The onyx begins to glow. Every other light goes dim. Lanterns and sparklers snuffed in the wind. Even the comet slips behind clouds as shadows pull free and writhe like snakes across the ground. With a bone-chilling screech, they slither up the archway and crawl into the black stone.
Seraphina’s powers—to see what is hidden, to control human hearts, to manipulate darkness and shadow—have been reunited with their amulets.
Jude clambers to my side. He takes my hand and tries to shield me as the curse swells. I can feel it building like the crest of an icy wave.
The locket beats beneath my shirt—wildly, euphorically—as another rift tears open. A jagged, vertical split through the air, and through its warped shimmer, I glimpse the other side.
A mob of stampeding partygoers scramble for safety, only they don’t know where to run. I spot Twig, working furiously against the wind, adjusting a rigged-up array of copper rods wired to a humming battery. Sparks spit from the panel as wind tears at his clothes.
Shadowed wings unfurl from the tomb. And Seraphina emerges, her eyes aglow. Her skin, pale and luminous. Her long, raven hair whipping in the wind, framing a face that is terrifying in its beauty.
Rafe drops to his knee.
The black ring of flame shrinks.
The wind goes quiet.
So does the chaos on the other side of the veil.
Slowly, she turns to Rafe in a gown woven from shadow and starlight. The hem tattered as though dragged through a battlefield.
“Raphael,” she says in a voice that is both honey and venom, melodic and inhuman. “I thought you wouldn’t come.”
“Of course I came.”
She traces her pale finger down his cheek.
He looks up at her, his eyes reflecting her glow. “You left me buried in a half-life, waiting for the stars to align.”
“Ileft you? Oh no no, my sweet.” She bringsthe tip of her finger beneath his chin. “You have your brother to thank for that. Please tell me you made him pay.”
“Him and every generation after.”
She smiles a slow, bone-chilling smile, then turns in our direction. “And who do we have here?”
“The last of Ezra’s line,” Rafe says. “And the girl he bleeds for.”
Fear coils in my gut.
Jude shifts, like doing so might hide me.
Seraphina’s glowing eyes glitter. “Is this love I see? Oh, how delightful.”
She turns to the archway and lifts the onyx between her fingers—obsidian dark, glowing with power. She sighs a contented, blissful sigh as darkness spills from the stone like undulating liquid suspended in the air.
“Do you have any idea how wonderful it is to be reunited with my beloveds after so long without them?” For a moment, the darkness swirls hypnotically. Then, with a flick of her wrist, it streaks toward me with impossible speed. I stumble backward and fall. Jude tries to intervene, tries to stop what is happening, but how do you fight shadow?
It passes through him like mist.
He shouts my name as darkness curls around my neck, squeezing, tightening, lifting me off my toes.
The world dims.
My eyes bulge.
I choke—unable to breathe.
“Let her go!” Jude shouts.
