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CHAPTER ONE

FRANKIE

He reached down and grabbed me by the jaw, his fingers digging into my skin. I hated how much I loved it. He lifted me up to his eye level. “Cooper is not your soulmate,” he snarled.

My heart was pounding in my chest. I frowned. “What?—”

Everest shot black magic into my chest, then blasted it across the room toward Cooper. He turned my face to watch as the green heart-shaped crystal on his chest vanished. My eyes widened. He dragged me over to a column a few feet away, then dropped me to my feet and spun me around to face my own reflection in a mirror. The soulmate glyph on me was gone.

My pulse was flying. He gripped my hair, tipped my head back, then sank his fangs into my throat. I gasped and my whole body flinched. My body lit on fire inside. I watched my reflection as my blue eyes changed to pink . . . as those lines slid down my throat to my shoulder.

“ You’re mine, ” Everest growled. “Not his. MINE.”

An explosion rocked the castle so hard dust rained down on us. Everest tossed me to my knees on the ground, then vanished into darkness and completely out of sight.

Everest was my soulmate.

Everest . . . was my soulmate.

I wanted to cry, scream, and throw up. We were running through the snow to the battle, to our Coven-mates, but I saw nothing. My entire soul was locked on this revelation. Everest was my soulmate. Everything suddenly made so much more sense. In hindsight, it was painfully obvious. In the back of my mind, I registered the sharp chill of the snow hitting my skin and the sounds of the war happening up ahead.

Everest is my soulmate.

I had so many questions.

Bright light flashed in front of me, snapping me out of my mental spiral. Lily was in front of me shining thick streams of golden sunshine from her palms into the battle up ahead. Vampires burst to dust and ash like fireworks left and right. Cooper knocked a dozen vampires out. With one flick of his wrist, they were all asleep.

I looked ahead and my heart sank. Willow had dragons of all colors flying around and shooting flames, which were really being sent by Emersyn. It was incredible. I saw rainbow mist light up the tree line. Tennessee was a monster zooming through the battle.

Sweyn was up there, I saw her white hair and heard her hideous cackle. Saber and Everest were fighting by her side.

Green flames shot up in front of me, causing me to make a sharp right turn. Sam charged for me, her long blonde hair flying behind her like a cape. My soulmate’s betrothed. She tackled me into the snow. I tried to push her off, but she had that vampire strength I couldn’t overpower. She wasn’t hurting me, instead she pressed her palms to my right shoulder and neck and screamed.

Oh no, she knows what this mark means— warmth covered my upper body all the way up to my jaw. I stopped fighting her and looked down. Sam had somehow used magic to cover me up. I looked up to her with wide eyes.

She snarled and dove for the other side of my throat. I gasped.

‘ I’m not gonna hurt you, Frankie. Stop fighting me or it WILL hurt. ’

I froze with my hands on my shoulders as her voice echoed in my mind.

‘ Sweyn CANNOT see that soulmate mark on your shoulder. Everest’s cover cannot be blown yet, ’ s he yelled through my mind. ‘You have to get out of here. Take The Coven and GO. You can’t win this tonight, not like this. ’

Then I remembered Sam’s voice warning us something was coming in the Land of the Lore.

‘ The Unseelie and demons are coming. She made me call for them. The fallen angels are coming, and there’s SIX of them now. ’ Her voice wasn’t screaming anymore, like she was new to this trick and still learning how to control it. ‘On the count of three, I need you to blast me with as much magic as you can, then run for the arches. ’

I nodded enough for her to feel it.

‘ Three . . . two . . . one—NOW!’

I pushed my magic out and into her chest. I threw it with everything I had. Sam screamed and flew up in the air. I scrambled to my feet just as Cooper lunged through the green flames. He reached down and lifted me off the snow and into a sprint.

We made it around to the rest of our Coven-mates. Tenn and Tegan weren’t there. Our Coven Leaders were thick in battle, surrounded by Sentinels and Sweyn. Everest was fighting Tennessee, but I could tell neither one of them were trying that hard to kill the other. The rest of us were just trying to work through the vampires between us and the arch. But Lily and Cooper were weak from the Land of the Lore. Their magic was flickering.

