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E xactly the man we were searching for. How had Phineas led us right to him?

Alastir had descended the staircase and moved straight to Saanvi’s side, pushing us gently out of the way.

He gradually laid her back down, procuring a translucent green stone from his pocket and placing it on Saanvi’s chest right above her wound.

He got to work quickly, grabbing the mortar and pestle off the counter and filling it with all sorts of herbs and powders with a dash of liquid to form a salve.

He pulled the tunic away from Saanvi’s chest and it stuck to her skin, causing her to wince in pain. He liberally spread the salve across the wound as he muttered an incantation, the words unfamiliar to me.

“Didn’t you see us coming?” I asked, leaning my hip against the front counter as we watched him work .

“Don’t sass me, girl,” he replied, his gaze deadpan as his eyes quickly flickered up to me before returning to Saanvi. “You know very well I only see what the Mother deigns to show me, and she did not show me this.”

When he was finished applying the salve to Saanvi’s wound, he grabbed the quartzite stone and place it in her grasp, his hands encompassing hers.

More spells flowed from his lips as we waited on bated breath to see if we had gotten here in time to save her.

The knife had to have nicked something vital in her chest with the amount of blood that she had lost.

Saanvi’s head fell back as her muscles released, no longer able to hold her own head straight. The creases of pain that had marked her expression were gone. I moved forward in shock—my hand out—but Alastir stopped me.

“Needn’t fret—the girl lives. This is part of the spell. She will heal faster in slumber.”

I glanced at him, eyes wide, before nodding in response.

If there was anyone that could save Saanvi at this point, it would be Alastir. He was not only a powerful seer but a powerful Shade with abilities far beyond what we could comprehend. I moved back to the counter, resting against it and releasing the air I had been holding in my chest.

Saanvi would be ok.

Puck had begun rifling through the beakers and test tubes on the shelf and one crashed to the floor before him, spilling neon green liquid across the floor.

“Sorry, mate,” he cringed as he turned to Alastir, who was watching him with narrowed eyes .

“Petyr, step away from the shelf.” Alastir pushed away from the table to move towards him.

“If people don’t stop calling me that…” Puck mumbled as he stepped away from the shelf as Alastir had asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Thomas, you’ll grab the mop to clean this up?” Alastir asked, unclasping his cloak at the neck and draping it across one of the chairs that had been pushed away from the table. The young man nodded, disappearing into a back room to gather the supplies.

Alastir turned to Phineas with an unreadable expression in his gaze, and my eyes flitted between the two of them. How had Phineas known exactly where Alastir was? And how did they know each other?

“Time for those answers?” Phineas asked, the ghost of a smile across his lips. “I did hold up my end of the bargain, after all.”

“You did,” I replied through my teeth, crossing my own arms over my chest in a protective manner.

Phineas nodded towards the door with his head, his salt and pepper curls falling across his brow. His men quickly filed out of the small shop, out of ear shot. He pulled a chair out from the table and sat, his legs spread wide, a smirk across his lips.

“Go on then, don’t let me stop you.”

I wanted to wipe that smirk right off his smug little face.

“What is this place?” I asked instead, Phineas’s gaze narrowing on me .

Alastir’s forehead creased as he met my gaze. A moment passed before he answered.

“This used to be my home,” he replied, a sad lilt to his words. “I grew up here. Raised my children here.”

Children? I hadn’t known him to have any. And I hadn’t known that Alastir grew up in The Shadow. Many Shades who weren’t as well off did, but I hadn’t imagined that he was one of them. He ran a successful charm shop in Prins out of a generously sized town house.

“I didn’t know.” My voice was soft.

I could see the emotion flood Alastir’s gaze as it flitted to Phineas once more. What was the connection here?

I turned towards Phineas—my gaze shrewd. “How did you know where Alastir was?”

“I knew he would be home,” was all he said.

Home .

Not his home, but home. As if they had shared it together.

My gaze darted between the two of them once more, the puzzle pieces slowly falling into place.

Alastir sighed. “I was raised here by my parents. When I had my first child, I raised him here, too. Only a certain sort of clientele frequents a shop in The Shadow, therefore I moved the main store to Prins and had my youngest, Thomas, take over operations here.” He nodded towards the young man mopping up the spilled liquid across the room.

