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I was… captive. A prisoner in a war, and this hulking shadow was trying to keep me grounded. Just as the man with the blinding smile would have.

This shadow knew me somehow. Or rather, knew of me. Because I was a warrior whose name would echo off the walls of eternity.

Nodding, I pulled the fabric over my head and crossed to the bars. Before I reached them, the man straightened, drew one hand toward his side, and lowered his head to his wrist. Only when I came close enough to see him in the sliver of light—moonlight, perhaps?—did the motion make sense.

He pulled too-long canines from his wrist. Blood welled dark against the shadow, and he shoved his arm through the bars.

“Come on,” he urged. “Remember, Ally.”

I lifted my gaze to his, breath coming faster.

“Who are you?”

“Drink. Remember.” Curt orders. Yet something in me felt compelled to obey them.

Drink? As in…

“No,” I breathed, horrified.

“We’ve done this before. Your name is Alvara Goldman Porter. You are the second-in-command of Grayshell. I was sent here to help you.” I only stared, desperate to see him—his face, his eyes. He shook his offered arm. “Drink, Ally. Read my blood. Before they come back for one of us.”

Terror knotted thickly in my throat, but I obeyed. I lowered my lips to the heat of his arm and followed his instructions—though I still could not remember why I should trust him—lapping at the blood running in rivulets over his skin.

A girl, not yet fourteen. Fear in her eyes. Guilt in his spine.

A blond man looking at him with loathing.

I should know him—the man.

Shadows wreathing. Bodies rising. Ravens crying.

I sucked down a deeper pull, even as he let out a pained breath.

The girl again, sitting in a tree. He likes watching her read. She has a kindness in her eyes the world never showed him. He needs to protect her.

A pinstriped suit. A swirl of green mist. Aqua eyes.

Another face, framed by dark hair, flashed through my mind. But as warm liquid slid down my throat, she vanished like smoke through my fingers.

“You’re sure about this?” the blond man demanded. Kade. His name was Kade.

The man nodded. “Not much use anywhere else.”

“So be it. I’ll tell Commander Porter we have a man for the job.”

“Keep your eyes peeled for the ravens.”

The necromancer dipped his chin and turned on the ball of his foot to leave…

War…

So much fire. An enormous gate, an open maw to hell itself. Pinned. He was pinned beneath metal, flames licking at his flickering shield. Five figures appeared and rushed forward. One he knew. The others he did not. But the one in the center—familiar, somehow—was a Grayshellian warrior. She raised flaming hands and, with a scream as though she were being torn in two, pulled the gate closed.

The man beside her turned, sensing him at their backs.

Gasping, I lifted my mouth from his wrist. I knew him. The man. The green-eyed man.

“He…” My voice was small, a broken thing lodged in my chest like glass.