“BEYOND THE ARCH OF MAGIC’S LANE!” Bentley yelled as he fought off a vampire. “We’re weaker here! Conserve your strength!”

“Get to the arch!” Tim shouted. “GO!”

Tegan screamed and rainbow magic exploded out of her. Sweyn shot into the air and crashed into the snow back by the ballroom’s shattered windows. But Tegan slid backwards and slammed into the arch.

Everest threw his hand up and the ground shook like an earthquake, throwing us all to the snow. Only Tenn and Everest stood still. We kept trying to get up, but the world trembled too hard. Gravity kept us down. All we could do was watch.

Black liquid bubbled up from beneath the snow. He flexed his fingers and twisted his hand. The liquid looked like tar. He’d summoned pillars made of tar all around Tennessee. The tar moved and pulsed.

And then the tar took the shape of people.

“ What the fuck is that? ” Easton breathed.

The tar kept morphing until it was shaped like people with weapons. The tar monsters lunged for Tenn. It was twenty on one. They attacked him with expert moves and skill. Tenn was Tenn though. He moved with speed even the vampires didn’t have. Michael’s sword sliced clean through the tar people, chopping them into pieces. But the second they hit the snow, they just began reforming.

And then Tennessee froze.

His sword lowered.

Cooper and Timothy were crawling in the snow to try and get to him. Kessler was leaping ahead but kept crashing again. Everyone was yelling. Tennessee had just stopped fighting. He’d lowered his sword until the tip of the blade hit the snow. He staggered backwards. The tar monsters he’d already sliced up were reforming already. They were going to ambush him at once.

Tenn just stared at one of them. His face was pale and a little green. His mismatched eyes were wide. “ Libby?

My Coven-mates froze.

The tar monster in front of him shined with a red glow from within the tar until the tar was gone, leaving a very human-looking girl standing in its place—a girl with light-brown hair tied in a side braid and hazel eyes . . . a girl with the Roman numerals XV written in faded gray on her left forearm.

Tenn dropped Michael’s sword in the snow. “ Libby. ”

Libby grinned and raised her sword up above her head and grinned. “Did ya miss me?”

There was a beat of silence where the world seemed completely frozen.

“ L-libby? ” Tenn whispered, his voice breaking. “ H-h-how? ”

I had no idea who this girl was to him, to them , but I did not trust the way he reacted to her. This was not like him, not even as Archie. Libby just grinned up at him like a lunatic. And then she screamed and thrust her arms straight forward—a bright, glowing white orb shot from her hands right into Tenn’s chest. He flew backwards into the air, rising higher and higher with every beat of my heart in horrifying slow motion. Those big white angel wings of his popped out but instead of catching him, they flew forward and wrapped around him like a cocoon. The air whooshed over my head.

And then that pressure holding my body against the snow vanished. I pushed off the ground and lunged forward like a jungle cat pouncing on her prey. Except I wasn’t moving in for the kill, my focus was laser-sharp on the glowing six-foot-long sword of Archangel Michael lying in the snow where Tenn had dropped it. I had no idea what would happen if our enemy touched it, but we couldn’t risk anything. With my gaze locked on the sword, I didn’t see what anyone else was doing, but I felt my Coven-mates rushing around me in a panic. The world seemed to be moving in slow motion, like trying to run in a dream. My knees hit the snow beside the sword, sending a tidal wave of snow straight into Libby’s face.

The power radiating off Michael’s sword was too bright to look at, but that meant I didn’t need to. I just dove for it and prayed it didn’t incinerate me for daring to touch it. In the back of my mind, I remembered hearing that while Tenn was the only one who could wield the sword, his sister and the entire Bishop family had been able to touch it to some extent—because they had angel blood in their bloodline.

I was also a Proctor with angel blood in my veins.

My fingers wrapped around the golden hilt and electricity shot through my entire body. I hissed as every one of my muscles tingled and buzzed, but my grip tightened on the weapon. I craned my neck back and looked up to find every gaze of our enemy locked on me.

Two large hands grabbed me by the back of my shirt and lifted me off the ground like I was a throw pillow. I gasped and summoned my magic because the power radiating off Michael’s sword drowned out all of my other senses. Kessler’s face passed by me in a blur—and then I was airborne, thrown like a baseball. I meant to look for my Coven-mates to see who could catch me, but my gaze landed on the demons dropping from the sky above me.