I hadn’t even noticed him reappear from the storage room.

Thomas was his son.

“And your oldest?” I asked, my brow quirked .

Deep down, I already knew the answer. A long moment of silence passed between us as we waited for his reply. Finally, he sighed, running a hand through his beard.

“Phineas,” he replied, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

Whether it was with affection or disappointment, I couldn’t quite tell.

“So you knew to come here, because this was your home, too?” I asked, glancing back towards Phineas.

He nodded in response, eyes downcast. I had never seen him without his smug expression, and the vulnerability that crossed his gaze surprised me.

Alastir was Phineas’s father.

It took me a moment to wrap my mind around it—how it could all make sense. Alastir was kind and gentle, but also incredibly powerful. Phineas was nothing but trouble.

“If Alastir is your father, why would you need to get the information from us? Couldn’t you simply ask him yourself?” I asked as I watched him prop one leg up on his knee and sit back in his chair.

“I could,” he replied, “but he wouldn’t tell me. My father stopped telling me what he sees many, many years ago.”

“Because all it brings is trouble ,” Alastir hissed. He turned his attention back towards me. “You made a bargain with him? To save the girl?”

I nodded in response. My gaze met Tess’s from across the room and she appeared equally surprised by this turn of events as I was.

“But you are the one who sent us after Phineas a few months ago. You told us he held the answers we searched for when we couldn’t find the missing spell from the Kotova grimoire,” I replied, reasoning it out in my head.

“Yes, my son deals in stolen spells. I happened to know that one was in his possession. Whether he knew it or not,” Alastir replied with the ghost of a smile, pulling a chair out from the table and sitting across from his son. “I know what my son is. I’m not proud of it.”

Phineas appeared as if he was going to say more but stopped himself, biting his lip and turning his gaze away. Saanvi stirred on the table, her legs moving, her lips murmuring, before becoming still once more. Her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm.

“So what did you bargain with my son to save the girl’s life?” Alastir asked.

He looked very, very tired.

I swallowed, steeling myself for what I was about to ask. I hadn’t managed to discuss Nikolai without ripping the wound wide open, and I had lost my temper at the mere mention of his name slipping from Kane’s lips. That is what had gotten us into this mess in the first place.

“You might not know, but—” My words were cut off by Alastir’s interruption.

“Nikolai is Noctani.”

I closed my eyes, pressing them together tightly. “Yes, Nikolai has turned Noctani. The mother showed you that?”

Alastir nodded once.

“We were told by Annelise that there was a spell that lived in the Kotova grimoire once, a spell to reverse siphoning magic. That whatever magic is done can also be undone. Amiyah said the spell has long since been ripped out and has been lost to time. But if anyone were to remember it or know where it was located, it would be you. You are our only hope for creating a cure for Noctani… an antidote for it.”

Alastir’s shoulders slumped under the weight of the request before his narrowed gaze met Phineas’s.

“What could it hurt for him to know?” I asked. “He wanted any information we got from you. I don’t see the harm in him having the cure for Noctani. This is a good thing.”

Alastir shook his head as if I didn’t understand. “It isn’t that simple. Spells can be twisted and turned based on the will of the Shade. A spell can easily be reverse manufactured.”

A sigh escaped my lips as I turned to Phineas. “You wouldn’t.”

“Alastir, I wouldn’t.” There was a pleading note to Phineas’s voice, one I had never in my life expected to hear from him.

This side of him was… unexpected. He was the cocky, arrogant spell thief, but we had a front-row seat to his family drama. Phineas delt in knowledge, maybe he simply wanted the bragging rights of being one of the few Shades in the realm to have this information.

“My trust for you was burned out long ago,” Alastir replied, his gaze falling to his boots.

Phineas appeared stung by his words. “It was the deal they made,” he replied, his voice tight.

“It was,” I confirmed .

Would I live to regret this? Would Phineas twist the spell and turn it into something dark, something evil? Would he reverse it to create even more Noctani? But to what end?

It was a risk we were going to have to take. I needed to bind my magic once more, and I needed Nikolai. We needed to end this war with Donika. Phineas couldn’t be a priority of mine.

