Beyond her, an endless chasm stretched in both directions, hundreds of feet wide, bottomless—or bottomed in hellfire. Lava churned deep below, slow currents casting a crimson glow that lit the shadows’ undersides like a hellish sunset.
Above and around us, shapes moved in the shadows—vast, darker than darkness itself, circling the chasm like predators orbiting a kill. My wolf’s instincts screamed: whatever lived here was old and powerful enough that looking directly at it was provocation.
Drakken’s eyes had gone wide in a way I’d never seen. He stood on Aelindor’s other side, staring at the chasm with the expression of a man whose every certainty had just been stripped away.
“Fuck,” he breathed.
For once, the dragon and my wolf agreed.
“Max.” Aelindor’s voice was low, measured. “Come to us. We need to return. Now.”
We started inching toward her. Every step felt like wading through a swamp, the air thick and clinging, unwilling to let us go.
Max didn’t answer. She stood facing the chasm, transfixed. Her head tilted, as if listening to something none of us could hear. I couldn’t see her face, but I could picture it: thosemidnight eyes, dark and enchanting, surely unfocused and glazed.
“Cadet Private Max!” Drakken barked. “I order you to?—”
The chasm chose that exact moment to erupt.
Liquid metal from the lava exploded upward in a monstrous wave—a geyser of molten starlight, a column of silver that detonated into a thousand screaming streams. Above us the sky became a canopy of liquid lightning, silver filaments crackling and weaving through the darkness like the nervous system of some half-slain god laid bare.
And that lightning moved with menacing intent, with a dreadful intelligence. Every thread turned toward us. Every single one pointed, paused, then struck.
All three of us lunged for Max, her name ripping from our throats.
The air turned to stone. Whatever force governed this place clamped down on us like an iron fist. My wolf’s legs drove against the ground, claws tearing at rock that pushed back, and I moved in slow motion, the distance between me and Max stretching like taffy.
Drakken roared and tried to shift. His bones cracked—the grinding sound of a dragon trying to emerge and failing. His skin rippled with scales that surfaced and sank back, his jaw elongating for half a second before snapping back to human. The DarkVeil wouldn’t let him change.
Aelindor’s wind lashed out, trying to shield Max while hauling her back to us. The magic hit the air and dissolved.
Drakken couldn’t shift. Aelindor’s magic was dead. I was in wolf form only because I’d shifted outside the Veil, before its rules could clamp down.
And the lightning was less than three seconds from hitting Max.
My heart shattered. We’d just found her. After decades of searching for the One, after pulling her from the Scorched Wastes half-dead and watching her start to bloom, we were going to watch her die.
“No!” Max’s voice split the air like a thunderclap.
“STOP!”
She spun and faced the lightning. Her hair whipped upward in a wild, gravity-defying corona, darkest midnight blue with a shot of glowing white.
Max Morning threw her hands up.
A thousand strands of liquid silver fire froze a dozen feet away, crackling, writhing against her will, straining against a leash held by Max.
“THEY. ARE. MINE,” she roared. “Do not harm what’s mine!”
The lightning recoiled. The entire canopy pulled back, the strands retreating like a pack cowering from a dominant alpha wolf’s snarl. They didn’t disperse. They hovered, vibrating and waiting. Obeying.
My wolf’s legs nearly gave out. Not from weakness but from awe.
I’d seen Aelindor shatter a mountain. I’d seen Drakken burn a city to cinders and Nikolai drain warlords dry in seconds.
I had never seen anything like Max Morning standing in front of a hellfire chasm, holding back thousands of strands of liquid fire with her bare hands and will of steel, claiming three princes of the Zodiac Covenant as hers in a voice that made the darkness flinch.
The sulfur burned my nose, but underneath it was her scent. My girl. My dominant star. And she smelled like home.
