CHAPTER 1
EMBER
Skyscrapers wereslippery bitches in a storm. I had just enough room on my ledge to keep watch as rain pummeled into the building, blown sideways by the wind. I was soaked through and shivering. It would have been nice to look nice, but it isn’t as though Lara Achilles has ever cared much about how I look.
But maybe I wouldn’t see her tonight. I’d been here every night for a month, after catching wind that her release had been approved, but so far, waiting had been a bust. Cautiously, I leaned against the glass, watching fog roll through the streets below. The fog meant the rain was about to let up. That didn’t stop the next lightning strike and its subsequent roll of thunder from shaking the glass-clad building.
A few offices down from where I stood, a light was still on. Someone was burning the midnight oil at O-Tex. Someone always was, though—the Corps never slept. I closed my eyes against the last of the rain, breathing evenly to tamp down the growing impatience building in my chest.
It took me nearly a decade to understand why Lara stayed in the Asylum when she could’ve walked out at any time—and another to reconcile my guilt at not having stopped this to begin with. I’d been so preoccupied withfinding our swords and regaining our honor that I forgot to be vigilant with my people. My lack of foresight got us here.
It had been long enough. If Lara was getting out, I was going to get her and the rest of the Orphium Maere back. Movement below caught my attention. A tall, lean figure pushed open the heavily carved metal door to the Asylum and slipped outside, lighting a cigarette as she went. Tonight was the night, then. I’d recognize the swagger in Lara Achilles’ step in any decade, any lifetime. I stepped forward, into the rain and off the ledge of the O-Tex corporate headquarters, falling nearly forty stories, clean into a crouch at Lara’s feet.
“Fucking Hel, Verona,” she said, without so much as a flinch.
“Good to see you too,” I sniped back.
And it was. She looked fantastic—like she’d adopted one of those seventeen-step skincare routines while she was in, meditating every day and shit. Really, it was just the immortality, but it was a lark to imagine it the other way. Easier than thinking about what it was really like in there. I shuddered to think of the conditions in the Asylum. No one knew much, because almost no one ever got out. And those who did rarely spoke about what it was like inside.
Rain hit us both square in the face as the wind shifted, sending the fog rolling towards us in ominous, billowing clouds. In Orphium’s midnight glow, Lara looked like the anti-hero of a comic. Her dark hair, though shorn poorly, was damp from the rain. It fell into her narrowed ice-blue eyes as she raised her chin defiantly at me, taking a long drag from the cigarette in her bony fingers before turning away from me.
She tossed the cig and looked both ways before crossing the street, which was an old habit—there’d been a time when being clocked as an immortal would have meant torture, or worse. Lara knew better than most what “worse” entailed. Even now, we adapted to the ways mortals moved through the world, despite the Consulate’s progress with the Authority.
Looking both ways wasn’t necessary, though. This time of night, the streets surrounding the Asylum were clear. No one wanted to hear the inmates’ screams.
“Fuck off,” Lara said as she strode into the wet intersection, fog swirling around her feet. “I’m out.”
There was no getting out of the Maere. She knew it. I knew it. This was all bluster and fuss. And I couldn’t blame her for it—but I did, anyway. Whatever the reason she’d had for staying in that abominable pit, I wasn’t interested in hearing about it anymore.
Her stunning lack of loyalty to me after hundreds of years of friendship fucked me up on a personal level, and fucked me over on a professional one. The bitch stayed in, refused every lawyer I sent her way, and wouldn’t see me or the rest of our sistren, no matter how we begged.
It ruined us. Scattered us to the winds. I hadn’t seen Rhi, Max, or Sera in almost eighteen years. Barely heard from them, either. It had just been me standing between the parapsychs of Orphium, the Authority, and the Consulate for twenty years and I was sick to death of the balancing act. Lara was supposed to be the one I could trust. My ride or die. The one I depended on. And she left me to fend for myself without so much as an explanation.
I had every right to be angry, but I chose something closer to begging, since we both knew I wasn’t too proud for such measures. “Come on.” I grabbed the sleeve of her tuxedo jacket. We’d been to a posh Consulate function the night she was taken in—as if I could have forgotten. “I’ve got a new place. You’ll like it.”
Lara twisted out of my grip. “The old place is fine.”
“It burned to the ground after you left,” I shot back, swallowing the acid that rose in my throat at the thought of the fire. “Necroline ghouls.” I practically choked over my next words: “Without you—everything’s gone to shit.”
For a moment I thought she might relent, might finally tellme what went down the night they took her,whythey took her. But Lara Achilles was a stubborn little git, and she just shook her head, fury building on the sharply carved planes of her face. I wanted to punch her till she did things my way. But we’d agreed to stop solving problems that way centuries ago, and unlike her, I kept my promises.
The rain hadn’t stopped yet, and it soaked us both through as it fell harder, banishing the creep of the city’s notorious fog. We were a mess. But when Lara reached out for me, I made the mistake of thinking she meant to embrace me. Instead, she gripped my chin in her fingers, her ragged nails digging into my skin as she yanked me towards her.
“It was always going to shit, Verona. Don’t you see that? We’re useless. Always have been, always will be. Go live your life.”
As if I had a life to live without the Maere. As if any of us did.
She let me go with a hard shove. I stumbled backwards, stung by the violence in her eyes, but not surprised. I stood on the corner, watching as she crossed the street, heading downtown.
“Don’t follow me,” she called over her shoulder. “Forget you ever knew me, Verona. I’m sure as Hel going to forget I know you.”
CHAPTER 2
EMBER
Saccharine pink wallscontrasted with acid green gutters and wood trim. If the color combination wasn’t enough to give me a headache, the noise certainly was. The sound of balls rolling down the polished wood lanes and pins being knocked down filled my ears. Everything smelled of cigar smoke and aged leather. Oldies played on the overhead speakers, as Lourdes Thaumas poured champagne out of a pink plastic pitcher, into the mug I held out for her.
It said #1 Boss on it, which I assume was Lourdes’ attempt at a joke. I wasn’t laughing. Lourdes wasn’t either, though the miracle worker was dressed as a ray of sunshine. Her perfectly tailored three-piece suit was a nearly blinding shade of neon yellow that contrasted with her dark brown skin. Today, her tiny box braids were pulled back in a thick bun at the base of her neck.
