Still spread open on the altar table, the ancient Cerridwen Codex pulses in time with my heartbeat.
Take what’s yours, daughter,it seems to say.Take all of it.
All of it.
All of it.
I spread my arms before the demons, smiling at them like a benevolent goddess…
Mine to control. Mine to—
“What is the meaning of this treachery?” The Archmage shouts, his voice cutting through the haze of my strange thoughts. As his shocked and horrified face comes into clear view, I know at once this wasn’t part of the deal. Not the deal the shadow mages agreed to, anyway.
But Verrick?
This little show is playing outexactlyas he intended.
My lips twist into a smirk. Like my thoughts, it doesn’t feel wholly mine, but I claim it anyway.
That silver-eyed, dark-fae motherfucker—my father—just double-crossed the Prince of Hell.
He bound me to Zorakkov. Allowed him to use my blood to summon hell’s legions into the bodies of the awaiting shadow mages.
The last line of the prophecy comes back to me once more—Blessed is the blood that brings the world down—and as I look back at the demons silently awaiting my command, I realize that this is it.
This is how it starts.
“Stop!” Zorakkov shouts, hobbling toward me on shaky legs, his body still a hot mess even after the binding. “I command you to obey me!”
I don’t know whether he’s speaking to me or the demons, but it doesn’t matter.
The demon legions aren’t going to answer to him. They’re going to answer to the witch whose so-called “blessed blood” called them forth from the abyss.
Verrick knew this would happen, and now that it has, he wants to usemeto achieve his ends.
I can hear it in his hungry voice, feel it in the greedy whispers of fae magic still prickling across my skin.
He thinks he can coerce me.
He thinks I have no real power.
Ignoring Zorakkov and the Archmage’s furious protests, he comes to stand at my side now, his voice cool against my neck as he murmurs his twisted, dark-fae spells. His magic is a coarse, ancient language I don’t understand, but every word unlocks another image in my mind—the same visions that have haunted my nightmares. The same visions I saw when I got a glimpse into Eloise’s twisted thoughts.
But in Verrick’s vision of the future, Eloise and the shadow magic society suffer the same fate as the humans he intends to enslave, torture, and execute, paving the way for the dark fae to reclaim the earthly realm as their own.
The demon army—mydemon army—will carry out his will, obliterating all of humanity.
Another whisper of magic, his fingers cool on the back of my neck, and suddenly I can hear their screams. Smell the blood running red in the streets.
I whirl around to face him. He smiles at me like a proud father, and power blazes in the air between us. The red jewels on his crown sparkle in the candlelight, and my runes respond in kind, blazing on my skin.
His runes.
His fucking claim.
“Taste it, my moon,” he whispers, his magic a sweet seduction as it winds around my heart. “The power. The darkness. All of it will soon be ours.”
I smile at him in earnest. In the inky black of his pupils, I see my reflection, my own eyes glowing bright. Sparks of violet magic arc across my chest, the demon legions feeding me their power. Their hatred. Their malice.
