the King’s ghosts fails.

But the ghosts around me have their eyes on my hand, smiles filling their faces. They look at me as one—and then, they’re gone.

I curl my fingers around the invisible thread—and the Shadow King jerks forward, falling onto bent limbs until we are both on the ground. Both leveled to our knees.

We stare at each other with wide eyes, mouths gaping.

Hazel’s words ring clear in my mind: Ancestral magic of any type requires an open connection in both directions.

Two parties tied together by blood.

I squeeze my hand again, and the Shadow King lurches in response.

“What are you… doing?” the King gasps.

I could say I don’t know, but as soon as I start to, I know that’s wrong. Because I do know.

“I’m calling you.” I push from my knees to my feet, holding the invisible thread tight, and as I rise, so does he. “An open channel runs both ways.”

Alone in my sphere now, without the distraction of his ghosts, I see the fear in his eyes. It strikes quick, like his lightning, but instead of fading—it lingers. Grows. His black fangs widen.

“Let me go.”

“Make my soul whole.”

He chuckles. “You won’t ever be the same again. Scar tissue, remember? Your soul fragments will never fit together the same way. You will be forever altered, Briana Matthews.”

I grit my teeth. “I can live with that.”

His wings flare wide. “You think you hold all the cards when there are still cards to play.”

“What do you mean?”

He laughs again, the sound of boulders cracking and glass shattering. “Before I was Erebus, before I was the Shadow King, before Arthur , I was Arawn of Annwfyn—shepherd of souls to the otherworld. If you force me to return your soul… I will ensure Alice Chen never wakes.”

My stomach drops. “What did you do to Alice?”

“I did not send her to purgatory, Briana. You did.” He grins wide. “But my hounds tell me that she is there. Stuck. Unable to die, unable to live.”

I chance a look back at Mariah, who kneels on the ground, panting from her effort. She looks as if she might pass out at any moment—something she warned me could happen—but she nods frantically. “There are hounds—I’ve heard them. They’re… circling her. Hunting her.”

My head jerks back to the smiling King. “I have not seen my realm in centuries, but my hounds still hear my voice. I retain some power yet. So choose, Briana Irene. Your innocent friend’s life… or the reunion of your fractured soul?”

My head whips to the other side, to find Nick at the outside edge of my sphere, face torn. He holds my gaze, and I see every ounce of his faith in me there. That I can make this decision. That I will make this decision. Nick has faith in me… but I don’t know if that’s enough. If faith can make this choice easy or clear. Nick presses an aether-enveloped hand to my barrier, the collision of our powers sparking blue and purple at his fingertips.

“Your choice will be right,” he says. “Either way.”

I hang my head. Tears burn at the edges of my eyes. My fingers tense around the cord that binds me to a god. I feel my own scream before I hear it. My agony rips the silence in half.

“Decide, Briana.”

My answer leaves me in a hoarse whisper. “Make my soul whole.”

“As you wish.”

It happens in an instant.

As Erebus returns my missing soul piece, the missing people return too.

And along with them, a flood of a million tiny memories fitting back into their places along the skein of my life. Faces around the table on birthdays. New people on the first days of school. My father at his shop. The guests at my mother’s funeral. Nick on the quad at Carolina. The Legendborn at their trials. Meeting Mariah and Patricia on campus. William showing me the Wall of Ages. Partygoers at the Eno Quarry. Selwyn’s wry smile and sarcastic voice. Alice hanging a poster in our dorm room.

The people, I expected. The full memories, I hoped for. But that’s not all that returns.

It’s as if my world had faded and I hadn’t noticed its dimness, because surrounding those tiny million memories is deeper joy and sharper anticipation and richer humor—and so, so much love. Or perhaps my world had grown too bright and I had forgotten its shadows, because also surrounding these returned people is fear with more clarity, confusion with more severity, and fear. So much fear.

I inhale a shaky breath. Exhale a shuddering sigh.

I breathe through it all. Then do it again.

When I open my eyes, my sphere has turned root red—but I am too filled with anguish to appreciate its return. My magic greets me like an old friend, but its price was the loss of another.

“We’ll—we’ll get her back, Bree. We will.” Mariah’s voice calls to me, and I twist toward her where she kneels.

But I hear the crack of doubt in her words. Know that they’re not a guarantee. Our eyes meet, and she nods once before collapsing to the ground in an exhausted heap.

When I turn, Nick meets my eyes through my red barrier. As I gaze at him, every feeling I’d started to nurture between us at Penumbra blossoms fully in my heart. I feel him in my heartbeat. Feel him in my hope. Call and response, deeper and richer. When Nick takes in my expression, he presses both hands to my barrier to bring himself closer, as if he can tell that our shared history is complete for me now, as it has always been for him. Then, I see what Nick had kept hidden from me until this moment. What he would have never revealed if I hadn’t made my own decision to restore my soul. There, in the face of the boy whose eyes see so much, is an open, unfettered ache. While I had longed for Nick, he had yearned for me.

My heart breaks, and my barrier falls.

When I let the King go, he collapses back into Erebus’s body on the ground. Blood streaks run down the sides of his mouth. His hand rises to his head, coming away streaked with blood.

His burning eyes focus on me where I stand. “And thus… ends… our lesson,” he pants, then grins through bloodied teeth.

“What lesson?”

“You have become… ruthless, after all.”