“DEMONS!” I screamed and tried to lift Michael’s sword, but I couldn’t get the tip of the blade up, so I just held it straight out from my body, gripping the hilt as tight as possible as gravity rolled my body through the air.

Everything was a blur to my eyes. All I saw were flashes of white and black with little pops of colorful magic from my Coven-mates. A demon charged for me, but the second Michael’s sword touched its black scales, the thing burst into dust. I wasn’t using the sword, I was merely holding it while the universe twirled me around. Kessler had thrown me. He must have known this would happen. Demons didn’t seem to think because they kept lunging for me only to burst to ash and dust. It was all happening too fast. The world was spinning. Gravity grabbed my ankle and yanked me back down toward the ground. I did not have wings, only very, very breakable bones. I scanned left and right for Tegan but couldn’t find her—a large, deeply tanned arm snaked around my waist and pulled.

My body flipped around until I was facing the stars again. White feathers moved in my peripheral vision a split second before I saw Tenn’s face. With perfect ease, he pulled Michael’s sword out of my hands and spun us around as he sliced four demons to dust in the blink of an eye. I threw my hands out and shot my blue flames into the demons as Tenn zipped us through the air. But holding me was definitely hindering our non-human leader, so I opened my mouth to tell him to bring me down when his grip on my waist vanished.

I blinked and Tenn was gone.

And then my feet hit solid ground. Big gray spikes shot up from the snow and the whole world rumbled— No, wait. That’s not the ground. I peeled my gaze off the demons and looked down to find I was standing on Silas’s back. My eyes widened. I’m standing on a dragon. Silas snorted, pulling me out of my momentary shock in time to see demons speeding toward us.

I cursed and dove forward. “Silas, FLIP AND CATCH!”

It was a batshit crazy move, but Silas didn’t miss a beat. This dragon knew how to fight. The second my feet left his spine, he tucked one wing and flipped upside-down to catch me in one of his dragon hands. I threw my hands up and fired my blue flames down into the line of vampires on the snow below us. Silas’s bright-yellow eyes shined like beams of sunlight and then a stream of fire shot out of his mouth. For a few perfect seconds, we worked in perfect sync, with him killing demons above and me taking down vampires below.

‘UNSEELIE!’ Tegan screamed through my mind.

That was all the warning we had before they ambushed us from seemingly out of the darkness itself. Their silver armor flashed in the moonlight. They were everywhere. My stomach dropped. But no new tricks was our rule when we got here. I just didn’t know what that meant we could do. I threw my hands up to do something when one of them flew up from beneath Silas’s head with a dagger raised. Silas tightened his grip on me and did a barrel roll, his wing slamming into the Unseelie’s chest like this was the home run derby. The Unseelie grunted and flew back but not before slicing his dagger right through Silas’s eyebrow.

“NO!” I yelled and threw my magic right at the Unseelie’s face.

Silas flipped back upright and red blood splashed across my face. A vicious growl shook his entire body as he rained fire in every direction. I craned my neck back to try and see how bad the injury was, but I couldn’t see over his massive jaw. A wall of water shot up from the ground, separating us from the line of vampires rushing toward us from the marble palace. Silas flipped in the air and sped off in the opposite direction just as Tenn darted between demons and threw his hands out in front of him. Wind like a category one hurricane crashed into us, yet Silas just rose above the gusts like it was nothing. I curled my body, still in Silas’s grip, to watch Tenn bury each Unseelie in water bubbles like he had on the beach that day, except they weren’t drowning. They used their daggers to try to cut through his water.

The demons screeched and dive-bombed all at once.

I gasped and looked ahead of me. The demons were being chased toward me by beams of pure sunlight flying across the night sky— on the back of a dragon. My eyes widened. That was not one of Willow’s illusions. The other dragons had arrived. A gigantic black dragon with purple eyes commandeered the sky with Lily and Easton on his back, blasting fire and sunlight at our enemies while the other dragons scooped up my Coven-mates.

With my heart lodged in my throat, I glanced left and right, panicking as I tried to find each of my Coven-mates, but the dragons were fast. I barely had time to glimpse flashes of green and ivory scales before they were zooming by. They seemed to be plucking my crew off the ground and throwing them in the air to catch on the fly— and they all landed on the dragon’s backs as if they practiced this.