“Does this mean you have a cure? You have an antidote?” I asked Alastir.

Hope was clear in my voice as my gaze flickered to meet Tess’s across the room once more. If he was this worried about Phineas having the spell, that had to mean that he had it, right? Or he knew where it was located at the least.

I hadn’t let myself hope before. I hadn’t wanted to set my heart on this only for it to be shattered when this turned out to be a dead end.

More than anything, I wanted Nikolai back.

I wanted to save him. More than I even wanted to end this war—as bad as that was.

I was broken with the piece of the binding shattered within me, and I wasn’t sure I could make my move against Donika when I didn’t feel whole.

“The spell you seek is the reversal of siphoning. It would reverse the very essence that made the Noctani what they are. I cannot guarantee that it would restore the Shade to their original state, or that the Shade would even survive it.” Alastir’s gaze was sharp, his voice gruff.

“Do you understand what I am saying, girl?”

If he called me girl one more time…

I bristled. “ Diana .” I replied through my teeth. “You’ll have enough respect for your rightful queen to call me by my name, at the least. ”

Alastir cleared his throat. “My apologies. I meant no offense. It’s only that this is a… tricky spell… to put it simply. I cannot make any guarantees about its success and I don’t want your expectations to be misaligned.”

“Have you ever done it before?” Tess asked, moving towards me from across the room and stopping at my side.

Thomas had left at some point to dispose of the mop and bucket.

“I have not.” Alastir shook his head. “The siphoning spell originates from the Kotova grimoire, but it no longer resides there.”

“We already know that,” I replied, my jaw tight. “My mother ripped it out.”

I could curse her for ripping out the spells I needed most in my time of need.

“Do you have it?” Tess asked.

Alastir shook his head. “It is not in my possession.”

“But you know where it is?” Her eyes hardened.

Alastir’s gaze fell on Phineas and it took every bit of strength within me not to leap across the room and fasten my bare hands around his neck.

“I don’t have it, Alastir,” Phineas replied.

There was no hint of untruth in his voice, but this wasn’t a man we could trust.

“You don’t… but you did,” Alastir replied.

Phineas averted his gaze in confirmation.

“Where is it now?” I asked, my patience wearing thin. “Who did you sell it to? ”

Phineas squirmed under my gaze and my hand darted to Stormslayer’s hilt at my thigh, ready to unsheathe her at a moment’s notice.

Alastir raised his hand as if to stop me, but I could see Puck closing in on Phineas out of the corner of my eye.

Kenna hadn’t left Saanvi’s side, but her eyes darted about the room as she watched everything unfurl.

Right before Puck could grab Phineas across the shoulders from behind, he pushed back out of his chair as if he could sense him. It skidded across the concrete and into Puck. He whirled on Puck, a dagger held between them.

“There’s no need for blades,” he said, despite holding one firmly in his own grasp.

“Sure,” Puck shrugged, his Katana glinting off the sun that peered through the shop window. “No need for blades, simply tell us who you sold the spell to and we will be on our way.”

Simply knowing that we wanted it—needed it—Phineas would want the spell for himself.

We were walking a fine line here. My blood was pumping through my veins thickly enough that my head was pounding to the rhythm of my heart.

I would not let Phineas stand in the way of possibly curing Nikolai.

I would do whatever it took to get my hands on that spell.

“Afraid the spell isn’t… accessible right now.” Phineas appeared sheepish as he took a step back… away from Puck.

Towards me.

I moved fast enough that I wasn’t sure if anyone saw, and I had Phineas’s back pressed against my chest, Stormslayer held across his throat. Everyone always thought Puck was the greater threat and underestimated me.

Big mistake.

I pressed the blade against his Adam’s apple and a trickle of blood spilled down, soaking through the collar of his white tunic.

“This all feels so familiar, doesn’t it? My blade to your throat? You’ll tell us who you sold the spell to, and you’ll tell us now.” My voice brooked no argument.

Phineas nodded, but that only made the blood trickle faster, my blade sinking deeper into his skin. He raised his hands in defense, letting his dagger clatter to the floor.

“It’s with Corian.” His voice was breathless as he slumped against me. “The spell is with Corian, Donika’s dream walker.”