There was a flash of white light up ahead, drawing my attention, but it was only Tegan sending the big green dragon through a portal with a row of witches on his back. That ivory dragon swooped down low and grabbed Timothy and Kessler, tossing them onto his back with Cooper and Savannah before charging for the arch where Tegan waited to send them through a portal.

Fire shot across the sky. I looked up only to find it was Silas. While I’d been watching, he’d been burning demons out of the air. A navy-blue dragon carried Emersyn and Willow, expertly working together to kill demons without slowing. Silas roared and dove for the ground faster than I’d ever seen him move. The ice-cold air felt like the tips of blades as it cut across my skin. Tears burned my eyes, and the air was like fire down my throat. The massive black dragon was standing in the snow using its body to shield— TENN.

No wait, not shielding. Dragging. That black dragon had Tennessee gripped tight in both its hands and was forcing our Coven Leader off the front line. A wave of heat billowed out of Silas as he swooped down beside the black dragon, melting the snow right off the ground to reveal green grass. Then he turned and shoved his head into the black dragon’s side. The black dragon growled so loud the ground shook like an earthquake, sending three dozen vampire Sentinels crashing to the ground. But when I looked up, the black dragon was already halfway back to the archway where Tegan was waiting with wide eyes and a flashing green soulmate glyph.

Tenn was cursing violently and thrashing in the dragon’s claws.

Silas lifted off the ground just as Sam sped up to me with her bright-green magic coiling in her palms. I didn’t think, I just reached out and grabbed her hands and lifted her off the ground with us. I had to get Sam out of Avolire. She didn’t belong there with them. She’d saved our asses too many times. I had to repay her, and being kidnapped was a great cover for escape.

Up ahead that black dragon was struggling to hold Tenn, and I wasn’t sure why he was even trying. He was our best weapon against these Unseelie. A brown dragon carrying Bentley raced over and flew beneath Tenn like it thought he was going to break free.

Sam made a strangled sound, so I looked down and found her eyes wide with fear. She whipped her head back and forth, then locked on me. “ More Unseelie are coming NOW!” she screamed into my mind.

I looked up to try and tell Tegan, but Sam must’ve told her too because Tegan’s eyes widened. In that split second, I saw Tegan’s indecision—fly for Tenn or get the others out. It was only a brief moment, then she flew up into the air like Storm from X-Men and charged for her soulmate.

But that same Unseelie Knight who’d sliced Silas was flying faster and was almost to Tenn. The brown dragon shot up and blocked Tenn’s body with its own, the two dragons flying in perfect unison as if they were conjoined. I couldn’t use my magic and hold Sam, and there was no way I was letting go of her this high in the air.

And then the Unseelie threw a ball of black-smoke magic right at Tegan.

Not Tenn.

Tegan.

Tenn’s scream sent bolts of lightning streaking across the sky like it wanted to catch that magic ball before it hit her—but even that wasn’t fast enough. It slammed into Tegan a split second later but crashed into a rainbow-colored forcefield around her body. She screamed and threw her arms out to the side and rainbow mist exploded out of her like a bomb. The mushroom cloud of her magic hit everyone with a thud, sending tremors through my body.

Sam screeched. I tightened my grip, but her body was burning hot and smoking. I clenched my teeth and growl-screamed through the pain of touching her. Those gold and red eyes of hers trembled and then turned solid red from eyelid to eyelid. My heart stopped. Lilith. That meant Lilith. It meant Lilith was calling for her, communicating with her. I knew that from my time with Everest in Avolire. But I couldn’t just let her go. A wild, vicious growl rumbled through Sam’s body. Her fangs elongated, piercing through her own bottom lip.

Tegan cursed, then rainbow magic slammed into Sam’s back. White light filled the air, blocking out every inch of our surroundings to where I could only feel Silas’s talons gripping my waist. For a moment there was nothing but white, then neon-green light flashed, chasing away the white like that pop of color as the sun sets beneath the ocean’s horizon line at the beach.

My vision cleared . . . just in time to see Sam drop from my hands.

No, no, no! SAM!